Susan Orlean, whose The Orchid Thief found the enormously able writer examining an obsession, is at it again with a nearly 100-year look at Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Be advised that any fond memories of a dog will make it difficult for the reader to put down the unlikely tale of a man who masterminded the creation of what was billboarded as America's Greatest Movie Dog.
The obsession in Rin Tin Tin is that of the dog's owner and trainer, Lee Duncan, who found the celebrity canine on a World War I battlefield in France. Duncan's extreme devotion to his dog is similar to John Laroche's intense attachment in The Orchid Thief.
Orlean weaves three story developments in telling the compelling tale of a dog who achieved public recognition that grew into the cult of Rin Tin Tin. There's the story of Duncan's bonding with and training of the dog; the Hollywood part of the story as Rinty (as intimates called him) achieving greatness in silent pictures; then the super dog's TV career when producer Herbert B. Leonard re-introduced him to audiences. With an eye for rich detail, Orlean explains how Rinty (there were a great many over the years totalling a singular icon) fit in with the transformation of dogs from work animals to pets. "Keeping an animal in the house as a companion is so common now," she writes, "that it's easy to forget how fundamentally odd it is, and what a leap it must have been to share living quarters with a nonhuman life form just to have their company."
Abandoned first by his father, then his mother when he was six, Duncan lived in an orphanage three years before his mother retrieved him and an older sister. Lacking the ability to make normal human interaction, Duncan became dependent upon animals for lasting bonds. His single-mindedness in creating a legendary super dog and the author's pursuit of a sprawling story are the book's recurring themes.
It was in a shelled kennel in eastern France that Duncan stumbled upon a newborn litter of German shepherd pups. In an unfinished memoir, Duncan wrote that Rinty "crept right into a lonesome place in my life and...became a part of me." Although the dog was found in September, 1918, Rinty's greatness didn't become obvious until he was filmed in slow motion by a friend of Duncan's. The footage of Rinty jumping over an obstacle nearly 12 feet high wound up on newsreels resulting in a Warner Bros. contract.
Rin Tin Tin's enormous silent film success was in 23 productions that saved the studio from bankruptcy on a regular basis. He was then the most famous dog in the world; at the height of his popularity, he was filmdom's number one box office star receiving 50,000 fan letters a month. Duncan became very wealthy.
"A dog was at no disadvantage," writes Orlean, "to a human in silent film; both species had the same set of tools for telling a story--action, expression, gesture. In fact, an animal acting without words looked natural and didn't fall into pantomime and exaggeration the way human actors in silent film often did."
The original Rin Tin Tin died in 1932 and the Hollywood rumor mill had the dog dying in the arms of handy Jean Harlow who was living across the street.
Talkies were tough on Rinty whose contract was terminated shortly before the dog's death. It wasn't until 1954 that Leonard brought him back in the huge TV success, "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin." The show played in more than 70 countries and became so popular in the U.S. that nearly one-third of the television sets in the country were tuned to the show.
Leonard is one of many odd characters who wander in and out of Orlean's impressively researched story. Caring nothing about dogs, Leonard sought out Duncan who held TV in low esteem. It was Leonard, whose other tube triumphs include "Route 66" and "Naked City," who "antagonized everyone he ever knew," according to one insider as Orlean pieces together who did what to whom in those early days of TV production. Some of Leonard's more significant battles are with Ralph Cohn, founder of Screen Gems and nephew of the outrageous Harry Cohn, head of parent company Columbia Pictures. Leonard, whose extravagances included four wives and a gambling addiction (at least one studio assumed his losses contractually), wound up sleeping in cars and homes of friends. Orlean has to have so much Herb Leonard material that she must be tempted to crank out a book about him. On the other hand, Sammy Glick in Hollywood has already been done.
One of the particularly insightful passages of Orlean's writing occurs near the book's end; more than anything else, it explains why she was so drawn to the dog:.."I was used to the idea that everything connected to Rin Tin Tin was full of happenstance and charm, lightning strikes of fortune and hairpin turns of luck; from a standstill, life around Rin Tin Tin always seemed to accelerate out of the depths of disappointment to a new place filled with possibility. Just like that, wonderful things happened to someone who otherwise would have been luckless, friendless, abandoned. This is what the story of Rin Tin had become in my mind--a myth--and why it had drawn me in, as it had drawn in all these other people. The facts were all interesting, but they were mere armature; the rest was like an ancient legend, wondrous, lifting everything around it, as buoyant as a dream."
Orlean, a Clevelander and graduate of the University of Michigan, has been a New Yorker magazine writer since 1992. The Orchid Thief, one of several books, formed the basis of a film script by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. The film, Adaptation, portrayed Orlean (played by Meryl Streep) as Laroche's lover and partner in a drug production operation in which orchids were transformed into a fictional psychoactive substance.
Now, go get the book if you haven't already. Susan Orlean's pursuit of detail is extraordinary, her insight also at that level. She is simply one of our very best writers.
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