Rin Tin Tin and the Power of Story

On the synergistic relationship between the stories on the screen and the stories of our own making

I recently read a book on Hollywood dog ‘Rin Tin Tin’, an animal of serious star power who started out on the silent screen but who’s legacy actually spans both multiple generations and multiple dogs. It was a fascinating book, not only because the first dog’s story is actually — rescued from a bombed German kennel during World War I — but because of the potency of the dog’s story, over many years.

One of my favorite sections of the book considers the curious fact that throughout many on-screen portrayals the dog’s ‘real life’ name of Rin Tin Tin was almost always used. As the author says:

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 Rin 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.

“Always Rin Tin Tin.” It does not surprise me that generations of children latched on to the ‘idea’ of Rin Tin Tin dog, seeing attributes within the animal that they wished their own pets had while equally equipping the on-screen star with their own unique fantastical desires. There is a certain type of ‘fluid’ power within film and television that makes the ‘real’ more real while at the same time making that which is fictitious believable to its audience.

I have my own memories of this sort of behavior, and the synergistic relationship between the stories on the screen and the stories of my own making. In my case, the characters were never anything more than fiction, given a double-life only because of the toys I owned. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to know that the thing which I loved so much truly existed to some capacity in the world, as a little dog on a ranch somewhere in Riverdale, California.

The story describes countless stories requests from children (and adults) writing in to the dog’s owner Lee Duncan asking for a ‘Rin Tin Tin puppy’ of their own, which Duncan often granted (for a price). I wonder what it was like to actually realize that experience — though some were doubtless disappointed with the reality, I imagine that the majority were overjoyed.

Speaking about the final major iteration of the dog’s success (a television show called ‘The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin’ in the 1950s) the author brings up an interesting fact about the show itself.

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 Tins: 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.

This is a uniquely human ability, to attribute meaning to a thing with such fervor that the very idea transcends its initial form within reality. Perhaps if all of us were to reach back into our childhood memories, we would find an icon or character for which this is true.

That’s the power of story.