Q INTERVIEW: Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend

The first Rin Tin Tin was plucked from the battlefields of Europe during the First World War and became a star of silent films.

Stories of the heroic dog became a staple of American entertainment and endured well beyond the lifespan of that one dog – through the talkies and into the 1950s with The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, a very popular TV series.

As a little girl, Susan Orlean wanted a dog like Rin Tin Tin. A writer for The New Yorker and author of The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Oscar-winning film Adaptation, she revisits the story of the first movie dog and his many successors in her latest book.

Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend looks at how a soldier from California found the original Rin Tin Tin and made him a star and how the dog became the one of the biggest box office draws of the 1920s.

In an interview with Jim Brown, guest host of CBC’s Q cultural affairs show, Orlean discusses the legacy of this most famous of dogs.