Rin Tin Tin

by Susan Orlean

  Occasionally, Lee was willing to barter. He once traded someone a male puppy for a pair of rare pheasants, and he frequently agreed to sell a puppy on credit. He was a soft touch for anyone passionate about Rin Tin Tin; he couldn’t help himself. In 1957, he got a letter from four kids, which began, “Dear Mr. Duncan, we would just love to have a dog like Rin Tin Tin. Dawn has been babysitting to get money for the dog. Chris sells butter so we can get this dog. Michael saves all his money and puts in every penny he had. Gail babysits and sells butter for the dog. We have saved up $22.55. If this is not enough please write and tell us how much we have to save.” Lee wrote back that if they could raise $25 by the end of the month, he would send them a puppy. A telegram, sent by their parents just after Thanksgiving, reported that the puppy had arrived safely, and that Dawn, Chris, Gail, and Michael were delighted.

  Lee’s files were filled with letters and telegrams from people who had failed to pay him for the puppy he’d sent them. It seemed as if everyone wanted a Rin Tin Tin puppy, but then they were struck with a hernia, they lost their job, their house was robbed, their spouse was in the hospital, they had terrible luck at the race track, or they hadn’t yet recovered from the Great Depression. Their misfortune only made their need for a Rin Tin Tin puppy more acute. A Missouri woman named Dorothy Bishop asked Lee for a puppy on a layaway plan. “With Mr. Bishop a bed-bound invalid,” she wrote, “and our boys all gone, and conditions changing all around us almost hourly . . . crime creeping slowly almost to our back door . . . my daughter and I do need a genuinely recognized and trained watchdog.” Lee sent one. One telegram from a delinquent owner read HAVE NOT MEANT TO DODGE DEAL ON THE WONDERFUL PUPPY JUST HAVE NOT HAD THE MONEY PERHAPS WE COULD WORK OUT A TIME PAYMENT. A woman in Texas with two Rin Tin Tin puppies wrote, “I will send you the money for the dog as soon as possible. You’ll just have to trust me I guess but I’m sure you do. . . . I will do my best to bring them up as a fine example of their famous father and a credit to you.”

  And still Lee couldn’t resist. He was so proud of his dogs, and so dedicated to seeing Rinty’s heritage preserved, and most of all, so moved each time he met someone who shared his devotion, that he saw nothing else beyond that.

  The number of German shepherds in the United States had been growing even before the television show went on the air. In 1947, 4,921 German shepherds were registered with the American Kennel Club. In 1954, before The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin had its impact, the number had more than tripled, to 17,400. By the time the show finished its prime-time run in 1959, German shepherd registrations with the AKC had grown to 33,735.

  German shepherds are known as “trotting dogs,” and they have a long, gliding gait. In a show ring, a German shepherd moving in a flying trot looks both powerful and weightless, as if it were on a cushion of air. To make that trot even more dynamic and long in reach, breeders started to look for dogs with hindquarters that were deeply angled, in a perpetual crouch, ready to spring forward. The line from the dogs’ shoulders to their hips was no longer horizontal; it was an almost forty-five-degree slope. The inbreeding to produce dogs with such an unnatural pose also produced dogs with a tendency toward hip dysplasia, cataracts, hemophilia, and aggressiveness. Other popular dogs that were bred to exaggerate their show qualities suffered the same deterioration.

  “Success, like a chicken bone, is bad for dogs,” began a February 1958 story in Life magazine called “Sad Degeneration of Our Dogs.” “The higher a dog rises in public favor, the more devastating its downfall. None has soared higher or fallen harder than the German shepherd.” Blaming “assembly-line reproduction,” the article included a chart of “the changing leaders in the canine derby, all heading for certain fall.”

  Lee, in a letter to the editor, wrote, “You speak of the degeneration of the Shepherd dog—and quite rightly.” He explained that his dogs were bred to work, not just to trot around looking showy. His dogs—and Frank Barnes’s dogs—were big-boned (with the exception of the first Rin Tin Tin, who was much slighter than his descendants). They were solid and square, without the extreme crouch that was getting attention at shows. Even so, the trend for German shepherds with extreme angulation continued. Some of them looked almost deformed, unable to stand up straight. Among German shepherd fanciers, a rift developed between those who preferred the dog to be rectangular and those who wanted an angled dog with the big trot. Meanwhile, people seemed to want German shepherds of whatever shape they could get, and their numbers kept growing every year.

