Pal (dog actor)

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Pal (June 4, 1940 - 1958), was a male Rough Collie. He was the first of a line of collies to portray the fictional female collie Lassie. Pal was owned by animal trainers Frank and Rudd Weatherwax.

During the filming of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film Lassie Come Home. The studios had decided to use a show collie trained by Frank Inn to portray the title character. However, a snap decision was made to take advantage of a massive flooding of the Sacramento River in northern California in order to obtain some spectacular footage for the film. As the collie was still in training, 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, the head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, stated that "Pal had entered the water, but Lassie had come out", and a new star was born.

Pal died in 1958, but a long line of Pal's descendants have continued to portray Lassie, most recently in a 1994 update of the original film.

In 1945, Pal played Laddie in Son of Lassie, and in 1949 played Lassie once more in Challenge to Lassie, an alternative adaptation of the book Greyfriars Bobby, by Eleanor Atkinson. Pal also appeared in the two 1954 pilots ("The Inheritance" and "The Well") prepared for the CBS television series, Lassie.