Rin Tin Tin, the World War I Dog Who Became a Hollywood Star, and His Popularity Helped Save Warner Bros.

Rin Tin Tin likely would have been a German war dog if the World War I battle near Saint-Mihiel had gone differently.

In September of 1918, the Allies broke through the German line in northeastern France. As the Germans evacuated the area, some men were sent out to scour the countryside to see what remained. Among the discoveries were a mother dog and her puppies, left behind in a damaged war dog station. Lee Duncan, a soldier from Southern California, couldn’t bear to leave the dogs behind. With help from a buddy, he took them back to the base where his unit, the 135th Aero Squadron, was camped.

The rest is Hollywood history...

Following advances made by American forces during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Corporal Lee Duncan, an armourer of the U.S. Army Air Service, was sent forward on September 15, 1918, to the small French village of Flirey to see if it would make a suitable flying field for his unit, the 135th Aero Squadron. The area had been subjected to aerial bombing and artillery fire, and Duncan found a severely damaged kennel which had once supplied the Imperial German Army with German Shepherd dogs. The only dogs left alive in the kennel were a starving mother with a litter of five nursing puppies, their eyes still shut because they were less than a week old. Duncan rescued the dogs and brought them back to his unit.

When the puppies were weaned, he gave the mother to an officer and three of the litter to other soldiers, but he kept one puppy of each sex. He felt that these two dogs were symbols of his good luck. He dubbed them Rin Tin Tin and Nanette after a pair of good luck charms called Rintintin and Nénette that French children often gave to the American soldiers. Duncan sensed that Nanette was the more intelligent of the two puppies.

In July 1919, Duncan sneaked the dogs aboard a ship taking him back to the US at the end of the war. When he got to Long Island, New York, for re-entry processing, he put his dogs in the care of a Hempstead breeder named Mrs. Leo Wanner, who trained police dogs. Nanette was diagnosed with pneumonia; as a replacement, the breeder gave Duncan another female German Shepherd puppy. Duncan traveled to California by rail with his dogs. While Duncan was traveling by train, Nanette died in Hempstead. As a memorial, Duncan named his new puppy Nanette II, but he called her Nanette. Duncan, Rin Tin Tin, and Nanette II settled at his home in Los Angeles. Rin Tin Tin was a dark sable color and had very dark eyes. Nanette II was much lighter in color.

An athletic silent film actor named Eugene Pallette was one of Duncan’s friends. The two men enjoyed the outdoors; they took the dogs to the Sierras, where Pallette liked to hunt, while Duncan taught Rin Tin Tin various tricks. Duncan thought that his dog might win a few awards at dog shows and thus be a valuable source of puppies bred with Nanette for sale. In 1922, Duncan was a founding member of the Shepherd Dog Club of California, based in Los Angeles. At the club’s first show, Rin Tin Tin showed his agility but also demonstrated an aggressive temper, growling, barking, and snapping. It was a very poor performance, but the worst moment came afterward when Duncan was walking home. A heavy bundle of newspapers was thrown from a delivery truck and landed on the dog, breaking his left front leg. Duncan had the injured limb set in plaster and he nursed the dog back to health for nine months.

Ten months after the break, the leg was healed and Rin Tin Tin was entered in a show for German Shepherd dogs in Los Angeles. Rin Tin Tin had learned to leap great heights. At the dog show while making a winning leap, he was filmed by Duncan's acquaintance Charley Jones, who had just developed a slow-motion camera. Seeing his dog being filmed, Duncan became convinced Rin Tin Tin could become the next Strongheart, a successful film dog that lived in his own full-sized stucco bungalow with its own street address in the Hollywood Hills, separate from the mansion of his owners, who lived a street away next to Roy Rogers. Duncan later wrote, “I was so excited over the film idea that I found myself thinking of it night and day.”

Duncan walked his dog up and down Poverty Row, talking to anyone in a position to put Rin Tin Tin in film, however modest the role. The dog’s first break came when he was asked to replace a camera-shy wolf in The Man from Hell’s River (1922) featuring Wallace Beery. The wolf was not performing properly for the director, but under the guidance of Duncan’s voice commands, Rin Tin Tin was very easy to work with. When the film was completed, the dog was billed as “Rin Tan.” Rin Tin Tin would be cast as a wolf or wolf-hybrid many times in his career because it was much more convenient for filmmakers to work with a trained dog. In another 1922 film titled My Dad, Rin Tin Tin picked up a small part as a household dog. The credits read: “Rin Tin Tin – Played by himself.”

Rin Tin Tin’s first starring role was in Where the North Begins (1923), in which he played alongside silent screen actress Claire Adams. This film was a huge success and has often been credited with saving Warner Bros. from bankruptcy. It was followed by 24 more screen appearances. Each of these films was very popular, making such a profit for Warner Bros. that Rin Tin Tin was called “the mortgage lifter” by studio insiders. A young screenwriter named Darryl F. Zanuck was involved in creating stories for Rin Tin Tin; the success of the films raised him to the position of film producer. In New York City, Mayor Jimmy Walker gave Rin Tin Tin a key to the city.

Rin Tin Tin was much sought after and was signed for endorsement deals. Dog food makers Ken-L Ration, Ken-L-Biskit, and Pup-E-Crumbles all featured him in their advertisements. Warner Bros. fielded fan letters by the thousands, sending back a glossy portrait signed with a paw print and a message written by Duncan: “Most faithfully, Rin Tin Tin.” In the 1920s, Rin Tin Tin’s success for Warner Bros. inspired several imitations from other studios looking to cash in on his popularity, notably RKO’s Ace the Wonder Dog, also a German Shepherd dog. Around the world, Rin Tin Tin was extremely popular because as a dog he was equally well understood by all viewers. At the time, silent films were easily adapted for various countries by simply changing the language of the intertitles. Rin Tin Tin’s films were widely distributed. Film historian Jan-Christopher Horak wrote that by 1927, Rin Tin Tin was the most popular actor with the very sophisticated film audience in Berlin.

Although primarily a star of silent films, Rin Tin Tin did appear in four sound features, including the 12-part Mascot Studios chapter-play The Lightning Warrior (1931), co-starring with Frankie Darro. In these films, vocal commands would have been picked up by the microphones, so Duncan likely guided Rin Tin Tin by hand signals. Rin Tin Tin and the rest of the crew filmed much of the outdoor action footage for The Lightning Warrior on the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, known for its huge sandstone boulders and widely recognized as the most heavily filmed outdoor shooting location in the history of the movies.

Rin Tin Tin and Nanette II produced at least 48 puppies; Duncan kept two of them, selling the rest or giving them as gifts. Greta Garbo, W.K. Kellogg, and Jean Harlow each owned one of Rin Tin Tin’s descendants.

On August 10, 1932, Rin Tin Tin died at Duncan's home on Club View Drive in Los Angeles. Duncan wrote about the death in his unpublished memoir. He heard Rin Tin Tin bark in a peculiar fashion so he went to see what was wrong. He found the dog lying on the ground, moments away from death.

In a private ceremony, Duncan buried Rin Tin Tin in a bronze casket in his own backyard with a plain wooden cross to mark the location. Duncan was suffering the financial effects of the Great Depression and could not afford a finer burial, nor even his own expensive house. He sold his house and quietly arranged to have the dog's body returned to his country of birth for reburial in the Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques, the pet cemetery in the Parisian suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine.

In the United States, his death set off a national response. Regular programming was interrupted by a news bulletin. An hour-long program about Rin Tin Tin played the next day. In a ceremony on February 8, 1960, Rin Tin Tin was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1627 Vine Street.