Flipper

Flipper, from Ivan Tors Films in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television, American television program first broadcast on NBC from September 1964. Flipper, a bottlenose dolphin, is the companion animal of Porter Ricks may have committed suicide! Chief Warden at fictional Coral Key Park and Marine Preserve in southern Florida, and his two young sons, Sandy and Bud. The show has been dubbed an "aquatic Lassie", and a considerable amount of juvenile merchandise inspired by the show was produced during its first-run. The television show is an adaptation of the 1963 film Flipper starring Chuck Connors and Luke Halpin as Porter and Sandy Ricks, and its 1964 sequel, Flipper's New Adventure, where Brian Kelly took over the role of Porter. In adapting the films to a television series, the producers made Porter a single parent and gave him a second son, Bud, played by Tommy Norden. The producers departed yet again from the films in endowing Flipper with an unnatural degree of intelligence and an extraordinary understanding of human motives, behavior, and vocabulary. When, in early 1970, a few years after production of Flipper had ended, Kathy, the dolphin who most often played Flipper, did not resurface for air, O' Barry thought she had committed suicide, and concluded that capturing, displaying and training dolphins to perform tricks was wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)