Tommy Rettig

He bonded strongly with his canine costar--who, like the whole line of Lassies, was male--and even took him home on weekends (the family had moved West in 1949). That stopped when Lassie became confused about whether to obey his trainer or Rettig. In a string of jobs he had little luck, and he was busted in the '70s for marijuana possession and cocaine smuggling. (The latter charge was overturned). After graduating from L. A.

While making The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953) he became acquainted with dog trainer Frank Weatherwax, whose brother Rudd bought the "Lassie" rights from MGM for an upcoming TV series. He auditioned and, to determine who would make the best Jeff, the brothers invited Tommy and two other child actors up for the part to spend a week at their North Hollywood ranch with the three collies who would play the lead. Tommy won the contract at $2,500 a week.

Tommy was a successful child actor in 1954 when he was chosen out of a field of 500 to play Jeff Miller in the TV series Lassie (1954). He was with the show for four years, after which Lassie acquired a whole new family. Rettig, the only child of Elias Rettig, a Lockheed aircraft-parts inspector, and his wife, Rosemary, began his career at age 5, after he was spotted by an acting coach who lived in the family's apartment building in Queens, N. Y.

After touring with Mary Martin in Annie Get Your Gun, he landed roles in movies, among them River of No Return (1954), starring Marilyn Monroe. Then, at 12, he was cast as Jeff Miller.

In the 1970s he and his family lived on a farm near Arroyo Grande, CA, where he secretly grew marijuana between rows of corn. His multiple drug busts eventually destroyed his marriage.

He and his wife moved to a California farm, where he cultivated marijuana; he was sentenced to two years' probation in 1972, but in 1975 was ordered to serve five years for running cocaine. That was dropped on appeal, but he was indicted again in 1980 for drug offenses.

Rettig remained a staunch advocate of recreational drug use throughout his adult life and in 1983 championed a proposed California initiative to legalize marijuana. He said he continued to use marijuana in middle age but gave up stronger drugs when he became a vegetarian.

For the last ten or so years of his life (starting in at least 1984), he was a computer software developer working on business application frameworks. He was regarded as one of the experts, a software guru in the area of desktop PC database applications such as dBase. At the time of his untimely death he was a central figure in the community of FoxPro database developers.

Profiled in the 2016 book "X Child Stars: Where Are They Now?" by Kathy Garver and Fred Ascher.