FORGET YOUR LASSIES, your Benjis, and your Beethovens, because great as you may think they are, amused by their shenanigans as you may have been, unless you have compared them to Rin-Tin-Tin, you cannot seriously discuss canine thespians. Other dogs may be good, but Rin-Tin-Tin was a Star. Consider the facts. At the height of his fame, in the middle to late twenties, he received as many as 12,000 fan letters a week. He earned $5,000 a month, was insured for $5,000, and had his own valet, chef, limo, and driver. He had an orchestra for mood music while he worked, a diamond-studded collar, and eighteen doubles to cover for him when he was tired. He ate only the best T-bone steaks, except when the story called for him to jump through a windowpane made of the finest spun sugar, because then he was allowed to devour the sweet as a reward. He had a personal secretary to handle his crowded schedule and his lucrative endorsement contract with Ken-L Rations, who featured his photograph on every box they sold—and with his help, they sold plenty. He was asked to pose for photographs with numberless visiting dignitaries. He lived a star’s life, and he died a star’s death: Rinty, beloved dog actor and greatest animal star in film history, met his maker while cradled in the lap of the blonde bombshell Jean Harlow.
There were an extraordinary number of animal stars in the silent era—animals of all kinds, not only dogs. Mack Sennett had a veritable menagerie under contract. In addition to his own famous dog, Teddy—the Great Dane who drove a train and had his own stunt double—Sennett had Fatty Arbuckle’s sidekick dog, Luke, and Props, a stray who just showed up one day and, no doubt sensing a good deal, promptly started licking the tears off a baby and was awarded with a solid contract. Sennett also had Anna May the elephant, who, unlike so many of her fellow thespians, went on to a successful sound career in Tarzan films. She had true star temperament and such an affinity for the camera that it was said that the minute it started rolling, you could see a change come over her. There were the lions, Numa and Duke, Susie the chicken, and Josephine the monkey, who played pool and golf and could drive a car, to say nothing of Pepper, the Lillian Gish of cats, who could lick cream off her paws on cue and who was reputed to be so smart that when her costar Teddy the Dog died and a look-alike substitute was run in on her, she spat and walked off the set. (When Pepper just disappeared one day, Mack Sennett issued a statement to the press: “She retired at the top.”) Sennett’s troupe of animals was well documented because it had its own publicity machine, but animals were acting in films all over Hollywood in those days. There were Rex the Wonder Horse, Tom Mix’s Tony, and William S. Hart’s beloved Fritz, not to mention a group of acting monkeys called the Dippity-Do-Dads, a parrot, an alligator, and even a turtle—all with more than one movie to their credit.
The moviegoing public loved these performers, and anything the public loved, the fan magazines covered. They featured elaborate layouts of photographs and drawings of the animals, and fans cut them out and put them in scrapbooks and pasted them on their kitchen walls much as people today buy calendars with full-color portraits of cats and dogs. The magazines invented a genre of pseudo-articles allegedly written by the animals themselves—elaborate “biographies” and “interviews” that recounted the typical star story: discovery, rise to fame, adjustment to riches, all the while remaining the same simple animals they had once been back in the barnyard. Pepper, the Sennett cat, was given a star “interview” in the May 1920 issue of Picture-Play, in which she “discusses” her three years of stardom for Sennett, highlighted by such popular hits as Back to the Kitchen and Down on the Farm. She praises “costars” like Louise Fazenda, Ford Sterling, and Teddy, the Great Dane. (According to Pepper, Teddy was her “supporting cast,” but Teddy might have put it differently.) She confesses that she absolutely hates having to do stunts, especially when forced to work all day with a mouse—without eating him. Sitting outside her very own little cathouse, the “Villa Paprika,” Pepper assures her fans that she is always on the lot, always ready for her next scene, and heavily insured against accidents. In another article, Josephine, the monkey, shows off her huge wardrobe and her superb table manners for the interviewer, while her “manager” proudly boasts that Josephine has an “I.Q. of 140.”
