Lassie

America’s favorite collie reached animal stardom, enamored by folks of all ages with special appeal to the kiddies. Beginning as a short story published in the Saturday Evening Post in the early 1900’s, the dog’s adventures came to life in a series of films in the 1940’s, followed by a television series that existed in various incarnations from the 1950’s through the mid 70’s and also gave rise to a series of illustrated children’s books. Lassie had several owner’s over the course of her existence, though the most well-known is probably a boy named Timmy from the TV shows (South Park fans, say it with me now: TIMMY!) One thing most people probably aren’t aware of is that while the character of Lassie was a bitch (and I mean that in the most literal sense), she was played exclusively by male dogs. Also, Lassie was a bit of a civil rights trailblazer by being one of the first series in the early 60's to feature an African-American actor in a role that was not a domestic or a train porter. Olympic champion Rafer Johnson, a 1960 decathlon Gold Medallist, played a construction worker who helped rescue the collie from a cliff in an episode of the television series. As far as we know, nobody ever got naked from the show (much less on it--unless you count Lassie herself), but Cloris Leachman, who played Timmy’s mom, had a plastic-covered pressed ham nip slip in 1975’s Crazy Momma. Of course, the former Miss America (1946) was a bit past her prime by then, so you may not be rushing out to rent that one for the freeze frame possibilities. She has been entertaining in a slew of other films, however, from Young Frankenstein to The Last Picture Show.