Rin Tin Tin or Rin-Tin-Tin (October 10, 1918 – August 10, 1932) was a male German Shepherd born in Flirey, France, that became an international star in motion pictures. He was rescued from a World War I battlefield by an American soldier, Lee Duncan, who nicknamed him "Rinty". Duncan trained Rin Tin Tin and obtained silent film work for the dog. Rin Tin Tin was an immediate box-office success and went on to appear in 27 Hollywood films, gaining worldwide fame. Along with the earlier canine film star Strongheart, Rin Tin Tin was responsible for greatly increasing the popularity of German Shepherd dogs as family pets. The immense profitability of his films contributed to the success of Warner Bros. studios and helped advance the career of Darryl F. Zanuck from screenwriter to producer and studio executive.
After the dog's only appearance in color (the 1929 musical revue The Show of Shows, in which he barks an introduction to a musical pageant), Warner Bros. dispensed with the services of both Rin Tin Tin and Lee Duncan. The studio was intent on promoting its "all-talking" stars, and silent-film personality Rin Tin Tin obviously could not speak. Undaunted, Duncan sought further film work for Rin Tin Tin and signed him with independent producer Nat Levine, who starred the dog in serials and feature films.
After Rin Tin Tin died in 1932, the name was given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio, and television. Rin Tin Tin Jr. appeared in some serialized films, but was not as talented as his father. Rin Tin Tin III, said to be Rin Tin Tin's grandson, but probably only distantly related, helped promote the military use of dogs during World War II. Rin Tin Tin III also appeared in a film with child actor Robert Blake in 1947.
Duncan groomed Rin Tin Tin IV for the 1950s television series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, produced by Bert Leonard. The dog performed poorly in a screen test, though, so was replaced in the TV show by trainer Frank Barnes's dogs, primarily one named Flame Jr.', called JR, with the public led to believe otherwise. The TV show Rin Tin Tin was nominated for a PATSY Award in both 1958 and 1959, but did not win.
After Duncan died in 1960, the screen property of Rin Tin Tin passed to his business partner Bert Leonard, who worked on further adaptations such as the 1988–1993 Canadian-made TV show Katts and Dog, which was called Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop in the US and Rintintin Junior in France. Following Leonard's death in 2006, his lawyer James Tierney made the 2007 children's film Finding Rin Tin Tin, an American–Bulgarian production based on Duncan's discovery of the dog in France. Meanwhile, a Rin Tin Tin memorabilia collection was being amassed by Texas resident Jannettia Propps Brodsgaard, who had purchased several direct descendant dogs from Duncan beginning with Rinty Tin Tin Brodsgaard in 1957. Brodsgaard bred the dogs to keep the bloodline. Brodsgaard's granddaughter, Daphne Hereford, continued to build on the tradition and bloodline of Rin Tin Tin from 1988 to 2011; she was the first to trademark the name Rin Tin Tin, in 1993, and she bought the domain names rintintin.com and rintintin.net to establish a website. Hereford opened a short-lived Rin Tin Tin museum in Latexo, Texas, and passed the tradition to her daughter, Dorothy Yanchak, in 2011. The dog Rin Tin Tin XII, owned by Yanchak, takes part in public events to represent the Rin Tin Tin legacy.
Following advances made by American forces during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Corporal Lee Duncan, an armorer of the U.S. Army Air Service, was sent forward on September 15, 1918, to the small French village of Flirey to see if there was a suitable flying field available 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 male and one female puppy. 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 (the soldiers were usually told that Rintintin and Nénette were lucky lovers who had survived a bombing attack, but the original dolls had been designed by Francisque Poulbot before the war in late 1913 to look like Paris street urchins. Contrary to linguistic clues and popular usage, Poulbot said that Rintintin was the girl doll.). Duncan sensed that Nanette was the more intelligent of the two puppies.
In July 1919, Duncan snuck 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 travelled to California by rail with his dogs. While Duncan was travelling 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, so would 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 fracture, 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 German Shepherd 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 working with a trained dog was much more convenient for filmmakers. 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".