… was the TV show The Littlest Hobo. In this thread, you can make your case for something else.
This show starred a dog doing cool things. These included:
Delivering an antidote to a poisoned child by parachute.
Helping a Russian ballerina defect from the Commies.
Proving Sasquatch was a dude dressed as a gorilla.
Stealing a painting from the safe of a Mafia boss.
Bringing back together the estranged parents of a hospitalized boy.
Exposing a con artist after finding a newspaper article about him.
Foiling a dastardly plot by breaking an evil hypnotist’s spell on a supermodel.
Transferring WW2 munitions to a safe place before they can blow up schoolchildren.
Deliver a baby.
Save the future Anne of Green Gables from an earthquake and a poisonous serpent.
Can your American dogs do that? The producers also convinced a whole slough of stars to accept a chintzy Canadian paycheque to play second fiddle to a dog. Including:
A) Donald O’Connor as a washed up clown whose career is revived by a dog
B) Mike Myers as a paraplegic who is taught by a dog to throw a frisbee
C) Al Waxman, taught by a dog to enjoy being confined in a wheelchair
D) DeForest Kelley, taught the meaning of love and friendship by a dog
E) Leslie Nielsen, forces by a dog to allow his child to marry into a rival family
F) Alan Hale, as a night watchman falsely accuses of robbery, whose name is cleared by the actions of a dog
G) John Carradine, whose son is saved from kidnapped by a dog
H) Joanne Pettet, whose amnesia is cured by a dog, allowing her to remember she is really the manager of Canada’s Wonderland
No TV show, nor anything else, is more quintessentially Canadian. So there!
Never heard of this show, but it sounds like a fun retro-watch. I’ll have to see if I can find it on streaming anywhere.
It must have been on for a long time to guest-host both John Carradine, who died in 1988, and Mike Myers. I assume it must have been a pretty young, pre-SNL Mike Myers.
I don’t think Littlest Hobo was even the most Canadian thing on TV. Hinterland Who’s Who, NFB Vignettes, Heritage Minutes: those are just off the top of my head.
I liked the Corner Gas episode with the faux Littlest Hobo, though.
I propose this: PFR – Prairie Farm Report. A painfully earnest host will travel the wilds of Alberta and Saskatchewan to meet with “interesting” farmers to talk aboot their gardens or their inventions or their really fancy tilt-up workshop.
I would offer Run Joe Run, about a military GSD falsely accused of attacking its handler, who then goes on the run, and has a series of adventures. Then I see in the wikipedia article there is a “see also” link to… The Littlest Hobo!
I think Lassie has them all beat though. Lassie, Friend to All! (hums Greensleeves…)
Rin Tin Tin, the show set in the post-Civil War west, had some good adventures with his boy, the biggest of which was existing before GSDs were even a breed.
It had a couple of iterations. The first version was on in the early-mid 1960s, and then it was rebooted in 1979 and ran until 1985. I saw the 1960s version, and I recall just a nice, family-friendly show, that aired in an early enough timeslot that it didn’t interfere with kids’ bedtimes.
I once met the dog who played the Hobo in the 1960s version. His name was London, and he and his trainer were making a publicity tour, and visited a nearby mall. My Dad took me to meet him. I got to pet him, and got a print of a charcoal sketch of London, which London then “signed” with a paw print.
The theme song was particularly memorable, and has been used in at least one Canadian company’s TV commercials. The theme song was used in both iterations. Here it is, as used in the 1979-1985 version (though I’m sure that the London who was in that version is a much younger descendant of the original London, whom I met).
Watching this show as a kid it was the first time I ever noticed the standard disclaimer “no animals were hurt, any resemblance to living persons is coincidental, etc”. It zipped by so fast in the end credits I used to try and read a little bit more each time. No idea why but it was fascinating to me.
Whoa, that’s weird. Before the internet existed and I could access the memories of millions of strangers, I was convinced I had made up Run, Joe, Run in my head as a child, because no one I had ever asked about it remembered the show.
That’s exactly how I described it to my wife. Duh dun dun DUND!
In 1974, a trained military German Shepherd was sentenced to death by a military court for a crime he didn’t commit. The dog promptly escaped from a maximum security kennel to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government he survives a a traveling do-gooder and friend to all. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him…maybe you can be helped by The American Littlest Hobo!
I was the right age when it came out. I remember liking it.
But I did get it crossed up with Run Buddy Run, a sitcom about a guy on the run from the mob, and Run For Your Life, about a dying man traveling around and having a series of adventures,
In 1972, CBC radio host Peter Gzowski held a contest to find a Canadian equivalent to the American “as American as apple pie.” The winning answer was “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances.”
An American journalist, Michael Kingsley, opined in the 1980s that the most boring headline he had ever seen ran in the NY Times and read, “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.”
To Hogarth: I will never be convinced that was a “faux Littlest Hobo” on Corner Gas. It may have been a direct descendant of the original, I’ll grant you that, but the Littlest Hobo exists “as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.”