Of all the animal stars, however, it was the dogs that really reached the top. There were an amazing number of them, with the alleged “first” being the beautiful collie Jean, who could untie knots, thereby setting free any hero stupid enough to get himself tied up. There were Sennett’s Teddy and Luke, of course, and also Sandow, Brownie, Strongheart, Silverstreak, Ranger, Fangs, Thunder, Peter the Great, Dynamite, Lightning, Peter the Second, Fido, Napoleon Bonaparte—and more. There were so many, and so many movies starring them, that a weary critic finally admitted in print to “a sinking of the stomach when another police dog was flashed across the screen at the Tivoli,” because, as he frankly stated, “a new mutt is just an additional strain.”
Throughout the twenties, dog stars held the public’s attention, and the seriousness with which their films was taken is reflected in the reviews. Every dog was given a hard-nosed critical evaluation. Silverstreak was “a great dog actor” who could “put over a new trick or two in almost every new release.” Thunder was “a police dog [who] has a corking trick of winking at proper moments.” Fangs was “a good natured pup,” but he would never really become a star because he “lacked fire” and was “averse to fighting.” Sandow (billed as “Sandow, the Dog,” in case people didn’t notice) was panned for his performance in Avenging Fangs (1927): “Sandow was too playful to agree with the subtitles, feeling pretty happy over things when the printed inserts would have him grim and merciless … Sandow won’t be proud of this [film].” The worst reviews always went to poor Ranger, the Vera Hruba Ralston of dogs. The bottom line on Ranger was simple: “not a good actor.” He was called “an impossible animal star” who, even worse, was surrounded by “a poor supporting cast.” In a review of Breed of Courage (1927), he was humiliated with “Ranger is still not a good actor, inclusive [sic] of all the progress he has made since last seen. In the fight scene, he is one of the tamest in the business. The heavy practically drags the dog toward him instead of the animal attacking. In several cases the menace falls to the floor, pulling the dog down on top of him in semblance of a fight.” (Later, the reviewer relents and praises Ranger reluctantly for effectively eating a dynamite fuse to prevent an explosion.)
Whenever a new canine star appeared, reviewers took notice. “Napoleon Bonaparte” starred for the first time in a 1927 movie called The Silent Hero. Variety wrote, “The new dog star … looks okay. He can act nasty when asked, and fights without that playful spirit noted in others.” He, like many before the arrival of Rin-Tin-Tin, was compared to the beautiful Strongheart, who was Rinty’s greatest rival. Strongheart was known as “a good looking, upstanding animal,” well worthy of “his starring honors.” There were so many dogs appearing in movies that sometimes they were left nameless, as in The Fighting Three (1927), which starred western favorite Jack Hoxie and “a horse and a dog,” or in His Dog (1927), whose lead was listed merely as “A Collie.” There was no way reviewers could ignore these performing dogs, because they made money at the box office and had legions of loyal fans.
No animal, however, no matter what its reviews or box office success, was a patch on the great Rin-Tin-Tin. Like Tallulah and Elvis and Madonna, he had an unusual name. Like Bogie and Kate, he had that name shortened into a beloved nickname: Rinty. And like so many great stars, he came from humble origins with a rags-to-riches tale: a climb out of the trenches of World War I up to the heights of Hollywood movie stardom. It began on the morning of September 15, 1918, when an American soldier, Corporal Lee Duncan, came across an abandoned German war dog station. Huddled inside was a half-starved mother with five newborn puppies, all of which Duncan rescued, eventually bringing two of them home with him to the United States. (The other three found new homes in Europe.) Duncan named his two dogs, one female and one male, for Nanette and Rin-Tin-Tin, the good-luck dolls carried into war by French soldiers. To Duncan’s disappointment Nanette died upon their arrival in New York, but Rin-Tin-Tin survived. (Later, a semiautobiographical movie starring Rinty was made of this dramatic story. Called A Dog of the Regiment [1927], it presented him intrepidly performing first aid chores for his mistress, a Red Cross nurse behind combat lines. This makes Rinty the Audie Murphy of dogs.)
