Rin-Tin-Tin, Susan Orlean, and Me

Fiction is my poison of choice and I’ve been addicted since my very first Nancy Drew book wayyyyyy back when I could buy a used book for a quarter and sell it back for a dime.  I worked my way through all of Carolyn Keene’s teenage detective stories, book by book. I haven’t stopped reading since and now I’m collecting those old Nancy Drew books.

I’ve always been drawn to books because of story, the fictional magic carpet that allowed me to travel to different places, different times and still have the comfort of my own bed in my own room.  East of Eden, On The Beach, Exodus, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, The Haunting of Hill House,  and many others, fueled my imagination and love of prose. 

But only recently have I been absorbed by a real story, a biography of a dog and the man who loved and trained him; one where I found more than a story to draw me in, more than a world different than my own.  Recently, Susan Orlean took me on a wondrous journey with Rin-Tin-Tin that wound through my own memories like a path in the woods that disappears and reappears on a whim.  When I began reading Orlean’s “Rin-Tin-Tin” I wrongly assumed it would be just a well-written biography of Rinty and Lee Duncan.  It never occurred to me that I would learn so much or that it would become a door to long forgotten memories of my own.

Of course I have really fond memories of the TV show, the Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin; it was a favorite of mine.  And though I actually preferred that show to Lassie, I knew much more about Lassie and the Weatherwax family.  I’m not sure why that is so, it doesn’t make sense to me now that I think about it, but there it is.  So reading about the early days of Rin-Tin-Tin and Lee Duncan were a revelation. I was totally unaware that Rinty had made so many silent films and I had really never heard of Duncan. But what I found in the book was a strange and nostalgic trip though my own life; memories of growing up; memories of a time that seems not so long ago.

I was born and raised in Glendale, California; the “Jewel City”, a ‘bedroom community of Los Angeles.  I lived there until I was 35....a memory-packed 35 years.  And strangely, a lot of that time intertwines with the story of Rinty and Duncan and Bert Leonard.  Bert Leonard, who Orlean describes in beautifully descriptive terms, lived on Los Feliz Boulevard.  Los Feliz, which runs from Glendale, just north of Forest Lawn, to Western in Hollywood.  A road I traveled a lot in my youth;  to Griffith Park Fountain, Griffith Park, the Observatory, the Zoo, Ferndale, the Carousel, Riverside Drive, to Western and down to Hollywood Drive.  

Above Los Feliz is a Frank Lloyd Wright structure known as Ennis House.  The house we drove to frequently when teenagers before we knew who Frank Lloyd Wright was, because the exterior had been used in the ‘horror’ film “The House on Haunted Hill”.  

We drove down Los Feliz to Hollywood Boulevard, to Stan’s Drive Inn for a  burger, then back up Sunset to Western, and back to Los Feliz, back home. It was our weekend ‘drive’.  Well, you get the idea.  

Rinty, the beautifully sleek, intelligent and agile German Shepherd that I watched on the TV at my Nana’s house. My Nana, dead these many years; born about the same time as Duncan.  Wispy memories mixing with real people mixing with ghosts from the past.

I’m grateful to Susan Orlean for the learning experience, for the joy of her prose.  But, I’m more grateful for the slew of memories that poured out of the pages of a book that really had little to do with my life, and everything to do with the world I grew up in.  Thanks, Susan.