A persistent Hollywood myth claims a German shepherd received the most votes for the first Best Actor Oscar in 1929 and the Academy re-ran the vote to ensure a human won. It never happened, but the fact that people still believe it says everything about the fame of Rin Tin Tin. This episode follows the true story from a bombed-out German army kennel in the French village of Fluery in September 1918, where Corporal Lee Duncan found a starving mother and five puppies less than a week old.

The conversation covers the dog’s smuggled voyage to America, a crushed leg from a bundle of newspapers and the nine-month rehabilitation that left him leaping to remarkable heights, slow-motion footage that convinced Duncan he had an athlete, and the Poverty Row hustle that led to a role replacing an uncooperative wolf. It explains how Where the North Begins pulled Warner Bros. back from bankruptcy, why silent film gave a dog a truly global audience, how the arrival of sound cost him his contract and forced retraining with hand signals, and what really happened to his remains after his death in 1932.

• The French yarn dolls that gave Rin Tin Tin and Nanette their names, and the designer who intended the names the other way round
• Why studio insiders called the dog the mortgage lifter, and how his scripts launched Daryl F. Zanuck’s career
• Fan letters answered with paw-print photos, a key to New York City and puppies owned by Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow
• The debunked claim that he is buried in a Paris pet cemetery, and where he most likely rests
• A June 1942 diary entry in which Anne Frank wrote about watching one of his films at her birthday