Rin Tin Tin, the Life and the Legend

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Can a dog deserve an Oscar? At the first Academy Awards, presented in 1929, the charismatic German shepherd who fought off gangs of villains in movies like “Clash of the Wolves” and “Jaws of Steel” won the vote count for best actor, but the Academy blinked, recalculated and gave the honor instead to Emil Jannings. Not that the public would have necessarily protested an Oscar for Rin Tin Tin. “He is a human dog,” one fan wrote to his trainer, “human in the real big sense of the word.”

As for Jannings and his colleagues, there may have been some doubt.

“Big” is certainly the word for the sweeping story of the soulful German shepherd who was born on the battlefields of World War I, immigrated to America, conquered Hollywood, struggled in the transition to the talkies, helped mobilize thousands of dog volunteers against Hitler and himself emerged victorious as the perfect family-friendly icon of cold war gunslinging, thanks to the new medium of television. Whether he was rescuing a damsel in distress with a crane or herding bad guys on the frontier, Rin Tin Tin “played out the founding principles of the nation,” Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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