Lassie is a true Hollywood star. She has her own ranchhouse, flies only first class, always eats steak for dinner and works out with a personal trainer (left). She even has a lively, young travelling companion called Melvin. The only complication is that she is a he

Defying a ferocious range of perils - guns, savage beasts, brigands, raging waters and torrential storms - Lassie, in that mystical dog way, manages to navigate hundreds of kilometres home and, bedraggled and limping, is finally reunited with young schoolboy Joe Carraclough.

Due to poverty, four reels earlier, Joe's unemployed father was forced to sell Lassie to the dog-dotty Duke of Rudling and now, in a heart-rending Technicolor moment that affirms the meaning of courage and devotion and the virtue of pluck, the tired dog gently lays her noble head against Joe's. All is well again. Lassie's come home.

It is alleged that in the screening room at MGM, the gnarled studio boss Louis B. Mayer wept as he watched the first Lassie film. A man with a finely tuned understanding of the public appetite for sentiment, he ordered more scenes, more pluck and much more dog, and set the studio to fire up a massive publicity campaign. A star, he said, is born.

Louis Mayer's instincts were right. Now, half a century later - 350 dog years - Lassie is leaping back onto the big screen. Her new movie "Lassie -Best Friends Forever" will be released on January 12. This time the faithful hound is the companion of a cynical 13-year-old boy, Matt Turner.

Without giving too much away, we can reveal that once again Lassie comes to the rescue. She remains the most enduring, winsome, recognised, intelligent, loved and profitable animal in the universe - a comforting presence for all generations.

Whenever there was someone to rescue from burning barns, swirling rapids, murky swamps, high ledges, hazardous caves or crumbling mine shafts, Lassie has been there. Whenever there was an ailing farm to be saved, a marauding wolf to be fought, an injured child to protect or a cunning desperado to be vanquished, Lassie has cocked her head knowingly and dashed to it. In wartime, she even parachuted to confront the Nazis.

But just as compelling as the thousands of dramas crafted around her is the real story of how an unwanted, undisciplined sable-and-white collie called Pal became a star. A motorbike-chaser, Pal had changed hands for $10. But, once "discovered", he founded a dynasty that stretched over 10 movies, more than 600 television shows and became an industry that thrives today.

Nine Lassies and half a century later, the canine's return is being feted as a major event in global pop culture. But it turns out that ... well, it isn't actually the 50th but the 51st anniversary. The first film, "Lassie Come Home", premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York, in October, 1943.

Producer Lome Michaels, owner of the latest Lassie movie, naturally wanted to open his new film at Radio City in October, 1993. But when filming was delayed, the anniversary was deferred. (A small departure from truth, perhaps, but so is the fact that all the dogs that have played Lassie have been male.)

Ever since Lassie first took her place in the gallery of great MGM stars, she has been regarded as part cultural icon, part national resource, not only a dog that is cute, smart and brave, but a dog with moral perspective, a dog with a soul.

However, Lassie's late trainer Rudd Weatherwax always believed that much of Lassie's appeal lay in her reality. "Micky Mouse isn't real, Lassie is. People can touch her, talk to her, feed her. They can dream she is theirs."

The responsibility of maintaining Lassie standards has now been handed on to Lassie IX (Howard), great-great-great-great-great grandson of Pal.

Since Pal became a star, about 2500 collie puppies have been bred to find successors with the Lassie markings -four white feet, white collar and chest and a white blaze between the eyes, down the nose and around the mouth.

But the look that has charmed the world is not admired in collie circles. "It's a genetic imperfection - they'd be booted out of the Kennel Club," said animal man Bob Weatherwax, who has worked with Lassies for 32 years.

Howard, who is four, has inherited not only the markings and the job, but Lassie's room at the Weatherwax ranch in California that goes with them. He shares it with Melvin, a Jack Russell terrier who is his inseparable companion. "Collies are very sensitive and get lonely on the road," Bob explains. "So Howard and Melvin hang out together, fool around, rest, stay in shape and watch a little TV."

It was the cleverness of collies that attracted Eric Knight, an English film critic and writer of plays and movies living in the US who owned and doted on his collie called Toots. Returning to Britain in 1938, to write a series for the "Saturday Evening Post" magazine, he was distressed by the poverty in his native Yorkshire. When he got back to the US, he wrote the affecting tale of a poor Yorkshire family forced by hard times to sell their collie, which then surmounts appalling adversity to find its way home to them.

"Lassie Come Home" first appeared as a short story, was expanded into a novel that became an instant bestseller, and then MGM swooped on the film rights. Seven movies later, the property that the studio bought for $10,000 had earned $285 million; there were even suggestions that Lassie's head should replace the MGM lion's.

Rudd Weatherwax, then a struggling Hollywood animal handler, had been landed with Pal, an eight-month-old collie whose owner left him in payment for a kennel bill. Rudd gave him away but, when MGM launched a contest to find Lassie, bought him back for $10.

At the audition, Pal was considered inferior to a show dog with the classic collie markings. "And besides," the studio representative said, "Pal's a male". But he was hired for the stunts.

Then, as so often in Lassie stories, meteorology intervened. California's San Joaquin River flooded, offering great opportunities to film Lassie's heroics, but the show dog refused to get into the water. So Pal swam the raging river and collapsed, exhausted, on the bank, [ __ __ ] ** the [ __ ] . Cut! Print! Sign that dog! He may have gone on set as Pal, but he crawled off as Lassie.

When the movie opened, critics gushed (Lassie was actress Greer Garson in furs) and crowds swarmed. In the first weekend of its release the film took $3 million in ticket sales.

However, when MGM eventually cooled towards dog movies, they sold "Lassie" rights to Rudd Weatherwax for the $40,000 it owed him on his contract. In the history of blundering, this ranks with Decca Records turning down The Beatles. Launched on television in 1954, with Pal's son taking over, the Lassie series won the ratings war every Sunday night for 17 years.

Although in later formats Lassie joined forces with forest rangers and became a defender of the environment, the classic stories involved a farm boy and his dog in plots where the boy got into trouble and the dog saved him. The formula has proved eternal.

And producer Lome Michaels believes that Lassie will go on for another 50 years... gene pool allowing.

The quest for Lassie X needn't begin for a. while, though. Except for Lassie IV, who died of cancer at eight, all the Lassies lived to be at least 17. But there will be a Lassie X, and XI and XII and XIII. "She'll be around as long as people go on having children," says Bob Weatherwax.

The Australian Women's Weekly, in conjunction with United International Pictures, has 450 family passes to the preview of "Lassie - Best Friends Forever", to give away. Previews will be screened in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth on Sunday, January 8,1995. Simply fill in the coupon at right and send it to the address given.

* * *

The competition involved colouring in an outline drawing of Lassie's head, and writing in 25 words or less why you wanted to see the movie. I entered the competition, saying that watching Lassie is the next best thing to meeting Lassie � which is entirely true! I coloured Lassie's head with Derwent pencils, did a good detailed job... wish I had a copy of it! I was thrilled to be one of the 450 lucky winners of the Admit Four pass to see Lassie: Best Friends are Forever, and I saw it in Brisbane, Queensland. It is a great movie to see on the big screen.

*Credit: For the 'official' order of Lassie lineage - Ace Collins' book Lassie: A Dog's Life.
Spook was not 'officially' designated the third Lassie. I believe Spook deserves a tip of the hat for all he went through, for without him Lassie might not have been on TV for the time Spook acted in the starring role.

** Note: Part of the article in my copy is cut off (aargh!) - should you have the full article, I'd love to know what the missing words are! Thanks!

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