For those who haven't seen it, Goodbye My Lady is showing on Turner Classic Movie Channel Today, 3/5/13, at 12:30 Central time.
And here is the sequel to Goodbye my lady, I found it online on one of the elibraries and downloaded it to my ipad. Very short only a few pages, but gives a nice happy ending to the original.
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/short-stories/18992982/please-come-home-my-lady
but gives a nice happy ending to the original.
Ah, the "Hollywood ending". Yeah, makes everyone happy, but the sad ones are the ones that stay with you. I will never forgive Disney for screwing up "Ol Yeller". The whole point in the book is that Travis doesn't know for sure the dog will get rabies. He must make the decision that marks his transition into manhood (as Skeeter does in "Goodbye my Lady"). In the movie, the dog is obviously rabid and would die anyway. It is a kindness to shoot him. Why, oh why, does Hollywood insist on messing up excellent stories?
Well, sort of, but not quite WD/Hollywood. Street wrote the Goodbye My Lady story for the Sat Evening post and ended with the boy gives up the dog. There was such an out rage from his readers that he had to write this last chapter. (Remember when Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes?) There are some inconsistancies if you read the book then the "last chapter". (Maybe the boy's real name? I'm not sure, it's been a while since I read it)
Yes, I know Street was pressured to provide a happy ending. I loved the original book with its poignant ending.
Am I the only one who didn't like the movie very much? Who thought that its emphasis on bird-hunting and on the cruel training methods of the time hardly made it look like the dog and the boy had such an amazing bond?
Having grown up and spent a lot of time in the mt farm area, when people routinely shot dogs for LOOKING wrong at a chicken, refusing to give up a bird when hunting etc, I didn't really fixate on the training methods when I saw it as a child nor in the years since. I am glad things have changed, but training was what it was and every animal was a commodity of some sort, not just a pet.
