Tommy Rettig

Rettig was born to a Jewish father, Elias Rettig, and a Christian Italian-American mother, Rosemary Nibali, in Jackson Heights in the Queens borough of New York City.^[1] He started his acting career at the age of six on tour with star Mary Martin in the musical Annie Get Your Gun,^[2] in which he played Little Jake.

Rettig was selected from among 500 boys auditioning for the role of Jeff Miller to star as the first dog owner in the first version Lassie television series from 1954 to 1957.^[3] His character was a young farm boy who lived with his widowed mother, Ellen (Jan Clayton 1917–1983), grandfather (George Cleveland, 1885–1957), and beloved collie, Lassie.

In addition to his famous role as Jeff Miller in the Lassie television series on the CBS network, Rettig appeared in 17 other feature films, including So Big (1953), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953), written by famed children's books author Dr. Seuss, and then in River of No Return (1954), with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum.^[3] It was his work with a dog in The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. that led animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax to urge him to audition for the Lassie role, for which Weatherwax had also supplied the collie.

Rettig later told interviewers that he longed for a life as a normal teenager, and after four seasons, he was able to get out of his contract. He was also critical of the treatment and compensation of child actors of his day. He reportedly received no residual payments from his several years of work in the Lassie series, even though the show was later very popular in syndication re-runs, widely shown under the changed title Jeff's Collie.

Rettig graduated in 1959 from University High School in Los Angeles. In the same year, at the age of 18, he was cast as Pierre in the episode "The Ghost of Lafitte", set in New Orleans, of the ABC short-lived western series The Man from Blackhawk (1959–1960), starring Robert Rockwell as a roving insurance investigator. Actress Amanda Randolph was cast in the same episode, as Auntie Cotton.^[4]

At age 19, Rettig had a prominent guest-starring role in the January 1961 Wagon Train episode "Weight of Command".^[5] Then in its fourth season on NBC, Wagon Train was the second-highest-rated prime-time series that year on American network television. The 5 ft 4 in (164.5 cm) Rettig played the part of a 16-year-old boy, Billy, who is traveling with his family on the wagon train. Although his father reluctantly allows his son to go on a buffalo hunt with assistant wagon master Bill Hawks (Terry Wilson), Billy frets that his father doesn't think of him as being a man yet. When the hunters are attacked by a band of renegade Indians, they take refuge in an empty house. Hawks manages to escape, but the wagon master Major Seth Adams (Ward Bond) makes the difficult decision not to attempt Billy's rescue, lest risking the entire wagon train to be vulnerable to attack. Hawks, who had promised Billy he would be rescued, is outraged by the decision to abandon the besieged youth to his fate. When Billy manages to survive the Indian attack on his own, he earns his father's respect.

Rettig guest-starred in the detective television series Peter Gunn as Kevin Daniels in the 1961 episode "I Know It's Murder". He played a young clairvoyant who hires Peter Gunn (Craig Stevens) to prevent the murder of his mother by her new husband, Mark Eustis, played by Hayden Rorke.

From 1965 to 1966, Rettig co-starred with another former child actor, Tony Dow (famous from Leave It to Beaver), in the ABC television soap opera for teens Never Too Young.^[6] With singing group The TR-4, he recorded the song by that title on the Velvet Tone label.^[7] While he was TR-4's co-manager, he did not sing with the group. Rettig only co-wrote the song in hopes that the TV soap would use it as the series' theme song. The record was produced by Joey Vieira, who under the stage name Donald Keeler played Rettig's sidekick Porky on "Lassie".^[8] Producers of Never Too Young, however, chose not to use it.^[9] Rettig was subsequently cast as Frank in the 1965 episode "The Firebrand" of the NBC education/high school drama series Mr. Novak (1963–1965), which starred James Franciscus.

As an adult, Rettig preferred to be called "Tom". He found the transition from child star to adult to be difficult, and he had several well-publicized legal entanglements related to illegal recreational drugs, a conviction for growing marijuana on his farm in 1972, and a cocaine possession charge in 1976, of which he was exonerated.^[10] Some years after leaving acting, he became a motivational speaker, which—through work on computer mailing lists—led to involvement in the early days of personal computers.

For the last 15 years of his life, Rettig was a well-known database programmer and author.^[11] He was an early employee of Ashton-Tate, specializing in (sequentially) dBASE, Clipper, FoxBASE, and, finally, FoxPro. Rettig moved to Marina del Rey, California, in the late 1980s.^[12]

Rettig returned to television after 23 years, making a guest appearance as a grown-up Jeff Miller in the final episode of the syndicated television series The New Lassie (1989–1992), along with Jon Provost (played second Lassie owner Timmy Martin, 1958–1964), titled "The Computer Study", which aired on March 7, 1992; he also co-wrote the episode. The updated series featured appearances from earlier Lassie veterans Roddy McDowall, who had starred in Lassie Come Home in 1943, the first feature-length Lassie film, and also actress June Lockhart, who had not only starred in the 1945 sequel feature film Son of Lassie but also co-starred on the second version television series, portraying new dog owner Timmy Martin's mother, Ruth, in the succeeding years (1958–1964), after Rettig and Jan Clayton (1954–1957) left the show.

On February 15, 1996, Rettig died of heart failure at age 54.^[13] He was cremated at the Inglewood Park mortuary, and his ashes were scattered at sea, three miles off Marina del Rey, California, with the ashes of his friend Rusty Hamer in a combined ceremony.^[14]

• Castro, Luis; Hanson, Jay; Rettig, Tom (1985). Advanced programmer's guide: featuring dBase II and dBase II. Ashton-Tate. ISBN 9780912677057.
• Rettig, Tom; Moody, Debby (1988). Expert Advisor: dBase III Plus. Addison Wesley. ISBN 9780201171976.
• Rettig, Tom; Moody, Debby (1989). Tom Rettig's Clipper Encyclopedia. Addison Wesley. ISBN 9780553347982.
• Rettig, Tom; Sander, Ellen; Moody, Debby (1990). Tom Rettig's FoxPro Handbook. Bantum Books. ISBN 9780553349375.