Rin-Tin-Tin, handsome dog, in Clash of the Wolves, with supporting cast, June Marlowe and Charles Farrell (photo credit 12.1)
Corporal Duncan turned out to be an imaginative entrepreneur who, having realized Rinty’s amazing ability to learn, decided to train him for the movies. When he first presented his dog for hire, his extravagant claims for Rinty’s talents caused Jack L. Warner to exclaim, “This I gotta see. A dog that can act!” As it turned out, not only could Rinty act, he had plenty more going for him, too. He was handsome and he was smart and, like Joan Crawford among so many others, he seemed to know by instinct that stardom was a viable way out of bone-crushing poverty. Like Joan, he learned fast and was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. Jack Warner cast Rinty in his first starring feature, Where the North Begins, in 1923, and he was at once labeled “a good actor” by critics and accepted by the public.
Rinty quickly surpassed the very popular Strongheart, and the fan magazines dutifully covered the shift of fan loyalty from one dog to another. In the December 1921 issue of Photoplay, two years before Rinty entered films, “The Story of Strongheart” is presented as the feature article of the month, with Strongheart photographs spread over a lavish layout. “Strongheart,” the article gushed, was a stage name; he had, in fact, been born “Etzel,” a German name because he was a German dog. (Readers were reassured that Etzel had “served nobly” in the German Red Cross during World War I, thus eliminating any fears that he had actually been a German trooper.) Strongheart, readers are told, is taking his place on the dog star roster alongside such popular canines as Sennett’s Teddy and Universal’s very popular Brownie. But Teddy and Brownie, Photoplay carefully points out, are comedy dogs, whereas Strongheart “is a dramatic dog; an emotional actor,” which makes him unique. In other words, Strongheart is like all the other foreign actors and actresses who came over from Europe to straighten Hollywood out about just what serious acting really was.
Rinty’s main rival, Strongheart, in North Star (photo credit 12.2)
Strongheart reigns supreme in the fan mags through 1923, but by March 1924 the handwriting is on the wall. Motion Picture publishes an article ominously entitled “The Rival of Strongheart.” This new star, “Rintintin [sic],” is said to be “now competing with Strongheart for the canine celluloid honors,” Where the North Begins (1923) placing him “in the stellar ranks.” Motion Picture did not doubt “Rintintin’s” movie power, particularly, as the story points out, “now that he has a press agent and a specially constructed motor car.” By 1925, articles about Strongheart were fading, while Rin-Tin-Tin was appearing in almost every other issue.
Ultimately, Rin-Tin-Tin not only surpassed Strongheart, he became the biggest dog star of the era and Warner Brothers’ top box office draw—he was nicknamed “the mortgage lifter,” because his movies bailed Warners out of financial difficulties and kept them solvent. The films he made between 1923 and 1930 also earned Lee Duncan over $5 million. In addition, Rinty helped to advance the career of Darryl F. Zanuck, who was at the time a young writer at Warners, and who understood early on that Rin-Tin-Tin was box office gold. Zanuck played a key role in building Rinty into a superstar and a fan favorite. Jack Warner, who had at first been so skeptical, ended up loving the dog, pointing out that “he didn’t ask for a raise, or a new press agent, or an air-conditioned dressing room, or more close-ups.” (Since Warner was famous for being cheap with his actors and resenting their demands for perks, no doubt Rin-Tin-Tin was his ideal movie star.)
Watching Rin-Tin-Tin’s films today, it isn’t difficult to appreciate their strengths. They’re enormously fast-paced, with an effective no-nonsense approach to storytelling. The production values are superior, with excellent outdoor location shooting, competent human supporting casts, and solid writing and directing. They understand how to please a crowd by including a little something for everyone: a little comedy, a little romance, a little sentiment, and a lot of danger and action. And the hard-nosed businessmen who supervised the Rinty pictures knew how to turn them out for a minimum of money, so that they were not only entertaining but hugely profitable.
