Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Susan Orlean

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Biography, History, Animals

336 pages, published September 27, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

This book is a biography of Rin Tin Tin, the iconic star of movies and television, and his owner Lee Duncan and is a quintessentially Twentieth Century American tale.  Duncan allegedly found the first Rinty in the ruins of a bombed-out dog kennel in France during World War I, brought him to Los Angeles, trained him and got him into silent films.  By 1927, Rin Tin Tin had become Hollywood’s number one box-office star.  Susan Orlean’s book covers ninety years and explores the enduring bond between humans and how dogs were transformed from working farmhands to beloved family members as well as their role in the American entertainment industry and their use during war.

Quotes

“When Rin Tin Tin first became famous, most dogs in the world would not sit down when asked. Dogs performed duties: they herded sheep, they barked at strangers, they did what dogs do naturally, and people learned to interpret and make use of how they behaved. The idea of a dog’s being obedient for the sake of good manners was unheard of. When dogs lived outside, as they usually did on farms and ranches, the etiquette required of them was minimal. But by the 1930s, Americans were leaving farms and moving into urban and suburban areas, bringing dogs along as pets and sharing living quarters with them. At the time, the principles of behavior were still mostly a mystery — Ivan Pavlov’s explication of conditional reflexes, on which much training is based, wasn’t even published in an English translation until 1927. If dogs needed to be taught how to behave, people had to be trained to train their dogs. The idea that an ordinary person — not a dog professional — could train his own pet was a new idea, which is partly why Rin Tin Tin’s performances in movies and onstage were looked upon as extraordinary.”

 

“If only feelings and ideas and stories and history really could be contained in a block of marble—if only there could be a gathering up of permanence—how reassuring it would be, how comforting to think that something you loved could be held in place, moored and everlasting, rather than bobbing along on the slippery sea of reminiscence, where it could always drift out of reach.”

 

“Television wasn’t getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle…Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been.”

 

“It’s human nature to set a point in our minds when we feel triumphant and to measure everything that comes after it by how far we fall or rise from that point.”

My Take

Having enjoyed The Orchid Thief, a previous non-fiction effort from Susan Orlean, I was curious to see what she would do with the subject of Rin Tin Tin.  The result is an uneven book that suffers from its choice of subject matter.  Neither the dog nor his owner are all that interesting.  Going in, I really didn’t know much about Rin Tin Tin, so I did learn a lot about the movie and TV star and the entertainment era that he occupied.  If you have an interest in Rin Tin Tin, then this is the book for you.