Casey and Peanut: Article From SubmitYOURArticle.com: Famous and Not So Famous Dog Posters from Yesteryear

Snoopy, Lassie, Marmaduke, Beethoven, UnderDog,
and even Huckleberry Hound all had their moment
in the sun over the years. Some were flashes in
the pan and others have become societal icons.
Dog posters of these characters are easy to find,
but what about some of the more obscure canine
companions? For every superstar, there were at
least ten not so famous pups that could use a
little recognition. Some of them have become
enduring symbols and others are just what they
are supposed to be, man's best friend, ever by
our side and never seeking recognition for their
achievements.

Since the beginning of the Twentieth Century,
there have been films and famous artists
portraying dogs of all breeds doing heroic and
humorous things that have made them worthy of at
least a mention. Before 1900, there were artists
who painted dogs, some of whom became famous for
other works. That also happened in recent years,
as you'll read below. If you're a dog lover and
trivia buff, this is one list you'll definitely
want to check out. It's not numbered or ranked,
because there's no way to rate one dog as somehow
more important than others. It is however, a list
of important furry four-legged friends who have
quietly made history. You will definitely be
surprised by some of the little known facts
contained here.

Rover's Real Name was Blair

Hollywood has glamorized dogs since they first
started making movies back in the early Twentieth
Century. In 1905, a silent film called Rescued by
Rover depicted a heroic collie saving an infant
from a beggar woman who kidnapped her while the
family nanny was distracted and speaking to a
handsome soldier. The film is widely considered
to be the first movie of any kind to use paid
actors. The nanny, the soldier, and the beggar
woman were all given half a guinea to play their
roles. The film was so successful that the
filmmaker, Britain's Cecil Hepworth, had to shoot
it twice. The negative from the first shooting
wore out after several showings. In both
versions, Hepworth used his family dog and his
own infant child. The dog's name was not Rover.
It was Blair.

Where Would Annie have been Without Sandy?

Little Orphan Annie, a popular comic strip
character created by Harold Gray, first appeared
in print on August 5, 1924 and was published
virtually uninterrupted until June 13, 2010.
During that time, she was loved and hated,
respected and scorned, pitied and envied, but
there was always one constant - her dog Sandy.
Like any good canine companion, Sandy stood
beside her through thick and thin, never wavering
even when Gray's politics threatened to sink
their fledgling career. During their radio years,
from 1930 to 1942, Sandy had a speaking role in
the intro and a regular spot during the fifteen
minute afternoon show. Who did Sandy's voice?
Beginning in 1936, it was a little known NBC
employee named Orson Welles. He was twenty years
old when he was first hired for the part, just
two years before his famous War of the Worlds
broadcast.

Mike, Fritzi, Rags, Bozo, or Homer?

Most people have seen the movie dog poster from
Disney's 1955 animated film Lady and the Tramp,
and most just assume the stray's name is simply
"The Tramp". There are friendly families that
feed him and call him Mike or Fritzi, but neither
of those is his real name. During the film, he
isn't specifically addressed by any title other
than "The Tramp". The cast of the film, those who
did the voices, experimented with a number of
different tags, including Rags and Bozo, but
chose not to assign the poor pup one when the
film was finally released. For those of you who
are trivia buffs, his real name, the one that
they wrote into the original script, is Homer.
Why is this historic? Homer and his pals were all
part of the first animated feature filmed in
CinemaScope Widescreen, a revolutionary look that
would change the scope of filmmaking for the
decades that followed - the 1960s and 70s.

Andy Warhol and Maurice

Andy Warhol was an American painter and filmmaker
whose 1963 painting The Eight Elvises sold for a
record $100 million. The purchase made Warhol a
legend, on par with Pablo Picasso and Jackson
Pollock. The painting, which is a silkscreen, is
a portrait of Elvis Presley which was owned at
the time of the sale by Italian art collector
Annibale Berlingieri. The buyer is unknown.
Warhol also produced another painting called,
Portrait of Maurice, a depiction of a dachshund
that belonged to friend and fellow art collector
Gabrielle Keiller. You can find reproductions of
Maurice anywhere where dog posters are sold for
as little as $10 apiece. You won't however, find
him listed on any of the many internet lists of
famous Warhol's, but total sales of the image far
exceed the selling price of The Eight Elvises. It
seems that small amounts really do add up over
time.

Toto - The Dog Who Saw in Color

They say that dogs see in black and white, but
there's one dog on this list that definitely saw
things in color, at least once the house finally
landed in the merry old land of Oz. Toto, one of
the most celebrated dog poster dogs of all time,
was the first Canis Lupus Familiaris to set foot
in Munchkinland and will be forever immortalized
because of it. The movie itself is ranked as the
most watched of all time and was credited with
finally bringing vivid color into the filmmaking
industry. Toto, however, was not the dog's real
name, nor was he the male dog that Frank Baum
created him to be. Toto was played by a female
black Cairn terrier named "Terry" and she was a
professional actress. She was paid $125 a week,
which was $75 more than each of the munchkins
made, and she broke her foot during production
when one of the witch's guards stepped on it. Her
owners, no doubt influenced by the film's
popularity, changed her name to Toto in real life
after the film's release in 1939. She lived to be
eleven and is the only dog on this list to have
her own "autobiography", written by Willard
Carroll.

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Trey Markel is a marketing associate for Animal
Blue Print Company. Along with Robert Redding
(CEO) and the ABC team, ABC offers high end
architectural blue prints of dog breeds. Robert
was the former VP of Design for Quicksilver and
has a passion for pets. For more information on
Animal Blue Print Company please visit:
http://www.animalblueprintcompany.com

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