Timmy Martin - Leaving The Show

Leaving The Show

As the Lassie 1964 season approached, Jon Provost was a fourteen-year-old with his contract up for a three-year renewal. Provost however did not look forward to playing Timmy Martin until the age of seventeen, describing the role as a "vacuum" and stating,

"The character wasn't changing. If they had let him grow up a little, maybe I would have wanted to stay on. I knew that I wasn't going to sign up for another three years, and my parents were behind me all the way."

Stars Lockhart, Reilly, and Andy Clyde received their notices, with producer Bob Golden telling the press they'd done all the "boy and his dog" stories possible. With only Provost and producers knowing the real reasons for the show changes, speculation among the cast hinted that the decision to clean house was based on money. Lockhart was quoted as saying Provost's mother wanted too much money, and Reilly later stated that the producers' decision was based upon trading four advanced salaries for Robert Bray's starting salary.

Associate producer Bonita Granville Wrather kept the audience guessing through the summer of 1964 about the show's future by stating,

"We have built up such an adult audience; we are looking for stories with a wider scope. That's what our whole purpose will be in making any change that people might think we're making...our ratings have jumped in the past two years and it's because we do new things."

Without a boy in the cast as a principal character, producers reworked the show from a different angle. Several episodes which featured Lassie in the wilds such as "The Odyssey" and "The Journey" had proven popular with audiences. Jack Wrather and his associates decided to take Lassie off the farm and send her into the wilderness with a Forest Ranger who had previously appeared on the show in the tenth season's "Disappearance", Corey Stuart, played by Gary Cooper look-alike Robert Bray. Lassie would become the companion, not of boys, but of rugged, outdoorsy men sometimes working in dangerous places and situations.

Producers sent the Martin family to Australia where Paul would teach agriculture. Lockhart commented wryly, "We were supposed to go over there so that Paul could show the Australians how to grow things. We hadn't had a successful bean crop in six seasons. What could they possibly learn from us?" Lassie's three human companions then made their last appearances in the first part of "The Wayfarers" (1964), the opening three-part episode of the eleventh season. Lassie was forced to remain in the States due to Australia's strict quarantine regulations, and, though the dog would become the companion animal of a succession of forestry workers and see several seasons of new adventures, Timmy Martin would never be seen, heard, or referenced again on the show.