During the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in the waning stages of World War One, an Army corporal, Lee Duncan, scouted a forward position that had previously been in German hands. He came upon a bombed out dog kennel serving as a supply base of police dogs for the German Army. Only a mother with five nursing puppies remained alive. Duncan scooped them all up and returned behind American lines. He gave away all the German Shepherds, except for two. One died en route back to the states, but the other, a male, survived. His name: Rin Tin Tin.
Duncan, living in Los Angeles, had trained Rin Tin Tin, which means good luck in French, and realized he had something special in the dog. He approached several movie studios to hire the Shepherd before he got his chance to replace a camera-shy wolf in 1922's 'The Man from Hell's River.' Rin Tin Tin received a handful of small parts, mostly playing wolf roles, when the newly-formed Warner Brothers Studio hired him for the dog's first lead role in July 1923's "Where The North Begins."
The four Warner Brothers, Harry, Sam, Albert and Jack, years earlier had formed a successful film distribution company during the nickelodean days and dabbled in movie production beginning with their 1918 'My Four Years in Germany.' They decided to go full bore in the movie production business on the basis of a loan from Harry's banker friend, incorporating as Warner Brothers Pictures on April 4, 1923. The newly-built studio and its executives, impressed by a story outlined by Duncan, decided to invest a staggering $100,000 to produce the movie with a dog as the lead character. It's failure would mean bankruptcy for the brothers.
Two directors were eventually assigned with editor Lewis Milestone tearing his hair out trying to make semblance of miles of shot footage filmed in Canada. Studio execs were unhappy with the finished product, but two preview screenings proved the audiences loved it. "Where The North Begins" became an immense money maker for Warner Brothers and saved them from fiscal ruin. Warner immediately signed Rin Tin Tin to a $1,000 a week contract, making him the studio's most highly paid star.
Young screenwriter Darryl F. Zanuck, who assisted in the script, received a big boast from the "Where The North Begins" success. He went on to become one of Hollywood's most powerful producers and studio head, earning three Oscars for Best Picture, including 1941's 'How Green Was My Valley,' 1947's 'Gentleman's Agreement,' and 1950's "All About Eve.' One popular rumor allegedly begun by Zanuck, who didn't think awarding trophies in the movie business was such a good idea, occurred during the balloting of the Academy Awards' first ceremony in 1929. Word got around that Rin Tin Tin was voted Best Actor and the organization required a second round of voting to eliminate the canine, a fact still in dispute today.
For Rin Tin Tin, "Where The North Begins' jump-started a round of commercial endorsements, the popularization of German Shepherds as a pet dog and a 27-film movie career for the original Rin Tin Tin before he died in August 1932. His remains were shipped to his native country, France, where he's buried in a pet cemetery outside Paris. Several offsprings of Rin Tin Tin have carried on with the name through the following years, but many claim they'll only be one Rin Tin Tin.
