Notes from ‘Rin Tin Tin’

I have been stunned at which books turn out to be my favorite, over the year. Undoubtably, Susan Orlean’s epic biography of ‘Hollywood dog’ Rin Rin Rin is up there among the best I’ve read. I did not expect that when I picked up this book.

The story begins with Lee Duncan, owner of ‘Rinty’ and the one who believed in his ability more than anyone else:

He believed the dog was immortal. “There will always be a Rin Tin Tin,” Lee Duncan said, time and time again, to reporters, to visitors, to fan magazines, to neighbors, to family, to friends. At first this must have sounded absurd — just wishful thinking about the creature that had eased his loneliness and made him famous around the world. And yet, just as Lee believed, there has always been a Rin Tin Tin. The second Rin Tin Tin was not the talent his father was, but still, he was Rin Tin Tin, carrying on what the first dog had begun. After Rin Tin Tin Jr. there was Rin Tin Tin III, and then another Rin Tin Tin after him, and then another, and then another: there has always been another. And Rin Tin Tin has al-ways been more than a dog. He was an idea and an ideal — a hero who was also a friend, a fighter who was also a caretaker, a mute genius, a companionable loner. He was one dog and many dogs, a real animal and an invented character, a pet as well as an international celebrity. He was born in 1918 and he never died.

Rin Tin Tin was a Hollywood star who made it through multiple Hollywood scenes, because it was a legacy more than a singular dog. So how did it all happen? Wildly, it began on the battlefield of World War I. Perhaps any story about old Hollywood is also a story about ‘the war’, and the story of Rinty gave me new insight into both World Wars which the ‘greatest generation’ lived through. The author explains how important animals were in the first, saying:

It is estimated that 16 million animals were deployed in World War I. Their presence alongside the equipment of warfare suggests a surreal fusion of clumsy antiquity and vicious modernity. Many species were involved. Britain’s Imperial Camel Corps boasted thousands of ill-tempered camels. The cavalry used close to a million riding horses. Heavy draft horses pulled artillery and guns. Thousands of mules drew carts or packed loads. Hundreds of thousands of homing pigeons carried messages. Oxen dragged the heaviest equipment wagons. Dogs were everywhere. Germany, where the first military dog training school in the world was established in 1884, had 30,000 dogs on active duty, and the British and French armies had at least 20,000, of which 7,000 were pets donated by private citizens. (If a dog was deemed a washout in training, the British put a tag around its neck saying USELESS. Most of these dogs were taken out and shot.)

I had no idea that this was true, but it was a fact of life for previous generations. Lee Duncan was a soldier, and his journeys — or fate — led him to find a helpless Rin Tin Tin in the middle of the war:

Lee implies in his memoir that he went to Fluiry alone, although it is surprising that a soldier would be sent near the front lines unaccompanied. He might have been with a few other soldiers, or he might have traveled there with George Bryant, the captain of another squadron, whom Lee had come to know. It is hard — impossible, really — to know. By his description, he strolled around the field in Fluiry, taking stock of the place and looking for the battlefield mementos the troops most prized — small engine parts, called Bosch Magnetos, from the Germans’ tough Fokker planes. He noticed a long, low concrete building at the edge of the field. Because he was familiar with dogs, he knew immediately that the building was a kennel, probably built by the Germans for their canine troops

He stooped down and looked inside the building. When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a hellish image of slaughter: twenty or more dogs, killed by artillery shells. He stepped into the kennel and made his way among the bodies. They were clearly army dogs; one had a messenger-pigeon cage strapped to its back, and two of the pigeons were still alive. Lee released the pigeons. In the still-ness, he heard whimpering. He followed the sound to the back of the kennel. There, in the farthest corner of this shattered, deathly place, was a frantic German shepherd female with a litter of five puppies.

Duncan took the dog home, and as the war ended, began setting his sights for Hollywood. Having had connections with dogs in his childhood, training Rin Tin Tin came naturally and the dog was apparently a quite capable actor. The first ‘big break For Duncan and Rinty came in a black-and-white picture called ‘Clash of the Wolves’, which the book’s author watched and described thusly:

The film has its share of silliness — a scene in which Rinty wears a fake beard as a disguise to avoid being identified as Lobo, for example — and the human acting, to the modern eye, is stilted. But Clash of the Wolves made me understand why so many millions of people fell in love with Rin Tin Tin and were moved by the way he wordlessly embodied many of the questions and conflicts and chal-lenges that come with being alive.

As implied, ‘Clash of the Wolves’ was a hit, and the film marked the first of many Hollywood pictures to star the dog. As time carried on, the dog aged, and Orlean added this profound aside to a section describing Duncan and his dog touring the United States:

Lee was thirty-nine, still what we would consider a fairly young man, but for the dog — for all dogs — time dashes forward at a speed we humans can hardly perceive, until the day we realize that the puppy is no longer a puppy and has out-paced us. And yet a part of us lags behind, still seeing that old dog as a young dog even when he is standing at life’s finish line. On this trip to the Sierras, in their slow advance across the mountain range, Lee hiking beside the mule while Rin Tin Tin rested in his travel bed, the arc of their extraordinary time together was almost complete.

This is, in a way, heart-breaking to read. One can imagine Duncan seeing his dog through entirely different eyes than the world did, not wanting to believe that the end was waiting not far away…but the dog’s death did not mean that Rin Tin Tin was gone. Indeed, there was another, and another after that. Oddly, not only was the dog named Rin Tin Tin but the characters he portrayed were as well. Orleans notes this strange bit of the story, saying:

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.

Indeed, though I did not live through it, I do not have a hard time believing that a dog captured the hearts and imaginations of generations. Children especially must have loved what the dog both was and represented, and there are still ‘Rin Tin Tin dogs’ in the world to this day. Orleans concludes the book with this powerful passage:

For me, the narrative of Rin Tin Tin is extraordinary because it has lasted. He is that rare thing that endures when so much else rushes past; he is the repeating mark in our memory, the line that dips and rises without breaking. It is the continuity of an idea that makes life seem like it has a pattern that is wise and beautiful and indelible, one thing leading to the next; the individual beads of our lives, rather than scattering and spilling, are gathered up and strung along that endless line.

I believe there will always be a Rin Tin Tin because there will always be stories. He began as a story about surprise and wonder, a stroke of luck in a luckless time, and he became a fulfilled promise of perfect friendship; then he became a way to tell stories that soared for years. He made people feel complete. I had started my own story by thinking that Lee and Bert and Daphne were curious specimens for their stubborn devotion, and then I realized that I was no different, elbowing my way into the chorus of narrators to advance the tale that much further, to become a part of what “always” means.

“Always” is a powerful concept, one that we yearn for. The dog gave us an imperfect version of that out-of-time concept, of an almost-eternal representation happiness and companionship to children (and adults), again and again. Duncan is gone, and so is Rin Tin Tin, but for now, the legacy continues forward.