In 1943, MGM released Lassie Come Home, the tale of a faithful dog and his young master. As it turns out, Lassie was the most faithful to MGM: the canine-friendly film grossed a handsome profit, spawned several successful sequels, and featured one of the industry's greatest stars in one of her earliest films. Based on a novel by Eric Mowbray Knight (first featured as a short story in a 1938 edition of Saturday Evening Post), Lassie Come Home starred a very young Roddy McDowall as the Scottish lad who is forced to sell his beloved dog. McDowall had just finished work on My Friend Flicka and both films (which were released in the same year) helped to firmly establish McDowall as a popular child actor. In an early supporting role, Elizabeth Taylor was cast as McDowall's friend. Taylor's big break would come the next year with the release of National Velvet (1944), a film that also featured Donald Crisp in a supporting role. Taylor and McDowall became close friends during the shooting of Lassie Come Home, a friendship that would last until McDowall's death in 1998. Based on the success of Lassie Come Home, several Lassie films were released in the subsequent years, including Courage of Lassie (1946) that once again featured Elizabeth Taylor. Lassie's owner and trainer, Rudd Weatherwax, employed a wide variety of techniques to cajole Lassie into performing for the camera. Favorite toys and treats dangled in a tantalizing fashion just off-camera helped to focus the animal's attention to the right directions, and rubber balls were attached to doorknobs to give the impression that the dog was opening doors. A piece of cork attached to a paw provided a limp when the action called for Lassie to be injured, and ice cream smeared on McDowall's face allowed for the sloppy dog kisses. In order to secure a canine expression of frustration, Lassie was given a command to stay but forced to watch the director, beyond the sight of the cameras, being pushed around by the crew.