The world of Rin-Tin-Tin is obviously of another time and another place. It is for the most part a bucolic world, with simple values and straightforward definitions of good and evil. Central to the appeal of his movies, there is always some key task to be performed: a gold mine to be found, a dam to be built, a stagecoach to be saved from robbers, wild wolves to be outrun, homesteads to be staked, even wars to be fought. Time’s a wastin’, and the humans need help, being the poor befuddled fools they are. In fact, the basic plot always consists of Rinty having to save the day because he’s surrounded by human beings who are either remarkably venal, remarkably innocent, or remarkably stupid—often all three types in one film. The number of times that poor Rinty tries to tell people something important and they just don’t get it is amazing. As his career advances, he looks more and more annoyed about this, but he is never less than a trouper; he always dashes into the situation at full speed, takes a quick look around to size things up, decides on a plan of action, and carries it out with excellent results. (Many actors would benefit from these skills.)
Rin-Tin-Tin’s action stunts were cleverly varied to allow him to do the same thing many times while making it appear to be different. For instance, Rinty was a strong swimmer. Thus, he would jump into the water to retrieve a crutch for a little crippled child, or he would jump into the water to save a baby. He would also jump into the water to drown a villain or save a heroine from going over the falls. All that was required was that the river be rushing rapidly, and that he jump in, retrieve the item (or, in the case of the villain, leave it there), and bring it safely back to shore.
In everything he did, Rinty was humanized as far as possible. He was even given a love interest, finding himself a girlfriend in more than one film, and on occasion actually marrying and settling down with a wife and pups. In Tracked in the Snow Country (1925), he mates with a widow wolf, and in Hills of Kentucky (1927), he is a married dog when the film opens, “having fought the pack to win” his soul mate, played by the classy female dog star Nanette (not to be confused with his late sibling). In Tracked by the Police (1927), he falls for the leading lady’s pretty “blonde” dog, also played by Nanette. (“After all, gentlemen do prefer blondes,” says a coy title.)
The plain fact is that Rinty’s movies are peppy and uncomplicated. They know how to bring an audience into their simple dilemmas and then step up the excitement so that, even today, you start caring about what happens. A typical example is Jaws of Steel (1928). It opens on a car driving across the Mojave Desert, carrying a little puppy (Rinty) and his “people”: Jason Robards (senior) as John Warren, Helen Ferguson as his wife, Mary, and little Mary Louise Miller as “Baby Warren.” When Baby’s doll drops out the back window, Rinty jumps out of the car to run back and fetch it, but no one notices. He can’t catch up to the speeding car and has no choice—after he has suffered enough—but to grow up and become a wild dog. (Title cards tell us that at first “Rinty was frightened, lost and alone,” but one year later “He had conquered his fear and mastered the desert. He was no longer a dog, but a beast among beasts—known through the valley as The Killer.”)
The Warren family lives in a deserted old town that they have been conned into believing will be a wonderful place to live while they work the worthless gold mine they have trustingly purchased. When grown-up Killer Rinty noses into town and reunites emotionally with Baby, the grown-ups don’t trust him. (“He eats little babies!”) Daddy even shoots at Rinty, since only the kid recognizes the truth of who he really is. Rinty and Baby start having secret play meetings, in which Rinty uses his teeth to pull a rope tied to the bottom of her swing. When she wants to remove her heavy boots, Rinty pulls them off for her, and when grown-ups show their intolerant faces, he hides in the laundry basket. Meanwhile, there’s hanky-panky, as the villain murders “Alkali Joe,” Warren’s kind old partner, and steals the map to the gold mine that has suddenly and remarkably panned out. The villain then plants clues to blame the murder on Killer Rinty, but Rinty has other things on his mind. Baby is very, very ill: she misses her dog friend so much she just can’t go on. Rinty sneaks into the languishing child’s room, and as she perks up, her mother hesitates, giving Rinty the opportunity to do some tricks. He sits up, rolls over, and the mother suddenly gets it: This is Rinty! She sends him off to fetch her husband and the townsmen, who have formed a posse to search out the Killer Rinty and dispatch him. Mom wants the men to go for the doctor instead, as Baby is once again fading. Rinty sets out, and here is where it becomes clear that this dog has real brains. Since the posse is after him, he figures the best thing to do is show himself to them, so he can lure them back home to rescue Baby.
