If you are under the age of 60, you may not know who Rin Tin Tin is. This is a shame, because there was a time when Rin Tin Tin was one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. Born in Flairy, France in 1918, Rin Tin Tin (sometimes abbreviated Rinti) was a German Shepherd found on a French battlefield by an American soldier named Lee Duncan, fighting in World War I. Returning from the war, Duncan trained Rinti to perform on camera and just walked the dog from studio to studio, asking if they were looking for a performance animal. Rin Tin Tin made his film debut in the 1922 film The Man from Hell River, replacing the wolf with madness. He would go on to play Wolfhound in the 1923 film Where the North Begins, launching the popular coup into the mainstream.

During the 1920s, Rin Tin Tin headlined more than 20 films, often playing himself. He was one of the best-trained dogs in Hollywood and became the face of several dog-related products. Some estimates of ticket sales list Rin Tin Tin as the highest-grossing movie star of the era, although those numbers cannot be fully confirmed. Unfortunately, many of Rin Tin Tin's films have been lost to time. Fortunately, audiences can still see the dog's first color film, John G.'s The Show of Shows.

In the 2011 biography "Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend" by Susan Orleans (whose book was The Orchard Thief). the inspiration for the Nicolas Cage-led Adaptation), began a legend that has persisted in Hollywood for some time. Orleans claimed, repeatedly (including in an article in the New Yorker), that Rin Tin Tin received enough votes to win Best Actor at the first Academy Awards (held on May 16, 1929). She said Rinti was denied the award after the show's producers decided that awarding a dog would not give the brand new awards the prestige they were deliberately seeking.

Unfortunately, this is not true.

It should be remembered that the Academy Awards were not created to celebrate the burgeoning art form, but were a deliberate and mercenary attempt by studio super-honcho Louis B. Mayer to discourage Hollywood players from syndication. /Film has written about Mayer's Oscar shenanigans in the past and how his attitudes toward unions are based on personal expenses he incurred while operating a home in Santa Monica, California. The Academy was established as a means of distracting workers, directors and actors with a symbolic fairy tale, an award that could be said to have prestige.

With that in mind, it stands to reason that the Academy would really want the first Oscar to retain as much prestige as possible. Giving Best Actor to Rin Tin Tin would take that prestige away from the ceremony and completely undermine the entire purpose of the awards ceremony. The Orleans hypothesis rings true from this perspective.

But as the Wrap pointed out in 2017Rin Tin Tin's Oscar was an urban legend. Orleans only embellished the widespread myth of the Rin Tin Tin ballots and the subsequent embarrassment of the brand new Academy. As noted in the Wrap article, the 1928 Academy Awards ballots were signed that year—it was not yet a secret ballot—and all are preserved in the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library, located in Los Angeles, California. One could look through the ballots and find that Rin Tin Tin's name was not written on any of them. The dog star was a big enough star to keep Warner Bros. going, but no one actually voted for the good guy's good performance.

Note: the photo above is not of Rin Tin Tin, but of Rin Tin Tin IV as it appeared in the 1954 TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Everyone's Favorite Dog was just the first in a legacy of canine performers.

The origin of the Rin Tin Tin Oscar rumor lies in a story about Fox co-founder Darryl Zanuckwho was a Warner Bros. executive in 1929 and the letters he shared with screenwriter Frank Woods, the Academy's first paid executive. Woods, who was working with Mayer's idea, liked the idea of ​​the film industry awarding the best films of the year and reached out to several executives, hoping to get some support. Zanuck reportedly responded very negatively to the idea of ​​the Academy Awards, finding the idea of ​​an industry rewarding itself rather silly.

Zanuck, according to the Wrap article, wrote an abusive letter to Woods, including a fake version of his own ballot in which he voted only for Warner Bros. productions. Why, Zanuck thinks, would any of the executives vote for movies from other studios? He also sarcastically wrote that the award for best actor should go to Rin Tin Tin. It was a joke.

Zanuck may very well have pitched his Rin Tin Tin joke to Jack Warner - the head of WB - and the CEO went on to write his joke ballot, which also named Rin Tin Tin as best actor. Warner's ballot also jokingly nominated Casey Jones (who died in 1900) in the now-defunct Best Engineering category.

However, having Rin Tin Tin's name on two executive papers left some true believers upset and rumors began to spread that the voices were serious. Soon, rumors abounded, with some claiming that Rin Tin Tin had received enough votes to win Best Actor. The rumors persisted until 2011, when Orleans wrote his book.

The rumors are definitely not true. Other stores exposed them. Rin Tin Tin is a very good boy, but he is not an Oscar winner.