Reel Dogs in Art Week 3

The hero’s journey has been a major theme of Reel Dogs since 1943, when one of the most famed and beloved dog movies of all time was released, Lassie Come Home.

From Lassie to Benji to Bingo, it seems dogs on the big screen are always trying to get somewhere. And it’s always very, very difficult. They’re attacked by wild animals, struck by cars, kidnapped, and abused. They battle against starvation, blizzards, raging rivers, city streets, and animal control officers in their fight to find their people, or simply to stay alive. Here are just a few of these journey hounds celebrated in art:

The modern classic of animal journey movies is Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), a remake of the 1963 film and based on Sheila Burnford’s beloved novel. This sketch portrait of “Chance” (American Bulldog, Sure-Grip’s Rattler) by GoldieRetriever captures the enduring personality behind one of these three unforgettable characters.

Japanese classic Nankyoku monogatari (Antarctica, 1983), follows an epic journey, not of travel, but of survival at the bottom of the world for a sled dog team of fourteen Sakhalin Huskies and one Alaskan Malamute. The heroes of this true story, Taro and Jiro, are painted here by SanctuaryWarrior.

In Fluke (1995), a dog is on a quest to find his family. But he’s not a dog. And it’s not his family. Fluke, seen in this emotive portrait by Wolfinden, is a man reincarnated in a canine body and recalling only flickering images and feelings of his past life. Yet some of those images prompt him to set out in search of that life.

The artwork above is published here by kind permission of the artists; GoldieRetriever, SanctuaryWarrior, and Wolfinden of deviantART.

Watch for more Reel Dogs art next week!

The Weatherwax Legacy

Great short film for Lassie fans or anyone interested on the history of canines in movies, from Blue Heron International Pictures and Weatherwax Trained Dogs:

Daily Reel - The Thin Man (1934)

The movie that launched one of the most successful and still best known series of the 1930s, The Thin Man follows the exploits of quirky detective Nick (William Powell), his new wife Nora (Myrna Loy), and their dog Asta.

A Wire Fox Terrier, Asta plays an important comic part in all the Thin Man films, both helping and hindering the sleuth couple and showing just as well developed a character as any of the human stars. Asta’s real name was Skippy (though he went by Asta in later life) and he appared in dozens of feature films throughout his career until 1938. He was originally trained by one of the great Hollywood trainers of early films, Henry East, also working extensively with East’s pupils such as the Weatherwax brothers Frank and Rudd, later made famous by Lassie.

Produced by MGM