Rinty on the job: he attacks (Tracked in the Snow Country) and he brings the plasma (A Dog of the Regiment); he picks the lock and serves up the canteen (A Dog of the Regiment); he rescues Fair Maiden (Tracked by the Police) (photo credit 12.3)
A great outdoor chase ensues, in which Rinty breaks his paw in a jump to freedom. This action calls for all his acting skill. He has to fall, roll down a hill, express pain, and then get up and limp across the landscape as fast as he can with the posse in hot pursuit. (Rinty never forgets his limp, and always remembers which paw is supposed to be broken.) Back home, after the doctor tells the parents that Baby’s dying from that prevalent film disease, Dog-Loss Grief, the parents understand that they must reunite their child with her dog. Then Rinty unmasks the villain, and all is right with the world.
This plot may sound silly, but it works, because it never stops moving and the dog is really very charming, the leading lady is very pretty, and everyone in the piece knows his or her job and does it well. It’s not hard to understand why movies like this made money. They’re simple and fun, and furthermore they’re short—about an hour in running time. Nobody has a chance to get bored.
In one of his best films, Tracked by the Police (1927), Rinty is faced with a complex moral dilemma. Not one but two leading ladies get into deep trouble. First, the human female star (Virginia Brown Faire) finds herself hanging from a crane over a sabotaged dam. Next, Rinty’s own leading lady dog is put in chains and thrown into the rushing river. What to do, what to do? Duty or Love? Should Rinty remain man’s best friend and save the woman, or should he follow his heart and save his own true love? (Rinty and “Princess Beth”—played by Nanette—have done a lot of necking and nuzzling each other; the leading man, Jason Robards, Sr., and Ms. Faire, on the other hand, haven’t shown us much of anything.) Rinty, being the brainy dog he is, uses his head—and his paws. First, he cleverly operates the crane to rescue Ms. Faire, choosing Duty, because that’s the kind of noble dog he is. Then he rushes in to manipulate the dam’s operating mechanisms, turning back the flood, and, although at first he thinks “Princess Beth” is dead, manages to save both females. (Variety’s reviewer does muse on this a bit: “It is hard to tell just why a dog is gifted with human intelligence.” The New York Times complains outright: “His exploits in determining the levers that close the locks seems like asking almost too much of any animal.”)
The astonishing thing about watching Rin-Tin-Tin is that you begin to agree that this dog could act. He could do a lot more than roll over and play dead. He could listen at keyholes, hide under beds and inside grandfather clocks, tug open bolted doors, and track and sneak up on villains. He could operate simple machines, put on little shoes and take them off, and he could run and jump on cue. This is already more than some human stars could accomplish, but Rinty could also stir up emotions by looking happy or sad or worried or hurt. And Rin-Tin-Tin was one fine-looking animal. When he moved in on a costar, plopped his big head down in the lap, and googled up with his soft brown eyes, it was all over for the human performer. Rinty was a real scene stealer. So subtle were the nuances of his performance that one reviewer commented on how he managed to rehabilitate a hero who had fallen into slovenly habits by making him feel so ashamed of himself that he got up and gave the house a thorough cleaning. (How this was accomplished the reviewer did not make clear.) Variety wrote of his performance in Tracked in the Snow Country that he “shows himself to be as effective a canine actor as ever, shedding real tears when his master dies and portraying most effectively the mental torture of a poor animal pursued and hounded by those who had formerly loved him.”
