Only fans of old black and white reruns or people of a certain age will be familiar with the TV series, “My Three Sons.” Set in the fictitious California town of Bryant Park, “My Three Sons” centered around the widower, Steve Douglas (played by Fred McMurray) who encountered the issues of raising three sons as a single parent, a term not known when the TV series was popular. For our purposes, we’re interested in “Tramp” who was the family dog for most of the series (1960 to 1972). Virtually everyone at the time thought Tramp was a lovable scamp of a mutt, but he was, in fact, a Briard.
He wasn’t the only Briard in the entertainment industry. Top Dog, a 1995 buddy cop action comedy film with Chuck Norris featured, “Reno,” but there are many more appearances in film and on TV: “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (“Stevie”), “Married… with Children” (“Buck” (played by the Briard, “Michael”), “Dennis the Menace” (1993 with a dog named “Rosie”), “Buddy (starring Rene Russo in a movie about a gorilla named Buddy), “The Karate Dog,” “Tell No One (with a Briard named “O P’tit Loup”), American Wedding, and many more titles you can see here and here.
Top photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons