Good-bye, My Lady

Directed by William Wellman

FILM OF THE WEEK: GOODBYE, MY LADY (1956)

     You’re a 13-year-old boy living with your Uncle Jesse in the bayou country of Mississippi, when one day you hear an odd yowling coming from the woods, and what does it turn out to be but a stray she-dog, short-haired, with a curly tail and big and pointed ears – a dog that cannot bark.  “I’m gonna make her into a bird-dog!” says the boy, Skeeter (Brandon de Wilde; the terrific child actor you may remember as a small boy in Shane and The Member of the Wedding), though Uncle Jesse (Walter Brennan) has his doubts.
     “That dog’s a foreign dog,” says Uncle Jesse.
     “Maybe it’s a Yankee dog.  You know how Yankees are,” says Skeeter.
     Nobody else thinks the dog will be any good.  At first, the dog, whom the boy names Lady, seems good at nothing but catching rats.  But Skeeter keeps it up, and instead of forcing the dog to do just what the setters do, he lets the dog do what she is good at, and it turns out that Lady can point toward a cove…