The Postcard
A postcard, on the divided back of which is printed:
'Printed in Paris - La Pina'
The card was posted in the Nord Département of France on Monday the 23rd. December 1918 to:
Mademoiselle Renée Deuguin,
Bonningues-les-Calais,
Pas-de-Calais.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Joyeux Noêl et Bonne
Année de la part des
Geneviève et Lisbeth."
Rin Tin Tin
Nénette and Rintintin were the source of the name of the Hollywood film star dog Rin Tin Tin.
Rin Tin Tin (September 1918 – August 10, 1932) was a male German Shepherd dog born in Flirey, France, who became an international star in motion pictures.
He was rescued from a Great War battlefield by an American soldier, Lee Duncan, who nicknamed him "Rinty". Duncan trained Rin Tin Tin, and obtained silent film work for the dog.
Rin Tin Tin was an immediate box-office success, and went on to appear in 27 Hollywood films, gaining worldwide fame. Rin Tin Tin was responsible for greatly increasing the popularity of German Shepherd dogs as family pets.
The immense profitability of his films contributed to the success of Warner Bros. studios, and helped advance the career of Darryl F. Zanuck from screenwriter to producer and studio executive.
After Rin Tin Tin died in 1932, the name was given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio, and television. Rin Tin Tin Jr. appeared in some serialized films, but was not as talented as his father.
Rin Tin Tin III, said to be Rin Tin Tin's grandson, but probably only distantly related, helped promote the military use of dogs during World War II. Rin Tin Tin III also appeared in a film with child actor Robert Blake in 1947.
Duncan groomed Rin Tin Tin IV for the 1950's television series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, but the dog performed poorly in a screen test, and was replaced in the TV show by trainer Frank Barnes's dogs, primarily one named Flame Jr., called JR, with the public being led to believe otherwise.
Instead of shooting episodes, Rin Tin Tin IV stayed at home in Riverside, California. The TV show Rin Tin Tin was nominated for a PATSY Award in both 1958 and 1959, but did not win.
After Duncan died in 1960, the screen property of Rin Tin Tin passed to TV producer Herbert B. Leonard, who worked on further adaptations such as the 1988–1993 Canadian-made TV show Katts and Dog, which was called Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop in the US, and Rintintin Junior in France.
Following Leonard's death in 2006, his lawyer James Tierney made the 2007 children's film Finding Rin Tin Tin, an American–Bulgarian production based on Duncan's discovery of the dog in France.
Meanwhile, a Rin Tin Tin memorabilia collection was being amassed by Texas resident Jannettia Propps Brodsgaard, who had purchased several direct descendant dogs from Duncan, beginning with Rinty Tin Tin Brodsgaard in 1957.
Brodsgaard bred the dogs to keep the bloodline. Brodsgaard's granddaughter, Daphne Hereford, continued to build on the tradition and bloodline of Rin Tin Tin from 1988 to 2011; she was the first to trademark the name Rin Tin Tin.
Hereford also opened a short-lived Rin Tin Tin museum in Latexo, Texas. Hereford passed the tradition to her daughter, Dorothy Yanchak, in 2011. The current dog, Rin Tin Tin XII, owned by Yanchak, takes part in public events to represent the Rin Tin Tin legacy.
The Origins of Rin Tin Tin
Following advances made by American forces during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Corporal Lee Duncan, an armourer of the U.S. Army Air Service, was sent forward on the 15th. September 1918, to the small French village of Flirey to see if it would make a suitable flying field for his unit, the 135th. Aero Squadron.
The area had been subjected to aerial bombing and artillery fire, and Duncan found a severely damaged kennel which had once supplied the Imperial German Army with German Shepherd dogs. The only dogs left alive in the kennel were a starving mother with a litter of five nursing puppies, their eyes still shut because they were less than a week old. Duncan rescued the dogs, and brought them back to his unit.
When the puppies were weaned, he gave the mother to an officer and three of the litter to other soldiers, but he kept one puppy of each sex. He felt that these two dogs were symbols of his good luck.
He dubbed them Rin Tin Tin and Nanette after a pair of good luck charms called Rintintin and Nénette that French children often gave to the American soldiers. The soldiers were told that Rintintin and Nénette were lucky lovers who had survived a bombing attack, but the original dolls had been designed by Francisque Poulbot before the war in late 1913 to look like Paris street urchins. Contrary to linguistic clues and popular usage, Poulbot said that Rintintin was the girl doll.
