History's Luckiest Puppy: The Story of Rin Tin Tin - Paperback

by Walter Donway (Author)

He was history's luckiest puppy. Abandoned in a German army kennel in the war-torn France of World War I. The town flattened by artillery fire. Only one-week old and still blind, starving with brothers and sisters that a desperate mother had no milk to feed. The German Shepherd puppy's chances of survival should have been zero. Then, an American G.I., on reconnaissance far head of this own unit, happened along. And so the Hollywood--and American--legend began that never faded. Starring in more than two-dozen films, as much a celebrity as any actor, he received the most votes for "best actor" in the first year of the Academy Awards. He kept the name that the G.I., Lee Duncan, had given him--a name taken from a Paris good-luck charm French children used to give to soldiers. It was Rin Tin Tin.

Author Biography

Walter Donway has published four novels, two books of poetry, and three works of nonfiction, including the story of his boyhood on a farm in Massachusetts. In that book, "You're Probably from Holden, If...: Growing Up in A Vanishing New England," he tells the story of Smokey, his own German Shepherd. Born in California, then brought to the Massachusetts farm, Smokey may well have been a descendant of Rin Tin Tin.