Puppy found in a bombed kennel

In 1918, Lee Duncan, a young American soldier from California, discovered a puppy in a kennel destroyed by bombings in France, according to the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. He adopted two puppies and named them Rin Tin Tin and Nanette, after the lucky charm dolls that French children gave to American soldiers, according to Voice of America.

Duncan’s childhood and bond with dogs

Duncan, who spent five years in an orphanage during his childhood, had a fondness for these animals, explains author Susan Orlean to NPR. He brought the two dogs back to the United States in 1919, but Nanette died quickly from pneumonia. Rin Tin Tin, nicknamed "Rinty," never left his side.

Rin Tin Tin’s first film appearance

In 1922, during a working dog competition at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a friend of Duncan, who had developed a slow-motion camera, filmed the dog jumping over an obstacle of approximately 3.6 meters. He then spent months approaching Hollywood studios with these images, and his persistence paid off: Rin Tin Tin got a small role as a sled dog in The Man from Hell's River.

Rin Tin Tin’s rise to fame

Duncan, however, had no idea. A few weeks after the competition, he simply received a check from the company Novagraph for these images. Major roles followed. The first, in Where the North Begins, released in 1923, would have earned more than its production cost. Jack Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros., attributed the dog's merit for having saved the studio from bankruptcy on more than one occasion, according to the Riverside Museum.

Rin Tin Tin as a cultural icon

At the height of his fame, Rin Tin Tin received 10,000 letters from fans per month. For Susan Orlean, he was much more than a dog performing tricks: a real actor, with a face "immensely expressive," as in the silent film Clash of the Wolves. After Rin Tin Tin's death in 1932, the news was treated as the disappearance of a cinema legend: a news bulletin interrupted programming, and a one-hour program was devoted to him nationally.

Legacy and continued influence

Duncan continued the name. In 1937, he bought a ranch in Riverside, California, named El Rancho Rin Tin Tin, where he bred and trained three additional generations of dogs. Rin Tin Tin III helped train approximately 5,000 dogs for the service during World War II. The series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin aired on ABC from 1954 to 1959. Duncan died the following year, after repeating that "there will always be a Rin Tin Tin." Today, Texas breeders continue the lineage, notes the Riverside Museum.