Rescued dog star must be Hollywood’s greatest tail
AUG 10, 1932
‘ The mutt’s first film saved Warner Bros from bankruptcy
HE was a poor immigrant who saved one of Hollywood’s greatest studios.
Saved from the battlefields of the First World War, he was smuggled into the United States on board a troopship and became one of Tinseltown’s most bankable stars.
He had 48 children, could leap almost 12 feet in the air and had the glossiest coat you’d ever seen.
For “he” was Rin Tin Tin, one of the most-famous dogs in cinema history.
The German shepherd was found in France in 1918 by US Army Corporal Lee Duncan who’d spotted a damaged kennel.
It had been used to supply the Imperial German Army with dogs but the only ones Duncan found alive were a starving mother and her five pups, their eyes still shut as they were less than a week old.
He rescued them, gave the mother to an officer and three of the litter to his comrades, but kept a male and a female, naming them Rin Tin Tin and Nanette after a pair of good luck charms French children often gave to American soldiers.
When Duncan was shipped back to the States in 1919, he managed to conceal the dogs on board, but Nanette died of pneumonia after arriving in the States.
Duncan headed home to Los Angeles where he taught Rin Tin Tin tricks and became convinced he could become the next Strongheart, a successful film dog of the time who lived in his own bungalow in the Hollywood Hills.
He walked Rin Tin Tin up and down Poverty Row, a string of B-movie studios, and the dog’s big break came when he replaced a camera-shy wolf (yes, really) in 1922’s The Man From Hell’s River though he was miscredited as “Rin Tan”.
He’d play a wolf many times but that same year he played a household pet in My Dad, and this time the credits read: “Rin Tin Tin – played by himself”.
The movie mutt’s first starring role came the following year in Where The North Begins which was a huge success and saved the Warner Bros studio from bankruptcy.
This was followed by a string of 24 hits, each so popular the pooch was nicknamed “the mortgage-lifter” by the studio.
In 1929, Rin Tin Tin received most votes for Best Actor at the first Oscars competition but the Academy wanted to look serious so removed his name from the list and the votes were cast once more.
The likes of Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow owned Rin Tin Tin puppies, and when he died in 1932 he was replaced by his son, Rin Tin Tin Jr, who proved less talented.
And he wasn’t just a movie star. Rin Tin Tin was cast in three series of radio drama The Wonder Dog, but as he could only perform some of the sound effects, most of the dog noises were actually performed by a man called . . . Bob Barker!