Ruddell Bird "Rudd" Weatherwax (September 23, 1907 – February 25, 1985) was an American

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), lit ...

animal trainer Animal training is the act of teaching animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli. Training may be for purposes such as companionship, detection, protection, and entertainment. The type of training an animal receives will var ...

, and

breeder A breeder is a person who selectively breeds carefully selected mates, normally of the same breed to sexually reproduce offspring with specific, consistently replicable qualities and characteristics. This might be as a farmer, agriculturalist, ...

. He and his brother Frank are best remembered for training dogs for motion pictures and

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

. Their

collie Collies form a distinctive type of herding dogs, including many related landraces and standardized breeds. The type originated in Scotland and Northern England. Collies are medium-sized, fairly lightly-built dogs, with pointed snouts. Man ...

Pal Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

, became the original

Lassie Lassie is a fictional female Rough Collie dog and is featured in a short story by Eric Knight that was later expanded to a full-length novel called '' Lassie Come-Home''. Knight's portrayal of Lassie bears some features in common with another ...

, handled by Rudd for the 1943

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded o ...

film ''

Lassie Come Home ''Lassie Come Home'' is a 1943 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolor feature film starring Roddy McDowall and canine actor Pal, in a story about the profound bond between Yorkshire boy Joe Carraclough and his rough collie, Lassie. The film was dire ...

''. He also handled the dogs for the ''Lassie'' television series which ran from 1954 to 1974, and trained Spike for the 1957 feature film ''Old Yeller''. After his death, his son, Robert, took over the training of the animals. Weatherwax was also responsible for training the official

New York Mets The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Queens. The Mets compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division. They are one of two major lea ...

’ team mascot in the 1960s, a

beagle The beagle is a breed of small scent hound, similar in appearance to the much larger foxhound. The beagle was developed primarily for hunting hare, known as beagling. Possessing a great sense of smell and superior tracking instincts, th ...

named Homer.

Biography

Weatherwax was born in Engle,

New Mexico Territory The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912. It was created from the U.S. provisional government of New Mexico, as a result of '' Nuevo México'' becomin ...

, the son of Anna Elisa (née Wallis) and Walter Smiley Weatherwax.

became a movie star through a weather-related event. MGM, which had decided to use a show collie trained by Frank Inn in the movie, took advantage of a massive flooding of the

Sacramento River The Sacramento River ( es, Río Sacramento) is the principal river of Northern California in the United States and is the largest river in California. Rising in the Klamath Mountains, the river flows south for before reaching the Sacramento� ...

in northern

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

to obtain some spectacular footage for the film. Inn's collie was still in training, so MGM hired Pal as a stand-in for the river scene. Although the work was considered complicated for an animal actor, the dog performed exceptionally well. According to legend, after seeing the first prints, MGM head Louis B. Mayer stated that "Pal had entered the water, but Lassie had come out," and a new star was born. MGM owned the rights to Lassie's name, but when the series of films ended, Weatherwax obtained those rights in lieu of his final year's salary and a little additional money. Therefore, he benefited from those rights during the program's 17-year run on CBS and additional broadcasts in syndication.

Legacy

Weatherwax was posthumously inducted into the New Mexico Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2012. He had two sons, Jackie and Bob. He was the uncle of Ken Weatherwax, who played Pugsley Addams in ''

The Addams Family ''The Addams Family'' is a fictional family created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. They originally appeared in a series of 150 unrelated single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in ''The New Yorker'' over ...

'' television series.

References

Book

FOUR FEET TO FAME: A Hollywood Dog Trainer's Journey, by Bob Weatherwax and Richard Lester. Published 2017 by BearManor Media. .

External links

* * 1907 births 1985 deaths American male film actors Burials at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery Dog trainers Male actors from New Mexico Male actors from Hollywood, Los Angeles Place of death missing People from Sierra County, New Mexico 20th-century American male actors {{US-film-actor-1900s-stub