  15.

  In 1955, after what was described as “several weeks of delicate negotiation,” Rin Tin Tin and Lassie, along with their costars, Lee Aaker and Tommy Rettig, appeared together on the cover of TV Guide. According to the TV Guide writer, the tension in the studio had everyone “verging on nervous prostration.” This might have been dramatic license, but the two camps were indeed wary of each other. At the time, The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin still had higher ratings than Lassie, but Bert was always concerned about slipping. He nagged Screen Gems anytime he noticed a dip in the ratings. When Lassie’s producers began to woo PTA groups around the country to ensure that the show was well liked by parents, Bert insisted they set up a series of counteroffensive screenings to push Rin Tin Tin ahead in their affections.

  Lee paid even more attention to any challenge by Lassie. He was not a combative man, but he became testy about Lassie. When Roy Rogers advertised in both Lassie and Rin Tin Tin comic books—both produced by Western Publishing—Lee was furious and told the head of the company to reject any such ads in the future. No actors, including extras, that appeared on The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin were allowed to work on Lassie. When a reporter for the Los Angeles Times asked if the Hooker brothers, the show’s regular stuntmen, ever worked with Lassie, Lee snapped, “The Hooker boys are under strict contract to be bitten exclusively by Rin Tin Tin.” Were Lee’s feelings about Lassie petty? Not if you consider how galling it would have been to him anytime he heard someone equate Rin Tin Tin, a real dog, with the pretty but imaginary Lassie. There was something deeper in Rin Tin Tin’s story that Lee and Bert and, later, Daphne feared would be misunderstood or underestimated, something about it that needed protection. The fact is, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin aren’t the same at all. Lassie was a popular character in a book that was then portrayed in film and on television by nine talented dog actors, beginning with Rudd Weatherwax’s dog Pal. Rin Tin Tin was a dog who had a real life and ended up becoming an actor.

  As is the case with human actors, the characters Rin Tin Tin played in films had other names: Scotty, Lobo, the Grey Ghost, the Wolf Dog, Buddy, King, and Satan, among many others. In some films, his character was called Rin Tin Tin or Rinty, even when the character and the story had nothing to do with his life; in other words, these were not cameos. It was as if Humphrey Bogart’s characters in his movies were named “Humphrey Bogart,” which of course never would have been the case. Why was he called “Rin Tin Tin” in those films? Dog names don’t seem hard to think of. His name was used because giving him a different name, even within the fictional world of a particular film, seemed to fritter away some of his star power. Rin Tin Tin was not just an actor, but also a kind of franchise, no matter what character he was playing. Whether he was playing a half-breed wild dog in Alaska, say, or a soldier dog in World War I or a borax miner’s companion dog somewhere out west, he was always, foremost, Rin Tin Tin. Using his name also made it seem that Rin Tin Tin existed within the film and outside of the film at the same time. Within the film, he was a cinematic character in some cinematic predicament, existing in some other place or time. Outside the film, he was Rin Tin Tin, the famous actor dog. Fusing those two manifestations together highlighted the artifice of film and the self-referential nature of art, the fluid relationship we have with those things we imagine and create. With television, Rin Tin Tin underwent another conceptual transformation. The show was not set in Rinty IV’s time period, nor in the time period of any of the other Rin Tin Tin
s: it was set in 1870, almost fifty years before the first Rin Tin Tin was born, in a place thousands of miles from where he was found, in circumstances he and his ancestors couldn’t ever have experienced. German shepherds as a breed didn’t even exist in 1870. The plotline of The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin was pure fiction. The character in the show named Rin Tin Tin was a creation, a type of character with a set of qualities that had come to be bundled up under the name “Rin Tin Tin”—steadfastness, bravery, toughness, heroism, and loyalty. And even though there was a real, living dog named Rin Tin Tin at the time the show was being made, that dog stayed behind on El Rancho Rin Tin Tin, while the dog in the show was played by another dog, JR, who just happened to be better at portraying on screen the things that Rin Tin Tin had come to mean.

