SAYATA

Who wrote the original Lassie?

Answer: Eric Knight
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The fictional character Lassie was created by Eric Knight in a short story expanded to novel length called Lassie Come-Home. Published in 1940, the novel was filmed by MGM in 1943 as Lassie Come Home with a talented dog named Pal playing Lassie. Pal appeared in 6 movies as Lassie. Pal's owner and trainer Rudd Weatherwax then acquired the Lassie name and trademark from MGM and appeared with Pal (as "Lassie") at rodeos, fairs, and similar events across America in the early 1950s. The Television series Lassie lasted some 19 years and descendants of Pal have always been used to play Lassie.

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Eric Knight (10 April 1897 - 15 January 1943) He was born to Quakers in Menston in Yorkshire, England. His father, a rich diamond merchant, was killed during the Boer war when Eric was two years old. His mother moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, following her husband's death to work as a governess for the imperial family, the Romanovs who fell from power in 1917. She later settled in America. Eric Knight was largely raised by his Aunt and Uncle. He immigrated to the USA in 1912 and attended the Cambridge Latin School in Massachusettes to study art and music.

Knight had a full and adventurous life, from being in the Canadian Army during World War I, trying his hand as an artist, and later becoming a newspaper reporter and Hollywood screenwriter. His first novel was Song on Your Bugles (1936) about the working class in Northern England. As "Richard Hallas," he wrote the hardboiled genre novel "You Play The Black and The Red Comes Up" (1938). Knight's "This Above All" is considered one of the significant novels of The Second World War. Knight's last published work was "The Flying Yorkshireman" (1942), about an otherwise undistinguished man from Yorkshire named Sam Small, whose sojourns are reflected in a series of short stories with ethnocentric and eccentric observations of life around him.

Knight's most enduring story that is most significant in pop culture of course is Lassie. The story of Lassie came about largely as result of he and his wife raising collies on their farm in Pleasant Valley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. However, the lush settings of the story are said to have come from his birthplace in Yorkshire England.

Knight was killed in 1943 in an air crash in Dutch Guiana (Surinam). Knight was a major and working in Special Services as part of the United States Army when his adventurous life came to an end. He died with 34 other people in the plane that is said to have been shot down by a Nazi Submarine in an attempt to kill FDR. FDR had left two days earlier on a different airplane for the Casablanca Conference.

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