Bob Weatherwax, a Hollywood dog trainer who carried on his father’s legacy of breeding and coaching collies to play Lassie, the resourceful and heroic canine who crossed flooded rivers, faced down bears and leaped into the hearts of countless children, died on Aug. 15 in Scranton, Pa. He was 83.
His family said his death, at a Department of Veterans Affairs facility, was caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Mr. Weatherwax took over as Lassie’s primary trainer in 1985 after the death of his father, Rudd Weatherwax, whose collie Pal starred alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall in the hit 1943 film “Lassie Come Home,” as well as several other movies and the “Lassie” television show, seen on CBS and in syndication from 1954 to 1973.
As his father’s apprentice, Mr. Weatherwax learned the interdisciplinary roles — talent agent, pooch geneticist and acting coach — that were necessary for managing the Lassie brand.
Treating Lassie, a rough collie, as a genuine Hollywood star was a high priority. That standard was originally set by Louis B. Mayer, a founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that released “Lassie Come Home.” After the film’s premiere, Mr. Mayer called his friend Howard Hughes, who owned Trans World Airlines, to request that Lassie be permitted to fly with passengers, not in the cargo section. Lassie flew in first class.
Mr. Weatherwax embraced his talent-manager role. He also embraced the perks of traveling with a celebrity.
On a trip to Philadelphia to promote the 1994 movie “Lassie,” a successful attempt to revive the franchise, he and the film’s star stayed at the luxurious Rittenhouse Hotel, where the celebrity collie dined on boiled chicken that was prepared by a chef, delivered by room service and washed down with distilled water.
Lassie usually traveled with Mel, a Jack Russell terrier. The two dogs watched “Lassie” reruns on Nickelodeon in between promotional appearances.
“The hotels say they wish they had more guests like Lassie,” Mr. Weatherwax told The Los Angeles Times in 1994. “They don’t have to deal with cigarette holes in the carpet or spilled drinks.”
Breeding was key to the whole operation.
Lassie’s admirable traits — loyalty, bravery, a rich coat — did not include immortality, but the Weatherwaxes wanted the public to perceive each Lassie as the only Lassie. (All of them were male, although they were portrayed as female onscreen.)
To accomplish this, they bred thousands of collies to produce Lassies, each with a distinctive white blaze down the snout. But only one Lassie at a time appeared onscreen or at public events.
“The public doesn’t want four Robert Redfords or four Lassies,” Mr. Weatherwax told The Los Angeles Times. “What ruined Santa Claus is you’d see one on every corner.”
Mr. Weatherwax followed his father’s dictum that the dogs’ training should be positive and rewarding, filled with praise and yummy treats.
Like his father, Mr. Weatherwax taught his Lassies to understand hand signals so he could silently direct them to perform whatever was written in the script — tilting their heads with curiosity, twirling in excitement, backing away in fear.
“Due to my father’s genius, we transformed the training of dogs from simple props on a movie set into actors who seemed to behave with humanlike emotions,” Mr. Weatherwax wrote in an autobiographical essay on the Internet Movie Database.
Robert Walter Weatherwax was born on June 4, 1941, in Burbank, Calif. His mother, Mae (Hawksworth) Weatherwax, was a pianist who gave up a scholarship to Juilliard to marry his father.
Their son was practically bred to become a dog trainer.
In addition to Lassie, his father trained Asta, the wire fox terrier in “The Thin Man” (1934), and Daisy, the mutt in “Blondie” (1938). One of his uncles trained Toto for “The Wizard of Oz” (1939). Another trained Spike, seen in “Old Yeller” (1957).
Mr. Weatherwax grew up alongside Pal, the original Lassie. Sometimes his father used Bob as a training prop. On one occasion, his father coated his face with baby food.
“I especially liked when Pal licked my face,” Mr. Weatherwax wrote in “Four Feet to Fame: A Hollywood Dog Trainer’s Journey,” his 2017 autobiography. “That was how Lassie learned to kiss.”
Mr. Weatherwax began learning to train dogs when he was 10 years old. After serving in the Army from 1960 to 1962, he returned home to work full time training Lassies with his father.
He is survived by his son, Robert Ruddell Weatherwax, who is also a dog trainer as well as the author of “Training Your Dog the Weatherwax Way” (2022); his daughter, Mary Duxbury; and three grandchildren. His marriage to Linda Abbott in 1963 ended in divorce, as did his marriage to Jill Sundal in 2000.
Mr. Weatherwax trained other dogs in Hollywood films, including Einstein, the Catalan sheepdog in “Back to the Future.”
In 2002, the Weatherwax family voted to sell the Lassie trademark to Classic Media, a film studio that was later acquired by DreamWorks Animation. The vote was “against my wishes,” Mr. Weatherwax wrote in his autobiography.
Mr. Weatherwax was more than just a trainer and talent manager to Lassie. Their bond took on a kind of poignancy when Lassie saved his life.
“When I was a toddler,” Mr. Weatherwax recalled in his autobiography, “my parents couldn’t afford a fence in the yard, so they would tether me to a tree to prevent me from running off. I quickly learned how to free myself by unhooking that harness and, one day, decided to take off and explore the great big world beyond the tree.”
He wound up in the middle of the busy street in front of his house.
Pal, a.k.a. Lassie, “saw me and sensed that I was in danger and, within seconds, our famous collie was running toward me.”
The collie barked and nudged him back toward the yard.
“Lassie not only saved lives onscreen,” he wrote, “but also in real life.”
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