After the St. Mihiel Offensive on the Western Front in World War 1, Corporal Lee Duncan was sent to the village of Flirey to see if it had space for an airfield. On Sept. 15, 1918, he found a bombed-out kennel with a mother German Shepherd and her five puppies. He kept a male and female and gave the others away. He named his Rin Tin Tin and Nanette. Those were the names of popular French dolls that were given to soldiers by French children as lucky charms. Duncan brought them back to America and settled in Los Angeles. He taught Rin Tin Tin tricks and rewarded him with a squeaky toy. Duncan entered him in a dog show, but “Rinty” was aggressive and barked at everyone and it was a disaster. To make things worse, after the show, Rin Tin Tin’s front paw was broken when a bundle of newspapers thrown from a truck hit him. He was in a cast and not back to normal until months later. When he had recovered, Duncan put him in competitive dog show. He won the leaping contest which involved getting over an increasingly high wall. Rinty won by scaling a 11 foot, 9 inch wall. His winning jump was filmed by a friend of Duncan. This gave Duncan the idea of putting his dog in movies. He asked around and found a movie-maker who was having trouble with a wolf in his movie. Rin Tin Tin replaced the wolf and the rest is history. He got some more roles as wolves and then a starring role in “Where the North Begins”. Duncan had written the script for the movie. He became Warner Brothers’ biggest star and saved the studio from bankruptcy. Rinty was paid $1,000 per week and given a collar with diamonds on it. When he wasn’t filming, Duncan took Rinty around the country as part of vaudeville acts. He liked to take Rinty to animal shelters and orphanages. According to legend, Rin Tin Tin got the most votes for the Academy Award for Best Actor, so the Academy quickly made a rule that you had to be a human and the members revoted. He made Duncan a load of money, some of it from endorsement deals like Ken-L-Ration dog food. Because of Rin Tin Tin the popularity of German Shepherds as pets boomed. He made 27 movies. The last one was “Rough Waters” in 1930. By that time talking motion pictures had made dog films less popular. He passed away from old age in 1932. He got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rin_Tin_Tin
https://americacomesalive.com/the-story-of-rin-tin-tin-2/
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