Duncan sensed that Nanette was the more intelligent of the two puppies.
In July 1919, Duncan sneaked the dogs aboard a ship taking him back to the US at the end of the war. When he got to Long Island, New York, for re-entry processing, he put his dogs in the care of a Hempstead breeder named Mrs. Leo Wanner, who trained police dogs.
Nanette was diagnosed with pneumonia; as a replacement, the breeder gave Duncan another female German Shepherd puppy. Duncan travelled to California by rail with his dogs. While Duncan was travelling by train, Nanette died in Hempstead. As a memorial, Duncan named his new puppy Nanette II, but he called her Nanette.
Duncan, Rin Tin Tin, and Nanette II settled at his home in Los Angeles. Rin Tin Tin was a dark sable colour, and had very dark eyes. Nanette II was much lighter in colour.
An athletic silent film actor named Eugene Pallette was one of Duncan's friends. The two men enjoyed the outdoors; they took the dogs to the Sierras, where Pallette liked to hunt, while Duncan taught Rin Tin Tin various tricks. Duncan thought that his dog might win a few awards at dog shows and thus be a valuable source of puppies bred with Nanette for sale.
In 1922, Duncan was a founding member of the Shepherd Dog Club of California, based in Los Angeles. At the club's first show, Rin Tin Tin showed his agility, but also demonstrated an aggressive temper, growling, barking, and snapping.
It was a very poor performance, but the worst moment came afterward when Duncan was walking home. A heavy bundle of newspapers was thrown from a delivery truck and landed on the dog, breaking his left front leg. Duncan had the injured limb set in plaster, and he nursed the dog back to health for nine months.
Ten months after the break, the leg was healed and Rin Tin Tin was entered in a show for German Shepherd dogs in Los Angeles. Rin Tin Tin had learned to leap great heights.
At the dog show while making a winning leap, he was filmed by Duncan's acquaintance Charley Jones, who had just developed a slow-motion camera. Seeing his dog being filmed, Duncan became convinced Rin Tin Tin could become the next Strongheart, a successful film dog that lived in his own full-sized stucco bungalow with its own street address in the Hollywood Hills, separate from the mansion of his owners, who lived a street away next to Roy Rogers.
Duncan later wrote:
"I was so excited over the film idea
that I found myself thinking of it night
and day."
The Film Career of Rin Tin Tin
Duncan walked his dog up and down Poverty Row, talking to anyone in a position to put Rin Tin Tin in film, however modest the role.
The dog's first break came when he was asked to replace a camera-shy wolf in The Man from Hell's River (1922) featuring Wallace Beery. The wolf was not performing properly for the director, but under the guidance of Duncan's voice commands, Rin Tin Tin was very easy to work with. When the film was completed, the dog was billed as "Rin Tan".
Rin Tin Tin would be cast as a wolf or wolf-hybrid many times in his career, because it was much more convenient for filmmakers to work with a trained dog.
In another 1922 film titled My Dad, Rin Tin Tin picked up a small part as a household dog. The credits read:
"Rin Tin Tin – Played by himself".
Rin Tin Tin's first starring role was in Where the North Begins (1923), in which he played alongside silent screen actress Claire Adams. This film was a huge success, and has often been credited with saving Warner Bros. from bankruptcy.
It was followed by 24 more screen appearances. Each of these films was very popular, making such a profit for Warner Bros. that Rin Tin Tin was called "the mortgage lifter" by studio insiders.
A young screenwriter named Darryl F. Zanuck was involved in creating stories for Rin Tin Tin; the success of the films raised him to the position of film producer. In New York City, Mayor Jimmy Walker gave Rin Tin Tin a key to the city.
Rin Tin Tin was much sought after, and was signed for endorsement deals. Ken-L Ration, Ken-L-Biskit, and Pup-E-Crumbles all featured him in their advertisements. Warner Bros. fielded fan letters by the thousands, sending back a glossy portrait signed with a paw print and a message written by Duncan:
"Most faithfully, Rin Tin Tin."
In the 1920's, Rin Tin Tin's success for Warner Bros. inspired several imitations from other studios looking to cash in on his popularity, notably RKO's Ace the Wonder Dog, also a German Shepherd dog.
