What if Rin Tin Tin had been born a cat?

You will have to be of a certain age to remember Rin Tin Tin.

Where the North Begins, 1923

He was a star of films radio and TV and his media career stretched from 1923 into the 21st century.

But his first appearances date from the early years of cinema and later transferred to the wireless in the 1930s and on to television from 1954 to 59.

And it is those black and white televisions series that I and many of my contemporise will remember.

My Wikipedia tells me that "Rin Tin Tin (September 1918 – August 10, 1932) was a male German Shepherd born in Flirey, France, who became an international star in motion pictures. 

He was rescued from a World War I battlefield by an American soldier, Lee Duncan, who nicknamed him "Rinty". Duncan trained Rin Tin Tin and obtained silent film work for the dog. 

Rin Tin Tin was an immediate box-office success and went on to appear in 27 Hollywood films, gaining worldwide fame. Along with the earlier canine film star Strongheart, Rin Tin Tin was responsible for greatly increasing the popularity of German Shepherd dogs as family pets. 

The immense profitability of his films contributed to the success of Warner Bros. studios and helped advance the career of Darryl F. Zanuck from screenwriter to producer and studio executive".*

Of course given the longevity of his “run” there were three Rin Tin Tins and later still more stand ins who went under their own names.

Rin Tin Tin, in Frozen River, 1929

But what if Rin Tin Tin had been born a cat?  

I doubt that there would have been many adventure films set in the frozen tundra featuring a ginger cat fighting off bears, and gangs of hoodlums.

It is not so daft a question because it mirrors that equally daft excercise beloved of some historians and journalists ……. What if Hitler hadn’t been born, Maria Antonetta hadn’t liked cake, Genghis Khan had preferred fishing to a career of conquest or Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters had taken up making balaclavas?

I grant you it is entertaining and may throw light on how events can turn out but to reuse a favourite quote of mine it is as useful as “trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.”**

Not that it stops historians playing the game, and even for a while was part of one GCSE history course where students were asked to speculate on different outcomes to an event.

But for me the trouble with the task is that once you change one bit of the equation all the bits are open to being changed. 

So if Hitler hadn’t been born in the Austro Hungarian Empire in the 1880s but instead in Paris what would the impact of this antisemitic, duff artist with delusions of grandeur have been on European history? 

Or if he been born but the Great War hadn’t occurred how would his destructive passage through the 20th century panned out?

Sneaking up on Mr's Pankhurst, 2022

And how would we remember Emmeline Pankhurst’s contribution if Lloyd George hadn’t calculated that giving the vote to a section of women who were in their 30s and by and large comfortably well off might enhance his election chances in the General Election of 1918. 

Four women campaigning for change, 1905

That election was called in the December just 10 months after The Representation of the People Act 1918 which gave women over the age of 30, and all men over the age of 21, a vote in Parliamentary elections was passed.

Nor should we forget those working class women who in their workplaces and in the Labour Movement advanced the arguments for the Parliamentary enfranchisement of women, but who are in the main left in the shadows. Women like Arnott Robinson from Manchester, Ada Chew, and Annie Kenney.

As Brecht wrote ….. “So many particulars. So many questions”.***

Women demanding change Manchester, 2013

It isn’t that I don’t think the ifs of history shouldn’t be played but just that it ain’t history, and while it can be fun and entertaining as  historical fiction it doesn’t deliver the goods.

So I won’t be looking to wonder how Samantha the cat would have saved the heroine of the 1923 Rin Tin Tin  movie, Where the North Begins, seeing off the dastardly corrupt official and saving the trapper Gabrielle who she loved.

Location; any time

Pictures, Poster for the American film Where the North Begins,1923, and Warner Bros-Lithograph by Otis Lithograph, Cleveland Poster, 1923, Rin Tin Tin from the film Frozen River, 1929, Sneaking up on Mrs Pankhurst, St Peter’s Square, Manchester, 2022, and demanding change, 2013, Manchester from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Suffragettes, 1905, m48441, Annie Briggs, Lillian Forrester and Evelyn Manestra. who attacked pictures in Manchester City Art Gallery in April 1913. m08225, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*Rin Tin Tin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rin_Tin_Tin

**“Worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.” Sunscreen, Baz Luhrmann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

***A Worker Reads History, Bertolt Brecht, 1947