Old Yeller (1957) is a Walt Disney Productions feature film starring Tommy Kirk, Jeff York and Beverly Washburn about a boy and a stray dog in post-Civil War Texas, based upon the 1956 Newbery Honor-winning book Old Yeller by Fred Gipson. The screenplay was written by Gipson and William Tunberg and the film directed by Robert Stevenson. The success of Old Yeller led to a sequel also based on a Gipson book, Savage Sam.
Plot
The Coates family consists of father Jim (Fess Parker), mother Katie (Dorothy McGuire), older son Travis (Tommy Kirk) and a younger son Arliss (Kevin Corcoran). The family is so poor the children have never seen a dollar bill, other than worthless Confederate dollars.
While Jim is away on a cattle drive, a scruffy “yeller” mutt visits the family uninvited. Travis unsuccessfully tries to shoo him off, while his younger brother Arliss takes a liking to him. Travis eventually accepts the dog and a profound bond grows between the two.
Yeller’s owner Mr. Burn Sanderson (Chuck Connors) arrives looking for his dog but comes to realize that the family needs the dog more than he does and agrees to trade the dog to Arliss in exchange for a horny toad and a home-cooked meal.
Then one day, Travis and Yeller set out to trap wild hogs for marking. Acting on the advice of a neighbor, Bud Searcy (Jeff York), Travis tries to sit in a tree above the vicious pigs and grab with a loop rope, while Yeller tries to keep the pigs from escaping. However, Travis accidentally falls off the tree and into the pack of hogs below. They promptly bite both him and Yeller repeatedly. Travis escapes with a cut leg, but Yeller is even worse off. They both receive stitches and, while they recuperate, Searcy arrives to warn the Coates family of an apidemic of rabies, and to Katie’s horror, the likelihood that the pigs that Travis and Yeller were after might have them and they might have gotten. Katie quickly decides she has heard enough and sends Searcy off. Travis, however, consoles his mother and says that he noticed the pigs were not mad. Eventually, both boy and dog fully recover.
While defending the family from a rabid gray wolf, Yeller is bitten and eventually develops rabies. With a breaking heart, Travis is forced to kill Yeller to protect his mother and brother. In doing so, he takes a painful first step into manhood. Depressed from the death of his beloved dog, Travis refuses the offer of a new puppy fathered by Yeller. But then his father explains to him the facts about life and death. Travis understands and adopts the puppy, naming him “Young Yeller” in honor of his sire.
Reception
Bosley Crowther in the New York Times of December 26, 1957 praised the film’s performers and called the film “a nice trim little family picture” that was a “lean and sensible screen transcription of Fred Gipson’s children’s book.” He noted that the film was a “warm, appealing little rustic tale [that] unfolds in lovely color photography. Sentimental, yes, but also sturdy as a hickory stick.”
The movie went on to become an important cultural film for baby boomers. Old Yeller’s death is perhaps among the most tearful scenes in cinema. It currently has a rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. One critic cited it as “among the best, if not THE best” of the boy-and-his-dog films. Critic Jeff Walls notes; “Old Yeller, like the Wizard of Oz and Star Wars, has come to be more than just a movie; it has become a part of our culture. If you were to walk around asking random people, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who did not know the story of Old Yeller, some who didn’t enjoy it or someone who didn’t cry. The movie’s ending has become as famous as any other in film history.”
