Lassie Come Home

Set in a Yorkshire mining village on the eve of the Second World War, the story follows the Carraclough family, who are struggling financially. When their circumstances become desperate, they sell their collie, Lassie, to the wealthy Duke of Rudling. The dog is taken far from home, to the Duke's estate in the north of Scotland, but she refuses to stay there and escapes, determined to make her way back to the family's son, Joe. The journey is long and full of hardship, and Joe has no way of knowing whether he will ever see her again.

Fred M. Wilcox directed the film, the first in a chronological list of five features he made that includes Courage of Lassie, The Secret Garden, Shadow in the Sky and Forbidden Planet. Hugo Butler wrote the screenplay, and Samuel Marx and Dore Schary produced it for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Roddy McDowall plays Joe, with Donald Crisp and Elsa Lanchester as his parents, May Whitty, Edmund Gwenn and Nigel Bruce in supporting roles, and twenty-two credited cast members in total. The film took about 5 million dollars at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.1 from around 6,400 votes, while on TMDB its rating is 6.7 from 144 votes. A critics' rating of 8.2 from 17 reviews places it above both audience scores.