Rin Tin Tin

Anyone who has read any of Susan Orlean's nonfiction knows that Susan Orlean is a big part of it, as it is in her biography Rin Tin Tin, the Life and the Legend. He was the movie dog who was a sensation in silent films and then, though not the same dog, of course, on television in the 1950s. "I knew that I loved the narrative of Rin Tin Tin because it contained so many stories within it; it was a tale of lost families, and of identity, and also of the way we live with animals; it was a story of luck, both good and bad, and the half turns that life takes all the time. It was a story of war as well as a story of amusement. It was an account of how we create heroes and what we want from them. It laid out, through the story of Rin Tin Tin, the whole range of devotion--to ideas and to a companion--as well as the pure, half-magical devotion an animal can have to a person."

Orlean traces her fascination to a plastic figure of Rin Tin Tin that her grandfather kept on his desk. She worked for ten years on the book, enduring repeated questions of why she would want to write a book about a dog. Of course, it's not just about a dog--the first dog himself dies about a third of the way through. It's a book about what the dog represented.

The story of Rin Tin Tin begins with Lee Duncan, a young man from California in France as a soldier during World War II. In a bombed out house he found two orphaned German shepherd puppies, and brought them home. One of them died, but the other showed extraordinary ability. He could jump over twelve-foot fences, and showed almost human emotions on his face. Duncan took him around Hollywood, and eventually he made several films over the course of the silent era, and became one of the biggest stars in the world. Duncan was himself an orphan, and many of the films (and later the TV show) would have Rinty being the companion of an orphan, a meme that Duncan was especially attached to.

Orlean describes this time period vividly--almost any tale of this golden age of Hollywood is bound to enthrall. She writes, "Hollywood in the 1920s could be a dark place. Narcotics were common; directors and producers were a motley group that included tramps, medicine-show barkers, lumberjacks, and swindlers." Rin Tin Tin basically saved Warner Brothers, becoming their biggest star--he earned eight times what their next-highest paid star made, and was considered a bargain at the price. According to Orlean, he received the most votes for the very first Oscar for Best Actor, but was ruled ineligible as the Academy didn't want to go down that road.

When he died, a nation mourned: "[t]he death of the first Rin Tin Tin had been so momentous that radio stations around the country interrupted programming to announce the news and then broadcast an hour-long tribute to the late, great dog. Rumors sprang up that Rin Tin Tin's last moments, like his life, were something extraordinary--that he had died like a star, cradled in the pale, glamorous arms of actress Jean Harlow." Orleans points out that that stars were much bigger than they are today (think of the death of Rudolph Valentino) as movie-going, absent other diversions such as television, was much more popular than it is now: "By the middle of the 1920s, the movie business had grown into one of the ten biggest industries in the United States. Almost 100 million movie tickets were sold each week, to a population of only 115 million."

Orlean discusses other dog stars of the era, such as Strongheart, whose dog house was an actual house. "Why were animals so popular in film, especially so early in the history of movies? It was partly a matter of convenience: animals were available, didn't need to be paid, and could be directed and manipulated easily. Additionally, people are fond of animals, enjoy looking at them, and experience little of the self-consciousness they might have when viewing other people--the 'otherness' of animals makes them easy to watch."

When sound came in, Rin Tin Tin's stock dropped. He made some very popular serials, but after the first dog's death, Junior was not as talented. The role became that of a sidekick rather than a star, and by the forties, when dogs were being used in the war effort, his movie career was over.

Duncan continued to try to drum up interest. He was an interesting man, but Orlean admits he was an elusive figure. He was married twice, and had a daughter, but appeared to love his dogs more than them. His daughter Carolyn told Orlean, "No, there was never any rivalry. The dogs always came first."

Eventually Duncan interested a young producer, Bert Leonard, into creating a television show. The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin was hugely popular and, along with Davy Crockett, capitalized on the new marketing trend of merchandising. Among the items you could buy were a cavalry mess kit, uniform, hat, bugle, gun, and holster, pocket knife, telescope, walkie-talkie, beanie, pennant, brass magic ring, button, lunch box, thermos, wallet, slippers, jigsaw puzzles, and comic books. There were deals with Cheerios and Nabisco Wheat Honeys for coupons for other products.

During this time there was a big rivalry with Lassie, the beautiful collie that always saved the day. Orlean points out how the dogs were different--Lassie was a character created by a writer, played by a succession of (male) collies. Rin Tin Tin was an actual dog that played different characters. I was also amused by Orlean's description of how the Lassie show evolved: "In later seasons of the show, Lassie lived with a different family, whose young son, Timmy, is far more disaster prone, and in time is threatened by a tiger in the woods, trapped in a mine, nearly drowned in quicksand, exposed to radiation, menaced by an escaped circus elephant, poisoned by nightshade berries, chased by a rabid dog, carried off in a balloon, struck by a hit-and-run driver, locked in a shed by an armed robber, and nearly killed by dynamite carried by an escaped lab chimpanzee."

When Duncan died in 1960. Leonard assumed the task of carrying on the legacy of Rin Tin Tin. After being shown in repeats until the early '60s, he manages to revive the show in the '70s, and always tried to get interest in Rin Tin Tin films. For years he litigated against a woman who had received puppies from Duncan and was breeding Rin Tin Tin dogs, and had tried to be the official Rin Tin Tin brand. As Orlean reveals, that woman and one point had insisted, "I am Rin Tin Tin."

It's an interesting story, and Orlean makes several interesting digressions. Most of them concern the changing attitude about people toward dogs. Until World War I, dogs were considered workers, and rarely were simply pets, except for the very rich. The idea of a dog living in the house as a companion was outlandish. That attitude changed with the decline of agriculture in the U.S., and due to popular movie animals. Rin Tin Tin and Strongheart, both German shepherds, increased breeding of that dog, which hadn't existed much before 1900. Orlean points out that a German shepherd at the 1913 Westminster Kennel Club show sold for $10,000, the equivalent of $215,000 today. They were so over-bred that they began showing hip and eye problems, which returned when the dog became popular during the 1950s TV show. But then, after the use of German shepherds as police dogs (think of Bull Connor using them on civil rights protesters) the breed declined in popularity.

Orlean also touches on the use of dogs during World War II (the Nazis had long trained them for war) and goes as far afield as to mention the beginnings of the navel orange business in southern California. If I have any criticism of this book it's that she too often tries to explain why people loved Rin Tin Tin and, by extension, dogs. She says this several different ways, and toward the end of the book writes, "The lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating. Rin Tin Tin did not need to be remembered in order to be happy; for him, it was always enough to have that instant when the sun was soft, when the ball was tossed and caught, when the beloved rubber doll was squeaked. Such a moment was complete in itself, pure and sufficient."