Rescued From a WWI Battlefield, This Dog Became Hollywood’s Biggest Star and Saved Warner Bros. From Bankruptcy
Published: 10 November 2025
By Allen Frazier
via the Military.com website
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Rin Tin Tin poses in his personalized director's chair during his Hollywood heyday in the 1920s. The German shepherd earned $1,000 per week at Warner Bros.—more than most human actors—and starred in 27 films between 1922 and 1931. Warner Bros. maintained 18 trained stand-in dogs to reduce stress on their canine star. (Vintage Everyday)
On Sept. 15, 1918, Corporal Lee Duncan walked through the bombed-out ruins of a German camp near Flirey, France. There, he found a kennel that housed military-working dogs meant for the German army. Most were dead, but he discovered a starving German shepherd mother with her litter of five newborn puppies. Their eyes hadn’t even opened yet.
Duncan had no idea that one of those puppies would soon become the face of Hollywood and save a then-unknown film studio called Warner Bros. from bankruptcy.
WWI Soldier Rescues a Battlefield Puppy
Born in 1892 into a poor family in California, Duncan’s father abandoned the family soon after. In 1898, his mother placed him and his sister in an orphanage, unable to support them. He spent five years there before his mother was able to retrieve them.
Due to his upbringing, Duncan jumped at the opportunity to join the military when the U.S. entered World War I. He was one of the first Americans sent to France in late 1917 with the U.S. Army Air Service’s 135th Aero Squadron.
He took part in numerous engagements for the last year of the war, including the bloody Battle of Saint-Mihiel. Following the engagement, he was sent forward to survey whether the small French village would make a suitable location for his unit’s airplanes. There he found the abandoned dogs; he knew he couldn’t leave them behind. With help from a friend, he rescued all six animals and brought them back to his unit’s camp.
Duncan gave the mother and three of the litter to his fellow soldiers. He kept two for himself — a male and a female — he named them Rin Tin Tin and Nanette after small yarn dolls that French children handmade and gave to American soldiers as good luck charms.
When the war ended in November 1918, Duncan convinced his commanding officer to help him smuggle both dogs aboard the ship returning to the United States. Once stateside, Duncan stopped in New York and found a German shepherd breeder, Mrs. Leo Wanner, who agreed to temporarily care for the dogs.
Unfortunately, Nanette contracted pneumonia and died in July 1919 despite the breeder’s care. Wanner gave Duncan a replacement female puppy from her own litters, which he named Nanette II. Duncan traveled with Rin Tin Tin and the new puppy to his home in Southern California by train.
⇒ Read the entire article on the Military.com website.
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