Rinty’s evolution as a dog actor is traceable. In his earliest films, while still a novice, he performs a few clever tricks but often seems to be looking off-camera, obviously watching for instructions from his master. As his confidence and experience grow, he more and more appears to be on his own, motivated by the narrative and carrying out complex instructions regarding action as well as conveying specific emotions in his close-ups. (Observers on the set often pointed out that Rinty increasingly was able to play lengthy scenes and go through complicated routines without stopping and without direction.) For instance, in the 1924 The Lighthouse by the Sea, Rinty accomplishes some amazing feats. When his master is shackled and incapacitated by the villains, Rinty brings him matches and a big piece of cloth so he can clumsily set the fabric on fire. Rinty then gallops up to the top of the lighthouse and rekindles its light with this flame. However, although he is a “retired Red Cross veteran” and manages to best a bulldog rival (“The Yukon Killer”) in a fair fight, Rinty has less to do than the humans in this early movie. Rinty is heroic, but so are the leading man (William Collier, Jr.) and even the leading lady (Louise Fazenda). By 1927, however, Rinty is on a roll and needs very little human support. He is always introduced first, as in Hills of Kentucky, in which he plays “The Grey Ghost,” so called because of his “phantom-like raids and escapes.” In this excellent feature Rinty is the main show, and he rises to the occasion, giving a real performance. When he’s wounded and helped by a crippled child, he begins to feel domesticated and slowly indicates the change. When the child leads him toward his home, Rinty wants to come, but is shy, apprehensive, reluctant. He comes forward toward the boy, then draws back, then circles around, ducks and runs, then returns. He even has his own subjective point-of-view shots, and his thinking process is clearly established through cutting and narrative. He’s actually amazing. (“Doggie, I love you,” says the little boy, and no doubt the audience echoed the sentiment.)
Over the years of his stardom, his stunts grew more complicated and his screen time was stretched out. His introductory titles grew more and more flamboyant, as in Tracked by the Police (1927): “Loyal and true, with the heart of a lion and the soul of a child, that was Satan, Sentinel of the Desert.” The films themselves were also increasingly polished, as this same movie presents a complex overhead shot from which Rinty views the villain menacing the leading lady. (Poor Rinty is wounded, as he frequently is, and hiding in the attic. Unfortunately, he drips blood down onto the hand of the villain below, alerting him to his presence.)
Rinty’s most dramatic close-up takes place in Night Cry (1925), in which, with his ears drooping and sagging, he lets his eyes tear up with emotion for his big break-down-and-cry scene—an Oscar-worthy performance. Night Cry is Rinty’s Hamlet. Playing a faithful sheepdog suspected of killing lambs, he is shot and wounded by ranchers on the prowl for him. He limps home to his master—who has been ordered to kill him on sight because it’s “the law of the range”—and comes in expecting the little family of rancher, wife, and baby to help him. As he begs for their attention, they ignore him, trying to cope with their emotions, knowing he must be killed. Rinty goes all out, resting his chin on their supper table, moisture in his eyes, turning his head slowly from one to the other, pleading, looking deeply hurt, sad, and bewildered. (One can’t help feeling terrible for him.) Later, he redeems himself when the real killer, a giant condor that apparently has come north for the summer, carries off the baby and Rinty has to save her.
My favorite example of Rinty’s ingenuity is a scene in which, having tracked a band of villains across the desert, he shows up in an isolated town only to realize he’s the only dog around and is bound to be recognized. With a little help from the hero, Rinty goes into a general store, locates a beard, dons it, and emerges—well disguised as a kind of goat or a very weird-looking other dog. Rinty in disguise! (There is a stunning moment when he contemplates himself in the mirror in this getup, fleetingly looking depressed, as if to say, “Is this any way for a dog to make a living?”) A moment of high suspense comes when the beard accidentally drops off and he is recognized (a lynch mob takes out after him). In this same movie, he also puts on little boots, partly because he has a bum foot. This means that eventually he has to use his teeth to unlace them (in full close-up, so we can see he’s really doing it), because they hinder his climb up a slippery roof. Rin-Tin-Tin also spends a lot of time trying to alert the silly heroine to the fact that there’s a message for her written on a water canteen he has efficiently delivered to her. Instead, she drinks from it while holding it the wrong way so the villain can read the message intended for her. Rinty is clearly disgusted. (This film, by the way, is very definitely not a comedy. It’s called Clash of the Wolves, 1925.)
