A young adult collie who is a descendant of Lassie is taken in by Kathie Merrick (Elizabeth Taylor) after being separated from his mother as a pup and growing up in a forest. Merrick names him Bill, and he begins working as a sheepdog under the supervision of the shepherd Mr. MacBain (Frank Morgan). Bill is conscripted as a war dog after being hit by a truck and sent to an animal hospital. He behaves gallantly while at war during the Aleutian Islands Campaign but gains an aggressive temperament after being injured and experiencing hardship. He is returned to the mainland to recuperate, but escapes and continues to behave aggressively. Bill is almost put down, but is reunited with Merrick after it is discovered that he is a war hero.
The film was copyrighted under the working title Hold High the Torch; another working title was Blue Sierra. Margaret O'Brien and Lionel Barrymore were originally slated for the starring roles, according to The Hollywood Reporter.[3]Courage of Lassie was the first top billing of Taylor's career.[4]
In 2010, Film Score Monthly released the complete scores of the seven Lassie feature films released by MGM between 1943 and 1955 as well as Elmer Bernstein's score for It's a Dog's Life (1955) in the CD collection Lassie Come Home: The Canine Cinema Collection, limited to 1000 copies.
Due to the era when these scores were recorded, nearly half of the music masters have been lost so the scores had to be reconstructed and restored from the best available sources, mainly the Music and Effects tracks as well as monaural ¼″ tapes.[5]
The score for Courage of Lassie was composed by Bronislau Kaper and Scott Bradley, who is well known to score music for MGM's cartoon department.
Track listing for Courage of Lassie (Disc 3)
"Main Title" (David Snell, Kaper, Bradley, Robert Franklyn); "The Lake" (Bradley); "Danger in the Woods" (Bradley) - 4:11
"The Lost Puppy" (Bradley) - 2:16
"The Playful Puppy" (Bradley); "The Eagle" (Bradley); "The Fishing Bear" (Bradley); "Fish Jumps" (Nathaniel Shilkret) - 4:49
"Girl on a Raft" (Bradley); "Fawn and the Raven" (Bradley); "The Puppy Gets Shot" (Franklyn–Bradley) - 5:36
"Bill Barks" (Kaper); "Hello, Mr. MacBain" (Kaper) - 1:30
The film was popular and earned $2,505,000 in the US and Canada and $1,595,000 elsewhere, making MGM a profit of $968,000.[1]
The New York Times praised the acting of Elizabeth Taylor "refreshingly natural as Lassie's devoted owner, and Frank Morgan, as an elderly confidante," though concluded "it is Lassie's, or Bill's, picture. And, despite some improbabilities in the plot, it is his "acting" and the polychromatic settings which are the chief delights of this offering."[6]