  16.

  The cast of The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin often went on the road, performing a twenty-minute live show, which began with Lieutenant Masters—actor James Brown—singing in his big, warm baritone. After he finished, he introduced “the star of our show,” Rin Tin Tin, who entered the arena riding in a covered wagon with Lee Duncan and Frank Barnes. As they climbed out of the wagon the announcer shouted, “Here he is! The fourth generation of a family that has entertained America for over thirty years! And his owner, and discoverer of the original Rin Tin Tin, Mr. Lee Duncan, and his co-trainer, Mr. Frank Barnes!”

  The dog who made these appearances was almost certainly Barnes’s dog JR, rather than Rin Tin Tin IV, especially since it was Barnes, not Lee, who put the dog through his paces. Lee took the role of the elder statesman, introducing Barnes to the audience as “my associate of many years” and stepping aside. After the dog performed, actors dressed as cavalry entered and did some horseback maneuvers, followed by a skit involving Apache braves sneaking up on Rusty as he sat around a campfire. At the end, Rin Tin Tin dashed in to set things straight.

  The live show was very popular, selling out venues as large as Madison Square Garden. Screen Gems considered expanding the performance to two hours, although, as Ed Justin pointed out to Bert, “this would require us to hire some inexpensive cornball acts like hillbilly singers, etc.” The longer show was never developed. It might have been harder to find cornball acts than Justin had imagined, or more likely the actors objected. They were already starting to grumble about being underpaid. James Brown, in particular, complained about his salary, his scripts, and even the requirement that anytime he flew somewhere to perform the live show, he had to disembark from the airplane in his Lieutenant Masters uniform.

  Lee received 10 percent of the show’s profits and also earned money from Rin Tin Tin books. This gave him enough income to have built the new house and some additional margin of comfort, but he wasn’t wealthy. In 1958, when he received his first Social Security check, the newspaper in Riverside reported, “Although Duncan is anything but destitute, he said, ‘We can use the money.’”

  He felt tired much of the time but he kept working hard. In the first year the show was on the air, at LaHay’s prompting, he traveled to New York several times, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, What’s My Line? and the Today show. He also judged the Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin Name the Puppy Contest, which drew almost a million entries. “My first entry is ‘Nani Wahine I Leke Duncan von Rin Tin Tin,’” one of those entries read. “My second entry is ‘Nani Kama’liivahine von Rin Tin Tin.’ Would like to have your opinion on the choice.”

  He also often took on work that was surprising for someone of his stature and age. Even when his dog was once again the most famous dog in the world, when 2 million Rin Tin Tin comic books were sold each year, when 40 million Americans watched the dog on television, he agreed to appear at events like the Riverside Council Boy Scouts pet show, where he was asked to choose the pet “with the curliest tail; the one with the most expressive eyes; blackest nose; the noisiest pet; and the longest pet.”

  It seems preposterous, but he did it because he believed in the connection between a kid and a pet, and in the deep satisfaction of having your pet admired, and he never felt far away from his experience as a boy needing a pet to fill his heart.

  He still wanted to go out with the dog, just the two of them—to perform, to meet the people who loved the dog, and to tell his stories. Being with Rin Tin Tin was still the thing that made him happiest. He was content whether they were in front of an audience or traveling alone together, just enjoying each other’s companionship, as he had when the first Rin Tin Tin was an old dog and they had their last and most tender time together camping in the Sierras.

  Lee’s contract with Screen Gems stated that he always had the option to be part of any Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin personal appearances and live shows—but it apparently had not occurred to him that the studio might not want him appearing on his own. If a Scout troop or an orphanage asked Lee to come visit with Rinty, the studio insisted that Barnes, and perhaps another cast member as well, be present. This was expensive and sometimes difficult to coordinate with the show’s filming schedule. Lee resented this, and the studio grew impatient with him. Memos between studio executives began referring to Lee as “eccentric” and “troublesome at times.” His insistence on making these public appearances was “terribly embarrassing.”

