Rin Tin Tin, a German shepherd, made twenty-three silent films. His owner, Lee Duncan (right, in 1927), was devoted to him. Photographs by HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY

Rin Tin Tin was born on a battlefield in the Meuse Valley, in eastern France, in September, 1918. The exact date isn’t certain, but when Leland Duncan found the puppy, on September 15th, he was still blind and nursing, and was nearly bald. The Meuse Valley was a terrible place to be born that year. In most other circumstances, the valley—plush and undulating, checkered with dairy farms—would have been inviting, but it rolls to the German border, and in 1918 it was at the center of the First World War.

Lee Duncan was a country boy, a third-generation Californian. One of his grandmothers was a Cherokee, and one grandfather had come west with Brigham Young. The family ranched, farmed, scratched out some kind of living. Lee’s mother, Elizabeth, had married his father, Grant Duncan, when she was eighteen, in 1891. Lee was born in 1893, followed, three years later, by his sister, Marjorie. The next year, Grant took off and was never heard from again. Lee was a great keeper of notes and letters and memos and documents. In thousands of pages, which include a detailed memoir—a rough draft for the autobiography he planned to write and the movie he hoped would be made about his life—there is only one reference to his father, and even that is almost an aside.

After Grant abandoned Elizabeth, she was unable to care for her children. She left them in an orphanage in Oakland. Neither she nor the children knew if they would ever be reunited. It wasn’t until three years later that she would reclaim them.

In 1917, Duncan joined the Army. He was assigned to the 135th Aero Squadron, as a gunnery corporal, and was sent to the French front. His account of this time is soldierly and understated, but he vividly recalled the morning of September 15, 1918, when he was sent to inspect the ruins of a German encampment. “I came upon what might have been headquarters for some working dogs,” he wrote. As he strolled around, he saw a hellish image of slaughter: about a dozen dogs, killed by artillery shells. But hiding nearby was a starving, frantic German shepherd female and a litter of five puppies.

From the moment he found the dogs, Duncan considered himself a lucky man. He marvelled at the story, turning it over like a shiny stone, watching it catch the light. He thought about that luck when it came to naming the two puppies he eventually kept for himself—the prettiest ones, a male and a female. He called them Rin Tin Tin and Nanette, after the good-luck charms that were popular with soldiers in France—a pair of dolls, made of yarn or silk, named in honor of two young lovers who, it was said, had survived a bombing in a Paris railway station at the start of the war.

In May, 1919, after the Armistice, Duncan returned to the United States. It would have been easier to leave the “war orphans” behind, but, he later wrote, “I felt there was something about their lives that reminded me of my own life. They had crept right into a lonesome place in my life and had become a part of me.” Before they reached California, however, Nanette developed pneumonia and died, and Duncan got another German shepherd puppy, named Nanette II, to keep Rin Tin Tin company. After Duncan had been back home for a while in Los Angeles, where Elizabeth was then living, he began to feel restless and anxious. He experienced spasms, probably as a result of his war service, and he found it difficult to work. His one pleasure was to train Rinty, as he called him, to do tricks.

By then, Rinty, a rambunctious, bossy dog, was nearly full-grown. He had lost his puppy fluffiness; his coat was lustrous and dark, nearly black, with gold marbling on the legs and chin and chest. His tail was as bushy as a squirrel’s. He wasn’t overly tall or broad, his legs weren’t particularly muscular or long, but he was powerful and nimble, as light on his feet as a mountain goat. His ears were comically large, tulip-shaped, and set far apart on a wide skull. His face was more arresting than beautiful, his expression pitying and generous and a little sorrowful, as if he were viewing with charity and resignation the whole enterprise of living.

German shepherds were a relatively new breed, and very new in this country, but their popularity was growing quickly. Duncan got to know other shepherd fanciers, and helped found the Shepherd Dog Club of California. He decided to enter Rinty in a show at the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles. An acquaintance named Charley Jones asked if he could come along. He had just developed a type of slow-motion camera, and he wanted to try it out by filming Rinty.

Rin Tin Tin and a female shepherd named Marie were competing in a jump-off for first place in the “working dog” part of the show. The bar was set at eleven and a half feet. The judge and show officials gathered beside it for a close look. Marie took her turn, and flew up and over. Rin Tin Tin then squared off for his leap. “Charley Jones had his camera on Rinty as he made his jump and as he came down on the other side,” Duncan wrote. The dog had cleared the bar at almost twelve feet, sailing over the head of the judge and several others, and winning the competition.

Something about watching Rin Tin Tin being filmed stuck with Duncan. In the weeks that followed, he was seized by a desire to get the dog to Hollywood. “I was so excited over the motion picture idea that I found myself thinking of it night and day,” he wrote.

In 1922, Duncan married a wealthy socialite named Charlotte Anderson, who owned a stable and a champion horse called Nobleman. The couple had probably met at a dog or a horse show. Still, the marriage was curious. Duncan was good-looking and was always described as a likable man, but he spent all of his time with his dog. It’s hard to imagine him presenting an alluring package to a woman like Anderson, who was sophisticated, older than Duncan—he was twenty-eight, she was in her mid-thirties—and had been married before. It’s even harder to picture Duncan having a romantic life; he made no mention of it, or of Anderson, in his memoir.

Duncan’s devotion was to his dog. When he wasn’t training Rinty to follow direction—which he did for hours every day—he took him to Poverty Row, in Hollywood, where the less established studios were. The two of them walked up and down the street, knocking on doors, trying to interest someone in using Rinty in a film. This wasn’t as implausible as it might sound: in those years, bit players were often plucked from the crowds that gathered at the studio gates. Moreover, in 1921, a German shepherd named Strongheart had made a spectacular and profitable appearance in “The Silent Call.” Strongheart was the first German shepherd to star in a Hollywood film, and his grave, gallant manner and the still-novel look of German shepherds caused a sensation. The dogs were now as sought after in Hollywood as blond starlets. Duncan probably brushed past other young men with their own trained German shepherds, all inspired by Strongheart, as he went from door to door.