She says Darryl Zanuck worked as a gag man for Charlie Chaplin (wrong) and that Lee Duncan man aged to get in the door at Warner Bros. Discussing Rinty’s canine competitor Strongheart and his owner, Jane Murfin, she describes the famous screenwriter’s impressive estate on a hill overlooking Hollywood and says her nearest neighbor was Roy Rogers-but that was decades after the period she’s describing. This muddling of the time frame runs throughout Orleans’ text. Orlean reports that in the wake of Rinty’s first big success When the North Begins, Duncan gave Rin Tin Tin puppies to such stars as Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow-neither of whom was in Hollywood in 1923. The animal who later starred on the TV show was no relation to the silent-movie dog.)Īll of this makes for great reading, but film buffs will have many occasions to wince along the way. wasn’t very talented, and at some point Duncan apparently raised an unrelated shepherd to take the place of his natural successor. Ultimately, Orlean ponders why she has spent so much of her life in the thrall of this animal who became more of a symbol than a reality. Leonard, who created the TV series and spent the rest of his life trying to revive it, and a dedicated dog breeder and trainer in Texas who used one of Rin Tin Tin’s puppies to claim ownership of the famous star-were also eccentrics and iconoclasts…not to mention the oddball impostor who spent some years claiming to be Rinty’s TV costar Lee Aaker. As it turns out, the people who later became associated with the dog-producer Herbert B. In fact, the longtime New Yorker writer (whose book The Orchid Thief inspired the movie Adaptation) has spent ten years researching this biography.ĭuncan was a loner who related better to Rinty than he did to people, including his own family. Orlean paints an equally colorful portrait, aided in part by access to Duncan’s personal archive and unfinished memoir. Another gifted writer, Glen David Gold, told a fictionalized version of how Lee Duncan-who had failed in his other pursuits-came upon the abandoned German shepherd toward the end of World War One in his wonderful novel Sunnyside two years ago.

Rin tin tin by susan orlean