Around the world, Rin Tin Tin was extremely popular because as a dog he was equally well understood by all viewers. At the time, silent films were easily adapted for various countries by simply changing the language of the intertitles. Rin Tin Tin's films were widely distributed.
Film historian Jan-Christopher Horak wrote that by 1927, Rin Tin Tin was the most popular actor with the very sophisticated film audience in Berlin. One fan wrote:
"He is a human dog, "human in
the real big sense of the word."
A Hollywood legend holds that at the first-ever Academy Awards competition in 1929, Rin Tin Tin was voted Best Actor, but that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, wishing to appear more serious and thus determined to have a human actor win the award, removed Rin Tin Tin as a choice and re-ran the vote, leading to German actor Emil Jannings winning the award.
Author Susan Orlean stated this story as fact in her 2011 book Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. However, former Academy head Bruce Davis has written that the 1928 ballots, kept in storage at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library, show a complete absence of votes for Rin Tin Tin.
Davis called the story an urban legend that probably originated in a joke ballot circulated that year by Zanuck, who wanted to mock the concept of the Academy Awards.
Although primarily a star of silent films, Rin Tin Tin did appear in four sound features, including the 12-part Mascot Studios chapter-play The Lightning Warrior (1931), co-starring with Frankie Darro. In these films, vocal commands would have been picked up by the microphones, so Duncan likely guided Rin Tin Tin by hand signals.
Rin Tin Tin and the rest of the crew filmed much of the outdoor action footage for The Lightning Warrior on the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, known for its huge sandstone boulders and widely recognized as the most heavily filmed outdoor shooting location in the history of the movies.
Rin Tin Tin and Nanette II produced at least 48 puppies; Duncan kept two of them, selling the rest or giving them as gifts. Greta Garbo, W. K. Kellogg, and Jean Harlow each owned one of Rin Tin Tin's descendants.
The Death of Rin Tin Tin
On the 10th. August 1932, Rin Tin Tin died at Duncan's home on Club View Drive in Los Angeles. Duncan wrote about the death in his unpublished memoir: He heard Rin Tin Tin bark in a peculiar fashion, so he went to see what was wrong. He found the dog lying on the ground, moments away from death.
In the United States, Rin Tin Tin's death set off a national response. Regular programming was interrupted by a news bulletin. An hour-long program about Rin Tin Tin played the next day.
Newspapers across the nation carried obituaries. Magazine articles were written about his life, and a special Movietone News feature was shown to movie audiences.
In the press, aspects of the death were fabricated in various ways, such as Rin Tin Tin dying on the set of the film Pride of the Legion (where Rin Tin Tin Jr. was working), dying at night, or dying at home on the front lawn in the arms of actress Jean Harlow, who lived on the same street.
In a private ceremony, Duncan buried Rin Tin Tin in a bronze casket in his own backyard with a plain wooden cross to mark the location. Duncan was suffering the financial effects of the Great Depression and could not afford a finer burial, nor even his own expensive house.
He sold his house, and quietly arranged to have the dog's body returned to his country of birth for reburial in the Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques, the pet cemetery in the Parisian suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine.
In a ceremony on the 8th. February 1960, Rin Tin Tin was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1627 Vine Street.
Henry W. Sawyer
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 23rd. December 1918 marked the birth in Philadelphia of the American lawyer and activist Henry W. Sawyer
Henry is best known for his civil liberties cases Abington School District v. Schempp, and Lemon v. Kurtzman. He died in 1999.
Thérèse Schwartze
The day also marked the death in Amsterdam of Thérèse Schwartze.
Thérèse, who was born in Amsterdam in 1851, was a Dutch painter known for her portrait work, including Queen Wilhelmina.
On the 22nd. July 1918 her husband, Anton van Duyl, died. As Schwartze was in bad health at that time (and tried to hide this), the death of her husband was a blow that she could not overcome easily. She died in Amsterdam on the 23rd. December 1918 from a sudden illness.
Schwartze was laid to rest at Zorgvlied cemetery in Amsterdam. Later she was reburied at the Nieuwe Ooster cemetery in Amsterdam, where her sister created a memorial to her, modelled on her death mask, which is now considered a rijksmonument.
