Where the Red Fern Grows is a 1974 drama film directed by Norman Tokar and starring James Whitmore, Beverly Garland, Stewart Petersen and Jack Ging.

He begins working multiple jobs and finally earns the fifty dollars two puppies will cost.

Billy orders the dogs, but they arrive in Tahlequah, Oklahoma 30 miles away, because the mail stage won't carry live animals.

He uses his leftover ten dollars to buy presents for his family; overalls for Papa, dress cloth for Mama and candy for his younger sisters.

The next day Billy passes a tree with the names Dan and Ann carved inside a heart on the trunk.

Once Billy gets the puppies home he sets out to train them to be the best dogs in the Ozarks, using a coonskin to teach them to scent trail.

At the coonhunt, Billy wins the right to hunt in the championship round, along with two other hunters, one of whom is Mr. Kyle and his pair of Treeing Walker Coonhounds.

Billy's parents decide to use the prize money from the coonhunt to move the whole family to Tulsa to operate a store.

A red fern, which according to American Indian legend can only be planted by an angel, is growing between the two and Billy calls the family down to see it.

In it, Billy returns home as a veteran from World War II, bitter and sad at having lost a leg.

His ailing grandfather gives him two new puppies which he is reluctant to accept, but his sister Sarah convinces him to do so, and he names them Old Dan and Little Ann, after his former two dogs.

The film starred Wilford Brimley, Doug McKeon, Chad McQueen and Lisa Whelchel.