Profile of Tommy Rettig on Famous Like Me

Tommy Rettig (also known as Tom Rettig) (December 10, 1941 – February 15, 1996) was an American child actor, computer software engineer, and author. Rettig is probably best remembered for starring as character Jeff Miller in the first four seasons of the Lassie television series, from 1954 to 1957, also seen in syndicated re-runs as Jeff's Collie.

Youth, child actor

Born Thomas Noel Rettig to a Jewish father, Elias Rettig, and a Christian mother, Rosemary, in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. He started his career at age six, touring with Mary Martin in the play Annie Get Your Gun in which he played Little Jake. Before his famous role as Jeff Miller in the first Lassie television series, Rettig also appeared in about 20 feature films including The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (written by Dr. Seuss) and The River of No Return with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. Rettig later told of a warm personal friendship with Monroe, who was more reserved in the company of older males.

It was his work with a dog in The River of No Return that led animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax to urge him to audition for new Lassie role, for which Weatherwax supplied the famous collies. Rettig later told interviewers that he longed for a life as a normal teenager, and after 4 seasons, 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 work in the Lassie series although his work was syndicated and widely shown under the name Jeff's Collie.

Adult, a new successful career

As an adult, Rettig preferred to be called "Tom". He found the transition from child star to be difficult, and had several well-publicized legal entanglements relating to illegal recreational drugs (a conviction for growing marijuana on his farm and a charge for cocaine of which he was exonerated). Some years after he left acting, he became a motivational speaker, which led him while working on mailing lists to get involved in the early days of personal computers.

For the last 15 years of his life, Rettig was a very well-known database software author and expert. He was a very early employee of Ashton-Tate, and specialized in (sequentially) dBASE, Clipper, FoxBASE and finally FoxPro. (Tom Rettig's career in software engineering is not to be confused with the person of the same name who worked at Brøderbund doing sound on such projects as Carmen Sandiego and Kid Pix. That Tom Rettig is one of Tommy Rettig's two sons. But they have different middle names, so technically he is not Tom Rettig Jr.)

Later years, death

Rettig did a guest appearance in an episode of the 1989 television series The New Lassie which aired on October 25, 1991. The series also featured appearances from two other Lassie veterans, Roddy McDowall, who had starred in the first movie Lassie Come Home (1943) and June Lockhart, who had starred in the 1945 movie Son of Lassie, and the television series (as Timmy's mother in the years after Rettig left the show).

After his untimely death at age 54 (of natural causes), his memorial service in Marina del Rey, California was attended by Roger Clinton, Jr and perhaps 10 other former child stars who were featured in a photo spread in The National Enquirer. His loss was also mourned by many in the software industry, where many computer people who read his books and articles or used Rettig's software products did not realize he was a former child star.

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