Editing Rin Tin Tin (section)

==Origins==
[[File:135th Aero Squadron Group.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Officers and men of the [[135th Aero Squadron]] with their mascot Rin Tin Tin shortly after his rescue as a puppy in 1918]]
Following advances made by American forces during the [[Battle of Saint-Mihiel]], Corporal Lee Duncan, an [[armourer]] of the [[United States Army Air Service|U.S. Army Air Service]], was sent forward on September 15, 1918, to the small French village of [[Flirey]] to see if it would make a suitable flying field for his unit, the [[135th Aero Squadron]].{{sfn|Orlean|2011|pp=21, 28}} The area had been subjected to aerial bombing and artillery fire, and Duncan found a severely damaged kennel which had once supplied the [[German Army (German Empire)|Imperial German Army]] with German Shepherd dogs. The only dogs left alive in the kennel were a starving mother with a litter of five nursing puppies, their eyes still shut because they were less than a week old.<ref name=DogStar>{{cite news |last=Orlean |first=Susan |title=The Dog Star |url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/29/110829fa_fact_orlean |access-date=October 17, 2011 |newspaper=[[The New Yorker]] |date=August 29, 2011b}}</ref> Duncan rescued the dogs and brought them back to his unit.{{sfn|Orlean|2011|pp=29–30}}

When the puppies were weaned, he gave the mother to an officer and three of the litter to other soldiers, but he kept one puppy of each sex. He felt that these two dogs were symbols of his good luck. He dubbed them Rin Tin Tin and Nanette after a pair of good luck charms called Rintintin and Nénette that French children often gave to the American soldiers (the soldiers were usually told that Rintintin and Nénette were lucky lovers who had survived a bombing attack, but the original dolls had been designed by [[Francisque Poulbot]] before the war in late 1913 to look like Paris street urchins. Contrary to linguistic clues and popular usage, Poulbot said that Rintintin was the girl doll.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.poupendol.com/poulbot-dolls.html |title=Les Poupées du Poulbot |publisher=Poupendol.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140530031821/http://www.poupendol.com/poulbot-dolls.html |archive-date=May 30, 2014 |access-date=September 23, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.malraux.org/index.php/motsclefs/870-nenette.html |title=Nénette et Rintintin&nbsp;– notice |publisher=Malraux.org |author=Présence d'André Malraux sur la Toile |language=fr |date=September 8, 2009 |access-date=December 3, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120608091247/http://www.malraux.org/index.php/motsclefs/870-nenette.html |archive-date=June 8, 2012 |url-status=dead |quote=Il faut préciser que, contrairement aux apparences linguistiques, «Nénette» désigne le garçon et «Rintintin» la fillette, ainsi que le suppose l'image qui suit et que l'exprime le texte de Poulbot cité ci-après.}}</ref>). Duncan sensed that Nanette was the more intelligent of the two puppies.{{sfn|Orlean|2011|pp=31–32}}

In July 1919, Duncan sneaked the dogs aboard a ship taking him back to the US at the end of the war. When he got to [[Long Island, New York]], for re-entry processing, he put his dogs in the care of a [[Hempstead, New York|Hempstead]] breeder named Mrs. Leo Wanner, who trained police dogs. Nanette was diagnosed with pneumonia; as a replacement, the breeder gave Duncan another female German Shepherd puppy. Duncan travelled to California by rail with his dogs. While Duncan was travelling by train, Nanette died in Hempstead. As a memorial, Duncan named his new puppy Nanette II, but he called her Nanette.{{sfn|Orlean|2011|pp=43–44}} Duncan, Rin Tin Tin, and Nanette II settled at his home in Los Angeles. Rin Tin Tin was a dark sable color and had very dark eyes. Nanette II was much lighter in color.{{sfn|Orlean|2011|p=90}}

An athletic silent film actor named [[Eugene Pallette]] was one of Duncan's friends. The two men enjoyed the outdoors; they took the dogs to the [[Sierra Nevada (U.S.)|Sierras]], where Pallette liked to hunt, while Duncan taught Rin Tin Tin various tricks. Duncan thought that his dog might win a few awards at dog shows and thus be a valuable source of puppies bred with Nanette for sale. In 1922, Duncan was a founding member of the Shepherd Dog Club of California, based in Los Angeles. At the club's first show, Rin Tin Tin showed his agility but also demonstrated an aggressive temper, growling, barking, and snapping. It was a very poor performance, but the worst moment came afterward when Duncan was walking home. A heavy bundle of newspapers was thrown from a delivery truck and landed on the dog, breaking his left front leg. Duncan had the injured limb set in plaster and he nursed the dog back to health for nine months.{{sfn|Orlean|2011|pp=46–47}}

Ten months after the fracture, the leg was healed and Rin Tin Tin was entered in a show for German Shepherd dogs in Los Angeles. Rin Tin Tin had learned to leap great heights. At the dog show while making a winning leap, he was filmed by Duncan's acquaintance Charley Jones, who had just developed a slow-motion camera.{{sfn|Orlean|2011|pp=48–49}} Seeing his dog being filmed, Duncan became convinced Rin Tin Tin could become the next [[Strongheart]], a successful German Shepherd film dog that lived in his own full-sized stucco [[California bungalow|bungalow]] with its own street address in the [[Hollywood Hills]], separate from the mansion of his owners, who lived a street away next to [[Roy Rogers]].{{sfn|Orlean|2011|pp=64–65}} Duncan later wrote, "I was so excited over the film idea that I found myself thinking of it night and day."<ref name=DogStar/>