Rin-Tin-Tin

A collection of film clips profiling animal actors.

Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War.

This tribute to Myrna Loy is organized chronologically with a few photographs, many film clips, a handful of personal appearances, and a detailed commentary delivered on camera by Kathleen Turner. Turner walks us through Loy's career as a dancer and an actress miscast as an exotic. She comes into her own as a grown-up women: shrewd, funny, decorous, and sexy - in "Manhattan Melodrama" and "The Thin Man." Her volunteer work during World War II, later stage work, and progressive politics come in for admiration as well. It's her style - seen best in her roles as a wife of charm and independence - that's captured and celebrated here.

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!

A lighthouse keeper and his daughter are in trouble on two fronts--if the authorities find out he is going blind they will remove him, and a gang of liquor-smugglers is trying to destroy the lighthouse so they can land their illegal cargo on shore without being spotted.

The Laguna Dam is to be built in Arizona to supply water to desert-land unfit for cultivation or stock-raising. Rival companies bid for the building contract, which leads to violence and danger for Bob Owen and his dog Satan.

When Rin-Tin-Tin's master is found murdered, Rinty is accused of the crime.

A fire in the mountains drives a wolf pack into the nearby desert where they terrorize the local residents. The leader of the wolf pack is Lobo, actually a halfbreed (Rin Tin Tin). When the pack is discovered hunting a herd of cows, a posse gives chase. Lobo leaves his pack to lead the posse away. He is injured and found by a local prospector, Dave Weston (Charles Farrell). The prospector nurses Lobo back to health and the two become close friends. Meanwhile, Weston has made a Borax find in the area. His girlfriend May Barstowe (June Marlowe), daughter of a wealthy rancher, is pleased. However, the local chemist, Borax Horton (Pat Hartigan), actually a claim jumper, plans to steal the claim.

Ben Darby and Pancake, his father, are owners of a mining claim in Northwest Canada. Ben goes to war, leaving Pancake to run the mine. During Ben's absence three claim jumpers take possession of the mine: one of the men is the father of Beatrice, Ben's sweetheart; another, a rival suitor. Pancake is murdered when he and Ben plot to regain the claim. Ben kidnaps Beatrice, resolving to obtain revenge through her. Ben finds that she knew nothing of the stolen claim and that her father was innocent of Pancake's murder. Ben then resolves to find the culprit and bring them to justice.

Rinty is a police-dog assigned to a young Scotland Yard police-officer who covers the Limehouse district of London.

A prospector is murdered by The Cactus Kid and his gang, who hope to find the murdered man's goldmine. The miner's dog, Rin-Tin-Tin, recognizes the killers, who thereafter seek to use the dog to locate the lost mine. With the help of a government agent and a young girl, Rinty saves the mine and brings the bad guys to justice.

Rin-Tin-Tin is saved from the beatings of a trapper by Ed Nolan, a shiftless trapper himself, and 'Rinty" follows Nolan home to his cabin but refuses to enter. Nolan takes him to the home of Mary Mallory, the girl he has failed to win as his wife because of his ways, and in their mutual love of 'Rinty," a new understanding is born and Nolan goes to work.

A German Shepherd puppy is "adopted" by a wolf pack in the snowy and frozen Great North and raised by them as one of their own. A few years later he comes upon a fur trapper and saves the man from certain death, and begins to feel a kinship with him that is stronger than the one he has with his adopted pack.

A mountie pursues a man wanted for murder.

Rinty rescues heroine June and hero Pat from all manner of desert dangers, both natural and man-made. The film's high point of tension finds the canine star rescuing Nye from a deep pit.

Tom's father, Barry, lives at a lonely trading post up north and is constantly in fear the post's factor, who has threatened to turn him in to the Mounted Police for a murder committed many years before.

A Mexico/United States border patrol officer is aided by his police dog, Rinty.

Rinty becomes the best pal of juvenile "human" hero Danny O'Shea. Their devotion to one another is proven beyond doubt when Danny is threatened by kidnappers.

Bill Holmes rescues Rinty from a car wreck not realizing that there is a stolen $50,000 diamond necklace hidden in the dog's collar.

Canine star Rin Tin Tin makes his all-talking (all-barking?) debut in Warner Bros.' Frozen River. In characteristic fashion, Rinty braves the elements to rescue heroine Jane from the villains, a gang of cutthroats and thieves.

A Rin-Tin-Tin serial presented in 12 episodes. The mysterious Wolf Man is terrorizing settlers in a western town. With the help of Rinty, young Jimmy Carter unmasks the Wolf Man and foils his evil plot.

A girl engaged to a member of the Royal Mounted Police is forced to marry a vicious blackmailer after he gains incriminating evidence on her father.

Slasher falls off the train that is carrying him. He is found, broken in spirit, by Donald Cass. The dog is regenerated by Donald's love.

Rin-Tin-Tin's first sound feature, in which he plays an abused dog recused by a young girl in the far north.

During World War I, Rin-Tin-Tin finds that he must rescue his master, a fighter pilot, from his wrecked aircraft. He also has to help him escape his rival, who has ordered him shot so he can have the girl they're competing for all to himself.

Adapted from Dorothy Yost's story, "The Untamed Heart"

Our doggy hero is abandoned in the desert while in pup-hood. Upon reaching maturity, Tin Tin has undeservedly earned the reputation as a killer canine. Thus, the human characters spend most of their time hunting down the dog in hopes of collecting a huge bounty.

Lady Jane Winston travels to the Ivory Coast of Africa to investigate George Castle, the manager of her family's rubber and ivory company, whom she suspects of embezzlement. On the voyage, Rin Tin Tin ("Rinty") leaps overboard near the African coast and befriends Jim Clayton, a beachcomber and former company employee. Together, the dog and Clayton rescue Lady Jane from a shark attack, prompting a partnership to expose Castle.

Paul Andrews returns from the World War with Buddy, a dog he found in Europe. Instead of getting a warm welcome, he finds his sweetheart, Caroline Blair, missing.

A police dog helps to track down two payroll robbers.

A giant condor decimates a herd of sheep, and Rin-Tin-Tin is accused of having turned killer.