Challenge to Lassie

Edmund Gwenn and Donald Crisp join Lassie the Collie once more after having been teamed in the otherwise-unrelated "The Hills Of Home" from 1948. This heart-tugging, family-oriented saga, based on the book "Greyfriars Bobby" by Eleanor Atkinson, involves stray, untagged Lassie with a crusty old coot who can't figure out why the dog has a confounding need to get into the Greyfriars Churchyard, where animals are forbidden. Geraldine Brooks is the proverbial pretty girl/Elizabeth Taylor substitute, Kathryn Beaumont has an uncredited bit as a neighborhood child, Gwenn is his usual spunky self, yet the whole show belongs to Lassie. Whether crossing a wide river, digging her way out of a barn, climbing out a window, or outwitting the hysterical humans, the dog is shown to a star's advantage. Story remade by Disney in 1960 (under the original title and with a Skye terrier in the lead). ** from ****