Rin Tin Tin: Celebrating Hollywood’s first four-legged superstar

There were numerous superstars during the silent era from the clown princes of comedy Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd to such dramatic and action icons as Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish. One was a good boy — the German Shepherd Rin Tin Tin. Not only is Rin Tin Tin, aka Rinty, credited with saving Warner Bros., but Hollywood lore also insists he, not Emil Jannings,  was the first Best Actor Oscar winner.

With Warner Brothers celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and the Academy Awards just around the corner, it’s time to look at the Rinty phenomenon and its place in Hollywood history.

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Rinty wasn’t the first canine star. Blair, the pet collie of British director Cecil Hepworth, headlined his 1905 thriller “Rescued by Rover.” The film was so popular it had to be shot twice because the negative wore out after so many prints were made. There were many other dog performers during the silent era including Teddy the Great Dane, a collie named Jean and an English pit bull named Luke. Even before Rinty made his film debut, audiences adored Strongheart the German shepherd who made his debut in 1921’s “The Silent Call,” had a dog food named after him and had two books written about him. He died in 1929 at 11.

Rin Tin Tin was a true Hollywood story. He was an immigrant who was the embodiment of the American dream. Rinty was a starving puppy without a kibble or bit who was discovered with his mother and siblings on Sept. 15, 1918 by U.S Air Corporal Lee Duncan and his battalion in a bombed out kennel in Lorraine, France. Duncan brought Rinty and his sister Nanette home with him. Unfortunately, Nanette got sick on the trip back to America and died. Rinty was discovered performing at a L.A. dog show in 1922 and made his film debut that year in “The Man from Hell’s River,” replacing a wolf that was having a difficult time doing his tricks. Rinty not only could do the tricks, he could do them in one take.

“He was special,” said author Susan Orlean, who fell in love with the dog Rin Tin Tin IV as a child watching the 1954-59  ABC TV series, “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.” The canine star was the subject of her acclaimed 2011 book,  “Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend.”

“I thought he was a cool dog, then I watched his silent films and you are kind of taken back,” she told me in a 2012 L.A. Times interview. “He is a really good actor. He had charisma He had a real presence on film. I think the proof is in the statistics when you appreciate how many dogs there were in films at the time and how many of them we remember. It is kind of a statement of his ability to project something special.”

A year later, Rinty starred with Claire Adams in “Where the North Begins,” written by Duncan. According to a 2019 Hollywood Reporter piece, Duncan studied his dog’s “facial expressions and concocted dramatic scenarios that took full advantage of them. The result was a dog who was able to ‘register emotions and portray a real character with its individual loves loyalties and hates,’ as Duncan once put it.”

The film’s budget was $100,000 and made $352,000 “rescuing the studio from bankruptcy.” Rinty went on to star in 26 pictures including 1925’ ‘Clash of the Wolves,” which was named to the 2004 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

By 1926, Rinty was making $6,000 a week. According to imdB.com, the studio had 18-trained stand-ins on hand to reduce strain on their superstar. He had his own private chef who daily prepared his tenderloin steak lunch; an ensemble played classical music while he dined to help with his digestion.

And then there was the Oscar legend. Bruce Davis, former executive director of the academy, wrote a 2017 Wrap article about the Oscar lore. Davis said that the urban legend began with a mock, joke ballot spread by Warner Brothers’ executive Darryl Zanuck, who wanted to make fun of the concept of the Oscars. Davis stated the  ballots for the for the first Oscars “lie in a storage box in the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles. Jack Warner’s is there; they were signed, not secret in the first year-along with stacks of others not a single one of them mentioning a dog.”

When sound arrived, Duncan taught hand signals to Rin Tin Tin. He just made a few talkies, eventually being dropped by Warners. He was 14 when he died in 1932 . The New York Times obit said: “An old trouper of the ‘silent’ days, Rin Tin Tin was about to start a ‘comeback’ under the direction of Nat Levine, head of Mascot Pictures Corporation, who recently ‘signed’ the canine Thespian for a number of talking pictures. His first starring role was to have been in ‘Pride of the Legion.”’ His son, Rin Tin Tin Jr. took over for his dad.

By the time of Rinty’s death, Duncan had fallen on hard financial times due to the Great Depression and couldn’t afford a lavish service for his beloved pooch. So, Rinty was buried it the  backyard of his house. Duncan would eventually sell his house and quietly arranged for the canine to buried in his homeland at the Cimetiere des Chiens at Autres Animaux Domestiques in a Paris suburb.

Forty-four years after his death saw the release the comedy “Won Ton  Ton: The Dog that Saved Hollywood.” The film featured numerous cameos from stars of yesteryear including Dorothy Lamour, Alice Faye, Dick Haymes, Richard Arlen, Johnny Weissmuller and Guy Madison.  It bombed at the box office as well as with critics. As the L.A. Times Kevin Thomas observed: “Sixty guest stars can’t save ‘Won Ton Ton; The Dog Who Saved Hollywood’ from its unrelentingly crass tone and steady stream of unfunny jokes.”

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