Another movie that I decided to watch because I saw it was about to leave the Watch TCM app and because the synopsis sounded interesting was Goodbye, My Lady. So now you get the review.
In the swamps of southern Mississippi (the TCM synopsis said Georgia, but all the geographic references are obviously Mississippi), young Skeeter (Brandon De Wilde) lives with his uncle Jesse (Walter Brennan, which should be a warning). Skeeter is apparently an orphan as his Mom died some years back and Jesse doesn't ever want to talk about Skeeter's pa which led me to think throughout the movie that Pa was in prison and when there's a stranger coming to town with a dark musical theme that it might be Dad getting out of prison. But despite the negative references to Dad, we never get the full story. Anyhow, the two of them live in a shack in the bayous, where Jesse makes a hardscrabble living cutting wood for Cash Evans (Phil Harris), who also runs the local store that gets all its goods by coordinating people's orders from the Sears catalog. Based on the presence of cars and some other mentions, however, it really sounds like the story is set relatively close to the present day (the movie was released in 1956 but was based on a novel published in 1954 that, in turn, was a fleshing out of a short story from the early 1940s).
One day, while out looking for whatever it is a boy of Skeeter's age looks for in the bayou, he comes across a really strange dog. The dog doesn't bark, instead making a noise that sounds a lot like the laught that Muttley had in the old Dastardly and Muttley cartoons. It's obvious that the dog has been cared for and has escaped from somewhere, but nobody in the area recognizes the dog. So Skeeter takes custody of the dog and raises it, learning that the dog, now named Lady, has a tremendous ability to hunt, something that's quite valuable in the bayou where hunting food can mean extra sustenance and not going hungry.
Cash brings his dog to see Skeeter, Jesse, and Lady, and they all go hunting together, which is how it's confirmed that Lady really is that good of a hunting dog, something that had never been seen in those parts. So news gets out, and that means it should be clear to anybody who isn't pig-ignorant that there's going to be somebody looking for the dog. Indeed, an acquaintance from the other side of the bayou who isn't so ignorant, Gates (Sidney Poitier in a supporting role), has been doing some research in hopes of finding the owner and getting a reward. But since Skeeter was the one able to capture Lady, it'll be him who has to deal with the owner when the owner comes calling for the dog. Skeeter has never had to deal with such a thing, and it's one of those milestones on the way to maturity....
I should have known from seeing Walter Brennan's name in the opening credits, along with the lyrics of the terrible opening song, that Goodbye, My Lady was going to be an incredibly schmaltzy film. And it didn't disappoint in that regard. To be fair, however, the actors do the best with the material they're given. It's more that the material is way too sentimental, and the story, having been extended from a short story, is something that still would have been better suited for episodic television, especially a 30-minute show. One could easily see skilled writers working the material into something that would have been fit for a show like The Rifelman where Lucas could impart an important lesson to young Mark. Extended to 95 minutes, however, the material grows stale fairly quickly.
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