On September 15 1918, the final day of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Corporal Leland Duncan of the US Army Air Service was in Fluiry, a bombed-out village in north-eastern France close to the German border.

The joint American and French assault had begun three days earlier and successfully broken through the German line thanks in large part to the use of American planes. Corporal Duncan, known to his friends as Lee, was dispatched to Fluiry to determine the possibility of establishing an airfield there. In the memoir he would write two decades later but never publish, he recalls going to the village alone.

It no longer matters whether he really did, or whether he found a useable landing strip. What does matter is that in a settlement only recently vacated by retreating German soldiers he found something more important – a half-demolished concrete bunker housing the bodies of 20 or so German Shepherds, the German army’s dog of choice.

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Duncan, a California farm boy, adored dogs. From the time he disembarked with his platoon in Glasgow in 1917, to the time he left England for France some months later, he had tried to buy one. There were none to be had. By then many family pets had been donated to the war effort where they were used on the frontline transporting messages, as “mercy dogs” on battlefields carrying bandages and water, or as so-called “demolition wolves”. Strapped with explosives, these poor creatures were set loose in enemy territory to act as four-legged suicide bombers, albeit unwitting ones.

But now, as Duncan wandered through the carnage, he realised not all the dogs were dead – in a far corner of the building was a nursing mother with five blind puppies a day or so old. He scooped them up, somehow returned them to his own quarters and, with mother and puppies settled into an oil drum filled with straw, set about tending them.

Lee Duncan believed strongly in luck and so the two puppies he kept for himself he named after a pair of good luck charms, two young lovers, which French children would make and sell. American soldiers liked to hang them from their rifles and packs. The girl was called Nanette. The boy? Rin Tin Tin. And so was born a cinema legend.

Luck played its part again here. Thanks to the success of Strongheart, the first canine film star, dogs on screen were having a moment in the Hollywood of the early 1920s. Demobbed and down on his luck back home in California, Duncan determined to win a role for his beloved Rin Tin Tin in the nascent film industry. He wrote a script in which the dog starred, then blagged his way onto the set of a film being made by Jack Warner, who along with brother Sam had set up the fledgling Warner Brothers studio. Warner had borrowed a wolf from Los Angeles Zoo for the day, but it wasn’t up to scratch. Duncan covered Rin Tin Tin in dust and dirt and proposed he use him instead. He also gave Warner his script to read. Warner loved it.

The film was Where The North Begins, and Scottish cinemagoers can see it at a special centenary screening later this month as part of the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival, centred on the historic Bo’ness venue of that name.

And what can they expect? Alongside a semi-improvised live piano accompaniment they will enjoy a top-notch action movie, says festival director Alison Strauss. More than that, they will witness the birth of a bona fide screen legend, one who was every bit as famous in his day as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.

“Sometimes people think silent movies are a bit slow and crude, but it really struck me when I watched it that it just rattles along at a great pace,” she says. “You’re introduced to the relationship between the dog and the hero early on and then they just develop this lovely bond, and within minutes you’re totally rooting for them. And then there’s a baddie, and there’s jeopardy and their relationship is threatened. I watch films for my job, but I found myself on the edge of my seat.”

The Herald:

Set in the wilds of Canada the film turns on the relationship between fur-trapper Gabriel Dupre and a German Shepherd which has been raised by wolves. When Rin Tin Tin (as Wolf-Do)g is falsely accused of attacking a baby, and Dupre falls foul of a corrupt trading post manager who has designs on his sweetheart, Felice McTavish, the stage is set for vengeance and justice.

Where The North Begins was an immediate commercial and critical hit, and many more films like it followed. At the height of his fame Warner Brothers paid Rin Tin Tin eight times as much as its human stars. Not for nothing was he known as “the mortgage lifter” around the studio lot – so profitable were the films that whenever the studio was in financial trouble they merely had to release a new one and all debts were cleared. At one point he even had his own radio show. He also sparked a craze for German Shepherds which persists today: it’s still the second most popular breed in the US according to the American Kennel Club.

Duncan, meanwhile, earned around $5 million during his time with Warner Brothers, and there was more money to be earned from merchandising deals. When Chappel Bros. launched the first commercial canned dog food in 1923, the company’s head, Philip Chappel, ate a can of it in front of Duncan to persuade him to lend Rin Tin Tin’s name to the venture. Soon the dog was featuring in adverts for products such as Ken-L-Ration, Ken-L-Biskit and Pup-E-Crumbles. One of the perks was a lifetime supply of the stuff.

Hollywood is all about storytelling and myth making. But it doesn’t necessarily stop when the credits roll. Off-screen, intrigue and mystery cling to its greatest stars as much as to the films they write, direct, produce or star in. Rin Tin Tin was no different.

One story has him dying in the arms of screen siren Jean Harlow, who lived near Duncan in Beverley Hills. Another, even more intriguing, involves him winning the Academy Award for Best Actor at the first Oscars ceremony, held in May 1929. The story goes that he did garner the largest numbers of votes, but that the organisers baulked at giving the Oscar to a dog. Instead they awarded it to Emil Jannings, German star of Joseph von Sternberg’s The Last Command.

In her 2011 book Rin Tin Tin: The Life And Legend Of The World’s Most Famous Dog, veteran New Yorker journalist Susan Orlean gives credence to the story. Few others do, most seeing it as a leg-pull dreamed up by Darryl Zanuck, then an executive at Warner Brothers. What is certain is that among the losers that night was the writer, director and star of a film called The Circus – a certain Charles Chaplin.

Even today, a century after Rin Tin Tin made his big screen debut, few people will not recognise the name. Between Duncan’s return to the United States in 1919 and the dog’s death in 1931, he starred in over 25 films and two 12-episode serials, though only six of the films still exist. And the fame continued as other dogs from Rin Tin Tin’s bloodline carried his name forward. When the film work dried up in the late 1940s a TV series called The Adventures Of Rin Tin Tin was produced. It ran for five seasons between 1954 and 1959 and was still being screened on British television into the 1970s.

On February 8 1960, Rin Tin Tin was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You can find his star at 1627 Vine Street. By then the original bearer of the famous name had been dead nearly 30 years. Six months later, Lee Duncan also died, aged 67. At one point he owned three homes in Beverley Hills as well as a Malibu beach house, but at the time of his death much of the money was gone. He remained devoted to his beloved dog, though, and to its memory. “There will always be a Rin Tin Tin,” he used to tell people. In a sense, he wasn’t wrong.

The Hippodrome Silent Film Festival opens in Bo’ness on March 22 (until March 26); Where The North Begins screens on Saturday March 25

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