Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend - Susan Orlean Audiobook

Written by Susan Orlean
Read by Susan Orlean
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 32 Kbps
Unabridged

Published by Simon & Schuster Audio
Length: 12 hours
Released: Sep 27, 2011

He believed the dog was immortal. So begins Susan Orlean’s sweeping, powerfully moving account of Rin Tin Tin’s journey from abandoned puppy to movie star and international icon.

German shepherd Rin Tin Tin’s journey is the story of the twentieth century. From the discovery of Rin Tin Tin on a WWI battlefield in 1918, to the movies, radio programs, and the 1950s television show that would cement his legacy around the world, Rin Tin Tin traces the extraordinary history of the dog and his descendants over more than ninety years.

Rin Tin Tin was a star (he received 10,000 fan letters a week); a worldwide sensation; a social figure (as the U.S. Army’s WWII mascot, he inspired thousands of Americans to donate their dogs for use in the war); and a baby-boom touchstone. He was also a real dog, and the book tells the epic love story between Rin Tin Tin and the remarkable people who devoted their lives to him and his legacy.

Rin Tin Tin is also Orlean’s meditation on the nature of heroism, loyalty, and memory, and how Rin Tin Tin has lasted for so many generations. “Rin Tin Tin could leap twelve feet,” she writes, “and he could leap through time.”

Publishers Weekly…
With this stirring biographical history, Orlean centers on Rin Tin Tin, the German shepherd who founded a film and TV dynasty. After spending a lonely childhood in an orphanage, the young soldier Lee Duncan discovers on the battlefield of WWI France the puppy that will make a name for him as one of Hollywood’s top dog trainers, and become his life’s guiding purpose. … Duncan never ceased grooming canine successors and shopping around scripts, and producer Bert Leonard lived on friends’ couches as he poured money into colorizing old episodes of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Susan Orlean directs a sympathetic gaze toward these men so haunted by their memories of the dog that swept them into stardom. Even readers coming to Rin Tin Tin for the first time will find it difficult to refrain from joining Duncan in his hope that Rin Tin Tin’s legacy will “go on forever.”

The David Thomson biography of the Warner Bros. has a chapter on “Rinty”