After the St. Mihiel Offensive on the Western Front in WWI, Corporal Lee Duncan was sent to the village of Flirey to see if it had space for an airfield. He found a bombed-out kennel with a mother German Shepherd and her five puppies. He kept a male and female and gave the others away. He named his Rin Tin Tin and Nanette. Those were the names of popular French dolls that were given to soldiers as lucky charms. Duncan brought them back to America and settled in Los Angeles. He taught Rin Tin Tin tricks and entered him in a dog show, but he was aggressive and barking at everyone and it was a disaster. To make things worse, after the show, Rin Tin Tin’s front paw was broken when a bundle of newspapers thrown from a truck hit him. He was in a cast and not back to normal until months later. When he had recovered, Duncan put him in another dog show. He won the leaping contest and his jump was filmed by a friend of Duncan. This gave Duncan the idea of putting his dog in movies. He asked around and found a movie-maker who was having trouble with a wolf in his movie. Rin Tin Tin replaced him and the rest is history. He got some more roles as wolves and then a starring role in “Where the North Begins”. He became Warner Brothers’ biggest star and saved the studio from bankruptcy. According to legend, Rin Tin Tin got the most votes for the Academy Award for Best Actor, so the Academy quickly made a rule that you had to be a human and revoted. He made Duncan a load of money, some of it from endorsement deals like Ken-L-Ration. The popularity of German Shepherds as pets boomed. He made 27 movies before he passed away in 1932. He got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rin_Tin_Tin
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