Films involving Limb & Spinal Conditions

Limb & Spinal Conditions: Major Films no photo.

Title	Lad, A Dog (1962)
Alternative/Original Title
Disability	Limb
Country	USA
Length	98
Genre	Drama
Rating	1
Director	Aram Avakian
Cast	Peter Breck Peggy McCay Carroll O'Connor Angela Cartwright Maurice Dallimore
Notes	2nd Director Leslie H. Martinson Appallingly sentimental and cliched, guess what breed of dog is used? Clue; sired by Lassie. from novel by Albert Payson Terhune. Sarah Wells bluemerle@msn.com writes to rebuke me that Lad came before Lassie. She writes "The first "Lad" stories were published and extremely popular in America well over 20 years before "Lassie come Home" was published in 1940. The lad stories were fictionalised adventures of a real COLLIE owned by Terhune from 1902-1916, when the dog died. The stories appeared in magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, Etc..) before the dogs death, and "LAD: a dog" was a collection of new and previously printed "adventures" published in 1919. Elements of the "lad" adventures have become clichT. For example, The "dog lost in the big city" muzzle scene from Disney's "lady and the tramp" is lifted right out of the lad series, and there are others. But the use of a collie is only as "cliched" as it is to do a movie based on one of Terhune's books. Now largely forgotten, this man ruled the genre of animal (dog) stories. He had THE most popular radio show on the air. He had a highly publicised feud with James Thurber. (, on a sightseeing jaunt to "sunnybank" actually ran over on of Terhune's collies and Thurber made a scandal by making fun of the reaction of Terhune, who was then sort of a public icon who could do no wrong.) The novel Lad: a Dog is based on a series of fictional stories published in magazines prior to the time the book was published. Series is the key, serialised fiction was very common in that day; sort of a book published a bit at a time. Many of the chapters can and did stand alone, but the book was compiled so that the stories were in chronology; and additional chapters to make it a coherent novel. You probably would be shocked to see how many books Terhune wrote - The dog-story juveniles list (his main claim to fame) is extensive, and with a few exceptions, featured COLLIES. Check out the TERHUNE site, if you aren't already sick of him forever. I wish someone would do a decent movie about lad. Unfortunately, your review captures the essence of the movie's stinkiness."

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