After a certain point, reviewers began to get really cranky about having to review dogs. After all, how were they supposed to evaluate these performances? To them, a dog was apparently just a dog. A sour note begins to creep in, and the sound of muttering can be heard. Writing about Tracked in the Snow Country, the New York Times reviewer sniffs that, oh, yes, Rinty’s feats are “no doubt very difficult” but “there are some who will wish they were impossible.” Later he adds with a touch of irony, “Let us, however, not be too fussy. Art is a democratic institution and if a dog has genius, by what canon shall self-expression be denied him?” Reviewers began to grapple with this issue. For instance, Variety’s review of the same film comments: “The most successful pictures featuring Rin-Tin-Tin, Strongheart, and other dog actors have not played up the canine side too strongly, but have introduced it merely as interwoven with a plot of human beings that holds a good deal of interest in itself. Tracked in the Snow Country makes the mistake of focusing the spotlight on its animal actors and on its star in particular, to the almost total exclusion of the men and women in the cast. The result seems to be a certain amount of monotony.” The public did not agree, loving the movie and wanting even more of Rinty. Variety made one excellent point: “Rin-Tin-Tin’s suffering and adventures are almost analogous to those undergone in countless films by Bill Hart and others of the school of martyred, silent, western heroes.”
By the end of 1927, reviews were suggesting that everyone might be getting a little tired of wonder mutts and longing instead for just an old-fashioned DOG. In praising Silverstreak, one reviewer pointed out that “the dog remains a dog, not a mind-reading, miracle-performing, semi-human quadruped. Toward the end [of the movie] the pup does seem to get a little clairvoyant, but not absurdly so as in some other woof-woof operas. At no time does Silverstreak indulge in those prolonged dog soliloquies.”
One of the dogs that reviewers most complained about in this regard was the luckless Ranger. His movie Outlaw Dog (1927) illustrated the worst of what everyone was beginning to find unacceptable. In this film, Ranger seems to be able to read, as he stops to peruse a sign offering a $5,000 reward for his own capture. He also has a remarkable grasp of English, as he clearly understands what he is supposed to do when told, “Go flag the Limited, and bring assistance. It’s up to you, Ranger!” (Ranger does indeed flag down the train, bring assistance, and save the payroll.) Outlaw Dog goes over the edge, whereas while Rin-Tin-Tin’s films gave him the human ability to think and plan, it was always somehow kept within a credible context. For instance, in Clash of the Wolves, Rinty climbs up a tree to hide so that his searchers will pass under him while he watches. When he tries to warn his two human friends, who are lovers, that her father is coming, he thumps the floor with his tail. (They ignore his signal, with dire results.) He knocks on a window with his paw to get the heroine’s attention, and knowing his master is dying of thirst out in the canyon, he galumphs into town and fills the canteen himself by using his teeth to open it and turn a spigot on. At the movie’s end, tribute is paid to him as a fellow “guy.” He and the hero double date—the hero and heroine, and Rinty and the lovely Nanette—out in a canoe on a romantic lake.
Rinty relaxes at home and takes baby for a stroll (photo credit 12.9)
Watching Rin-Tin-Tin perform his wonderful stunts and find his delightful plot solutions, it’s almost impossible not to start thinking of him as a person instead of a dog. This is what makes him stand out. Lassie was an animal who helped out her human owners, but Rin-Tin-Tin was a leading man, a semihuman character in charge of most of the thinking and all of the action. As one reviewer wrote about him in Dog of the Regiment: “It is impossible to really present naturalism in a picture featuring a dog of pretended human intelligence, but a good attempt has been made here. Rinty is supported by several skilled players … and his director and photographer did well.” Without realizing it, the reviewer had demoted two human beings—the director and photographer—and relegated the human actors to a status less important than the dog’s.
