Thanhouser Company trademark: a T and C monogram inside an octagonTHANHOUSERCompany Film PreservationBuy DVDs

1916FalstaffOne reelComedy

A Clever Collie’s Comeback

Also released as Shep’s Return

No copy you can watch online. No print is known to survive. What follows is what does: the release, the cast, the story, and what the trade press said at the time.

The story

“A clever collie, whose home always has been a city apartment, objects strenuously to the family moving to the country. He tells the other dogs that he is going to queer the new home with his owner. The family moves and finds that it has taken a haunted house. One night Mandy, the old colored servant, wakes everybody, screaming. She declares a ghost has pulled all the bedclothes off her, and another ghost has blown out the light. Her master and mistress laugh at her at first. But when the candle goes out in the hand of the head of the house, and when the baby’s carriage runs away all of itself, and when a beefsteak turned into a pair of corsets—well, the next day the family moves back to the city. Then the clever collie tells the other dogs all about it. And mysteries too deep for humans are explained.”

Summary from Reel Life · 29 January 1916

What the papers said

1 review

“A comedy subject in which a collie dog is featured. The young married couple move to the country, where the discontented dog performed so many stunts at night that they fear ghosts and move back. The dog is well trained. The number will perhaps have special appeal to children.”

The Moving Picture World · 12 February 1916

Have you seen this film, or a print of it?

Prints of films thought lost still turn up in attics, private collections and archives. A record like this one is how the next one gets found.

Tell us about a print

Cast and crew

Cast
Frances Keyes as wife
George Marlo as husband
Lady as collie
Mattie Keene as Mandy
Writer
Lloyd F. Lonergan

Every name opens that person's page, with each film they appear in and which of them you can watch.

Watch instead

Films you can watch from the same company

Matched by cast, director and kind
A frame from Toodles, Tom and Trouble12:49
1915 · Same castToodles, Tom and Trouble
A frame from Clarence Cheats at Croquet12:24
1915 · Same leadClarence Cheats at Croquet
A frame from The Man Without a Country25:18
1917 · Same castThe Man Without a Country

More about this film

Bowers’ notes
  1. The title was listed erroneously as A Clever Collie’s Coming Back in The Moving Picture World (issue of February 5, 1916, for example). 2. Although the British release title for this film was Shep’s Return, the collie featured was Lady, not Shep.

From Volume II: Filmography of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. Read the history of 1916 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “A Clever Collie’s Comeback”. thanhouser.org/films/a-clever-collie-s-comeback/

Where a print is held

Held by
No print known