Review of Old Yeller (1957) by Van R — 10 Jan 2009

Hollywood doesn't make dog movies like "Old Yeller" anymore. This frontier tale about Travis Coates (Tommy Kirk) who is left in charge of the family chores on a farm in 19th century Texas provides a fairly realistic portrait of life in the old West. A mangy yellow dog shows up one day chasing a rabbit and stampedes the mule that Travis is using to plow the family's crop field. Travis takes an immediate dislike to this hell-raising hound. One day after he shoots a deer, Travis hangs a haunch up and dares Old Yeller to snatch it. Surprisingly, Yeller refrains from dining on this delicacy. Travis changes his mind about this mutt, especially in light of his younger brother's love for the critter. Meanwhile, Travis' father (Fess Parker of TV's "Daniel Boone") has left to participate in a cattle drive to get some hard money for the family. Travis grows attached to old Yellow long enough to worry about the dog when a cowpoke (Chuck Connors) shows up to reclaim the egg-sucking canine. The cowpoke decides to swap Travis's younger brother for a horny toad and will the youngster keep the dog. Afterward, the cowpoke warns Travis about rabies and explains how to recognize the disease in an animal and what to do. One night while Travis' mother (Dorothy McGuire) and a neighbor's daughter (Haley Mills) are burning the carcass of a rabid steer, a crazed wolf attacks them, but old Yeller intervenes and battles the wolf to the death. Travis fears that old Yeller may have been contaminated by the rabid wolf.

You get to see an actual staged fight between a dog and a bear in one scene, something that would be done with computer graphics these days. Travis learns about the responsibility that accompanies maturity when he has to deal with old Yeller later in the movie. Robert Stevenson, a long-time Disney helmer, directs this modest 84-minute yarn with economy. You don't get to see much of Fess Parker. He's on hand at the outset and near the end. Chuck Connors rides through in what amounts to a cameo. This is a sturdy, solid example of filmmaking. There isn't a bad performance in this movie. Predictably, the movie ends on a downer, but "Old Yeller" was followed by a sequel "Savage Sam" and Sam appears in the last 30 minutes as one of Yeller's pups. Family oriented fare at its finest!