Eventually, of course, as with everything that is popular with the widest audience, the craze for dog stars waned. Even as early as 1925, the New York Times review for Rinty’s Behind the Lines had somewhat hopefully asked the question: “Is the public tiring of dog stars?” Ominous notes were struck even earlier for Rinty’s rival: “Unless they get better material for Strongheart [in The Love Master, 1924] the day of the dog star is going to be a short one in the future.” The craze lasted well into the end of the silent era, but as the fad began to die down, the fan magazines naturally jumped off the bandwagon. They began dropping their expensive photo layouts featuring dogs: dogs in their homes, dogs with their masters, dogs with other dogs, dogs with their dog dishes, dogs with their dog toys.
Rin-Tin-Tin prepares for his sound debut, with trainer Lee Duncan (photo credit 12.10)
Perhaps Rinty felt the pressure. Although Lee Duncan always claimed that Rinty came to work prepared, because “he knows he’s a movie star and therefore must do his duty as such,” others were not so generous. Many claimed that Rinty definitely began to display a star’s temperament in his last years. He was apparently not above attacking costars and directors if they irritated him, and he had to be handled carefully. He demanded so much attention, it was said, that he was actually cited by Duncan’s wife as the cause of her divorce. (Rinty as “other dog.”)
Ultimately, Rinty, like all the great silent film stars, had to face the coming of sound, making his debut in the 1929 musical review Show of Shows, which Warners used to introduce their “talking” players to the public. Rinty was given the important job of introducing the entire movie, which he did with a series of excellent barks, loud and sharp, with nothing effeminate or high and squeaky about them. His fans were not disappointed: this, after all, was pretty much how they imagined he would sound—like a dog. His bark recorded well, and he made the transition to sound without difficulty.
Off-screen, Rinty’s story turned out to be a happy one. He “married” his beautiful costar Nanette, and together they had four sons. After a long and successful career, Rinty, still active at age fourteen, suddenly collapsed and died on August 10, 1932. He had spent a happy afternoon playing with his lifelong friend, rescuer, and trainer, Lee Duncan. In one last playful leap into Duncan’s arms, Rinty suddenly became a dead weight, knocking Duncan to his knees. Across the street, Rinty’s glamorous neighbor, the platinum girl herself, Jean Harlow, saw what had happened and came running. Sobbing, she took Rinty into her arms, and as Jack Warner so colorfully described it in his autobiography, “She cradled the great furry head in her lap, and there he died.” What an exit!
After he was gone, other Rin-Tin-Tins took his place, although none were as great as the original who gave them all his name. There would be Rin-Tin-Tin serials, comic books, and even a television series, but there was never a dog to rival the real Rin-Tin-Tin, the greatest canine star of all time. His biggest competitor for long-lived stardom, Lassie, is still going strong in reruns, but Lassie was more of a franchise than a star, and several dogs played her over the years. (All of them were males, even though Lassie is always referred to as a female character, using “she” and “her.”) Lassie was always popular, and appeared in several charming movies as well as a long-running television series. However, she was never herself a top-ranked box office star the way Rin-Tin-Tin was, and her films, except for the original Lassie Come Home, mostly subordinated her overall role in the story to the stories of the humans themselves.
Rinty, wife Nanette, and the pups, en famille (photo credit 12.11)
To this day, moviegoers like to see dogs in movies, as well as other kinds of animals, with monkeys, chimps, and whales practically guaranteeing a box office hit. But no matter what animal stars have surfaced over the years, none are really as appealing as the amazing dog stars of the 1920s, the ones who played the leads and carried their films. To be able to shoot a movie outdoors and direct a dog across a real landscape in highly specific action sequences seemed an amazing, even heroic, thing to audiences back then. It made for great storytelling, and a satisfying kind of wishful thinking. After all, everyone had a dog. Maybe, if trouble came, Fido would save the family, or maybe—even better—Fido could learn to sit up and roll over, unlock a door, and rescue a drowning heroine. Then he could go out to Hollywood and become a big star, with his own fan mail, his own limousine—and his own fat paycheck.
Rin-Tin-Tin, Dog Star (photo credit 12.7)