  Screen Gems perceived any interference with its control of the show to be a nuisance. Lee—stubborn, single-minded, and old-fashioned—was becoming a nuisance. He was a dog man who had happened into Hollywood; the people at Screen Gems were Hollywood men who happened to be making a show about a dog. “Inasmuch as Lee Duncan is somewhat of an eccentric . . . and inasmuch as it is imperative that Bert maintain happy relationships with Duncan it is desirable that you get some action on this a.s.a.p.,” Ralph Cohn commanded in a studio memo, adding that he thought Lee’s publishing deals, which were in place before he signed on with Screen Gems and therefore out of the studio’s control, were “idiotic.”

  When the relationship between Lee and the studio seemed particularly strained, Screen Gems hurried some royalty payments to him and sent him an advance of $15,000 when he found himself with a deluge of bills for the house construction. (“This was a godsend,” Lee wrote to Bert, “and has eased our minds of worry considerably.”) The truth was, the studio didn’t need him and didn’t need his dog; the appeasement was just a courtesy. While he and the dog had served to inspire the idea of the show, it ran independent of him; his connection to it had become only symbolic.

  Bert, who cared about Lee and wanted to protect Lee’s dignity, tried his best to mediate. He tried to explain to Screen Gems how Lee saw things. But Bert was always most concerned about what was best for the show. In the end, he just seemed uncomfortable. “Lee Duncan is a very peculiar man,” he explained to Ralph Cohn. “Though he would hurt no one he lives by his own code.”

  Frank Barnes was probably in the most awkward position. He had Lee’s job, and his dogs had the job Lee had hoped his dog would have. Whether it was on his own or at Bert’s urging isn’t clear, but Barnes always took great care to pay Lee respect whenever possible. Barnes often wrote to Lee when he was on the road with JR, who was of course being presented to the public as Rin Tin Tin. One of those letters was sent from Houston. It was written on hotel stationery, milky white and thin as silk, with a drawing of the hotel filling the upper quarter of the page. It was easy to imagine Barnes hunched over a desk, with the dog asleep at his feet, trying to think of what to say, understanding that he was an instrument in Lee’s sense of loss, his fading significance. “Dear Lee, I have heard nothing but ‘Lee Duncan’ since we have been here,” the letter began. “I believe you are better known than the President.” After a few remarks about the weather, Barnes added one more sentence before signing off: “I can tell you that the name ‘Lee Duncan and Rin Tin Tin’ is nothing less than magic.”

  This was the first time I had ever spent so much time learning about one person’s life, and it was a new experience for me to fall so deeply into it, and strangest of all, to feel, as I did sometimes, that I knew
more about Lee than he might have known about himself, and more than I would have known if I had met him and talked to him and learned about him in that more usual way. Before I spent these hours in Bert’s storage room and Lee’s file boxes in Riverside, I had never realized how crackling and alive someone’s papers could be. I always assumed that archives would be as dull as an accountant’s ledger. But instead, they made me feel as though I had drilled my way inside a still-humming life. It was all there—the details and the ordinariness, the asides and incidentals, and even the misfires and failures that might otherwise have gone unmentioned. These are the things that make up an actual existence, the things a person wouldn’t think to share because they seemed inconsequential, or wouldn’t be willing to share because they seemed too intimate, but they are at the heart of who we are. I am sure that Lee, interviewed in person, would have been interesting but frustrating. He was a talker but not someone who was anxious to be revealed. He was desperate for you to know the legend that his life seemed to be, and he wanted you to know about his dogs, but really nothing more.

  I had been in a funk for a while because as I worked my way through his papers I could feel him receding. I knew the inevitable end of the story—this was 2010, after all, and Lee had been born in 1893, so it was no mystery that his story would soon be fulfilled. But over the year I had spent learning about him, he had come to life for me, and as I worked my way toward the end of his papers in Riverside, some of those afternoons felt very gray, even as the building was baking in the harsh desert sun.