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he also became a character in books. One of the first, The Little Folks’ Story of Rin-Tin-Tin, was published in 1927. In contrast to his masculine movie persona, the book casts Rinty as a doting nanny left to care for four children while their parents are out of town. As the parents are preparing to leave, Mother instructs Rin Tin Tin to “be sure to feed Baby Carol, to see that she has her naps.” Rinty is also expected to cook for the kids; one of the chapters is titled “Rin Tin Tin Makes Sure That Lunch Is Satisfactory.” I often wonder what Rin Tin Tin was really like as a dog—not as a movie dog or a radio dog or a book dog or a television dog, but just as a dog. We know he liked to chase squirrels and skunks and foxes. He liked to run. He was muscular, not cuddly and soft. In his films, he looks so keyed up that he sometimes appears high-strung, but he was comfortable in crowds and in unfamiliar places. Maybe that intensity was just his attention to Lee and the anticipation of his next instructions. He wasn’t very friendly. The only person he was especially interested in was Lee. Von Stephanitz, who founded the breed, believed that German shepherds should bond only with their master; he considered excessive and promiscuous friendliness to be a weakness in a dog. Lee, taking this advice, raised Rin Tin Tin in the most cosseted fashion, rarely letting anyone else handle him. Actors who worked with Rin Tin Tin complained that he was mean and temperamental and that his only good quality was that he didn’t drink. He was rumored to have bitten Jack Warner as well as several of his costars. But cinematographers were impressed by his patience: because of his dark coat, he had to be lit carefully so he was visible in these black-and-white films, and often had to stand still for long stretches while the lights were set for scenes. His reputation for viciousness may have been nothing more than some contrarian Hollywood mythmaking. Maybe he played his fight scenes too enthusiastically (they do look realistic), and maybe he was not friendly, but a dog with a genuinely bad temper would be impossible to manage on a film set around a large crew or in the sorts of places that Rinty visited frequently, such as hospitals and orphanages. If Rin Tin Tin really was nasty, he was an even better actor than he was given credit for, since all of his movies included at least one scene in which he had to appear affectionate, toward either his master or his mate, or often with his puppies. Or was the dog who appeared affectionate a different dog? Was there more than one dog being presented as Rin Tin Tin? Lee stated many times over the years that Rin Tin Tin was the only dog to appear in his movies, and that no doubles were used. He was adamant about it. But in a 1965 interview with the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Jack Warner said, “I guess there is no harm now in revealing what was secret information for so many years around the lot. It had occurred to us, when we realized Rinty’s earning capacity, that our investment would be lost if anything happened to him. Therefore, with Duncan’s consent, we agreed to breed and train a kennel full of doubles that could be used if our hero were ill or injured or even killed in some of the dangerous stunts we planned. Eventually we had 18 Rin Tin Tins and we used them all. Each animal was a specialist. One was used for attack scenes, another was trained to jump twelve-foot walls, a third was a gentle house dog, and so on.” Was this true? It stands to reason that other dogs would have been used when Rin Tin Tin was tired, or had to do something dangerous—he was too valuable to risk injury—or to perform a
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while classical music played over his kennel’s sound system, or so the press releases from Warner Bros. claimed. His puppies had their own lavishly appointed kindergarten. The screens over the kennel windows were made of copper, or perhaps bronze. By some accounts, he wore a diamond collar. None of this is likely to be true; Lee loved the dog and made sure the kennel was comfortable, but he never lost the rancher’s view that a dog was a dog was a dog. At the same time, it is true that Rin Tin Tin’s name and phone number were listed in the Los Angeles phone book, and that he had an open invitation to the Warner Bros. commissary and was welcomed there like a star. He got his own salary, separate from Lee’s salary as his trainer, and he earned more than most of his costars; in Lighthouse by the Sea, for instance, he was paid $1,000 per week, while the lead human actor, William Collier Jr., was paid only $150. The press treated Rin Tin Tin like a celebrity, writing and gossiping about him, without irony, never acknowledging that he was, after all, just a dog. “Famous Movie Dog in City; Thrills Kiddies” was the headline in a Wisconsin newspaper during one of his publicity tours. The story went on: “Rin Tin Tin, wife, occupy a doggy suite at hotel but canine actors left babies in West because of heat.” A 1927 issue of Movie Magazine—which included a lineup of stories such as “When Will We Really Have Talking Movies?” “Are Actors People?” and “Is the World Tired of Children?”—ran a four-page feature called “The Rin- Tin-Tins,” about Rin Tin Tin and Nanette’s family life. “Nanette, like so many of the stars, is going to combine motherhood with a career,” the writer noted. “The puppies are coming along beautifully, so she will play with Rin-Tin-Tin again in ‘Trapped by the Police.’” Even Rin Tin Tin stand-ins were regarded as celebrities. The New York Times ran an obituary for Ginger, a German shepherd that performed under the name Lightning, with the headline, “Double for Rin Tin Tin Is Dead.” Lee enjoyed the fact that he could now live well, but he never seemed to want or welcome attention for himself. He was a true Hollywood spouse, happy for the access it gave him, and for the money he earned, but he was most comfortable in a somewhat secondary role as a helpmate to a star rather than a star himself. There was more for him to manage all the time, which is perhaps another reason why he seemed to have no social life. In fact, when he finally mentions in his memoir that he had “met” a girl, while shooting on location, it comes as almost a shock. Even after he and the girl, Eva Linden, got engaged, he was far more preoccupied with Rinty than with any other part of his life. They had what seemed to be endless publicity tours and movies and endorsement deals, and there was now even a Rin Tin Tin radio show, The Wonder Dog. Rinty did some of the barking on the show, but a human actor named Bob Barker did most of it. In truth, the dog’s connection to the show was more abstract than actual. He rarely even figured in the plots except at the very end; in that sense, he was already beginning his transformation from a real dog into an idea and a character. The radio plots were wild. One episode was “a thrilling story of a heroic dog and a milkman, who upset the carefully laid plans of a criminal breaking into the house of the manager of the milk company.” Another, called “A Trip to Mars,” was described as “a story in which an inventor and scientist and his party, who have been shot to Mars in a giant torpedo, are saved from death at the hands of giant men by the heroic action of the inventor’s faithful dog.” In 1926, Rin Tin Tin appeared on an experimental television station in New York City called W2XCR. Around that same time,
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