Appearances

Title	Role	Year	Approx. Age
Lassie - Best of Jeff's Collie	Jeff Miller	1957	16
Lassie, A Mother's Love	Jeff Miller	1957	16
River of No Return	Mark Calder	1954	13
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T	unknown	1953	12
So Big	Dirk age 8	1953	12
Weekend with Father	David Bowen aka Shorty	1951	10

Tommy Rettig, the only child of Elias Rettig, a Lockheed aircraft-parts inspector, and his wife, Rosemary, began his career at age 5, after he was spotted by an acting coach who lived in the family's apartment building in Queens, N.Y.

After touring with Mary Martin in "Annie Get Your Gun" for 22 months, Tommy was offered more stage roles, including "Peter Pan" and "The Member of the Wedding," the latter play made famous by Brandon De Wilde. His strong-willed mother, however, decided Tommy should go for the movies. Ironically, Tommy won the boy role on Lassie (1954) after de Wilde turned it down.

His screen debut was at age 9 and he made 17 films. His most memorable screen performance was as the boy with the vivid imagination in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953). After touring with Mary Martin, he landed 1954's River of No Return (1954), starring Marilyn Monroe... And was Marilyn Monroe's youngest date ever when he escorted her to the Hollywood premiere of River of No Return.

Tommy Rettig was the first boy during the famous collie's 20 years on the CBS television network. An already established child star, he was chosen from over 500 other boys to play the 11 year old midwestern farm boy, Jeff Miller, when Lassie (1954) premiered on September 12, 1954. He stayed with the series until 1958.

He graduated from Los Angeles' University High School.

Following Lassie (1954) came a troubled life filled with failure to land adult roles, arrests and convictions for growing marijuana and importing cocaine, bankruptcy, divorce, and a string of jobs including photographer, tool salesman, computer programmer, and health club manager. Rettig was also a long time advocate for the legalization of marijuana and in the 1970s, he and his family lived on a farm near Arroyo Grande, CA, where he secretly grew marijuana between rows of corn. His multiple drug busts eventually destroyed his marriage.

For the last ten or so years of his life (starting 1984, maybe earlier), Tom was a computer software developer working on business application frameworks. He was regarded as one of the experts; a software guru in the area of desktop PC database applications such as dBase. At the time of his untimely death, he was a central figure in the community of FoxPro database developers and his passing was felt professionally and personally by many who had come to know Tom as a visionary and as generous mentor.

Father to actor Mason Storm.

Tommy died of a heart attack in 1996, Marina del Rey, California. At the end of Tommy's life, he was again reunited with Lassie, as his ashes were spread off the coast of Marina del Rey onboard the LaSea, with Lassie present to say goodbye.