Rin Tin Tin: A Silent Film Star On Four Legs

January 9, 2012

Guest: Susan Orlean

DAVE DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, filling in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. If you're a baby boomer, you might remember the old TV series "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin," about a German shepherd and a boy named Rusty who lived with a cavalry troop in the American West. In 1954, Rin Tin Tin was such a star that he was interviewed by a writer for the New Yorker, who noted that he turned up his nose at roast beef and drank milk from a champagne glass.

What most of us didn't know, until our guest, writer Susan Orlean, told us, is that Rin Tin Tin the TV star was a reincarnation of an ever bigger movie star who dominated the silent screen in the 1920s and nearly won an Oscar for Best Actor, and that Rin Tin Tin was a real dog rescued from a World War I battlefield by Lee Duncan, an American Doughboy who devoted his life to training and promoting that dog and others that bore the Rin Tin Tin legacy.

Orlean's new book is about the Rin Tin Tin story and about America's evolving relationship with dogs in the 20th century. Susan Orlean is a staff writer for the New Yorker who's written seven books, including "The Orchid Thief," which was made into the film "Adaptation." Her new book is called "Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend." Well, Susan Orlean, welcome to FRESH AIR.

SUSAN ORLEAN: Thank you.

DAVIES: You know, people – people of our generation think of, when they think of - when they hear the name Rin Tin Tin, they think of the TV shows of the '50s, probably most of us. But what we learn from you is that in the 1920s, the original Rin Tin Tin was a silent movie star. How big was he?

ORLEAN: His fame in the 1920s might have even been greater than his fame in the 1950s, which is considerable. Part of that is because the impact of movies was so enormous. But he was also a superstar. He literally and figuratively leaped off the screen.

These movies were greeted as events. People of all ages went to the movies. They were shown all over the world and there - it wasn't a minor statement to say that he saved Warner Brothers.

Warner Brothers was a small studio at the time that they began making Rin Tin Tin films. Not only did he make them a major studio, but every time they found themselves in any sort of financial straits, they would release a Rin Tin Tin film, and it would set things straight. He was known around the Warner Brothers lot as the mortgage-lifter for that reason.

[SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER]

DAVIES: Now, he made more than 20 silent pictures, and he was the star, right? I mean, what were the plots like? How was he depicted?

ORLEAN: Well, it was really interesting to me because, well, first of all, of those 27 films we only have seven. Unfortunately, you know, most silent films were not archived very carefully. Some of them were actually chopped up and melted and made into plastic. And we've just lost a huge amount of that. Apparently about 50 percent of all silent films have been lost, and more than that number of Rin Tin Tin's films were lost.

But we do know the plots of the ones that exist in some of those that are gone. What was interesting is he was always the hero, but he - and he always saved the day. But he didn't do it at - with the snap of a finger. There was always a struggle.

He was the star, and he was in these films with the big silent film actors of the time, and yet his was the name that was above the title. He was the big draw, even when he was in a movie with June Marlowe or Charles Farrell or Jason Robards. Rin Tin Tin was the leading man.

DAVIES: And there's - there would be real character development, right? Rin Tin Tin might have been accused of a crime, like killing sheep, and then his master might doubt him and even consider doing away with him, and then both he and the master have to struggle with their relationship. And, you know, we should say that this was a time when he wasn't the only animal prominently featured in silent films. You write there was this other dog, Strongheart, which was also a big draw. Why were animals more prominently featured in silent films than they later were in talkies?

ORLEAN: They were - actually not only was Strongheart making films and a huge box office draw at the time, but nearly 80 other German shepherds were starring in films in the '20s, which is just a staggering fact and something that really astonished me.

I mean, how can - and they were the leading actors in those films. Moreover, dogs look much more natural not talking than people do. When you see some of these films, the people are - there's a quality in a silent film that's a bit ridiculous because we know people can talk, and yet there they are either pantomiming or using exaggerated gestures to make their point and then having the inner title card flash up and explain to us what they've just said. A dog is just doing what they do naturally. And they never look - they never look diminished the way people sometimes can. So they were the perfect silent hero. They just suited the medium absolutely perfectly.

DAVIES: Well, tell us about the first Academy Awards.

ORLEAN: You know, this was a case where - I mean, this dog was beloved. People loved watching him on film and believed that he was an extraordinary actor. And the story has it that he was in line to get the first Best Actor award. It was the first year the Oscars were being given out. And it wouldn't have even been unheard of. I mean he was a huge box-office star. He was - it wasn't a crazy idea. He was that popular, and he was that seriously regarded as an actor.

But the Academy, according to the story, believed that this new idea of handing out these Oscars could possibly be damaged by the idea of the first Best Actor being a dog, even though everyone loved Rin Tin Tin. And he was welcomed in the Warner Brothers commissary. He was treated not as a dog but as a star. But the rules were written and - or revised to say that no non-human could receive an Oscar. And lo and behold, Rin Tin Tin was robbed.

DAVIES: Right. Now, what about the stories that like other temperamental stars, he could be, well, not exactly a sweetheart on the set?

ORLEAN: Well, those I happen to think are true.

[SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER]

I think - it was often said that he bit a lot of his co-stars, and I'm not sure that he actually drew blood, but he was a one-man dog. He was bonded entirely to Lee. Lee never let anyone else handle him, and he - you know, at the time the idea of behind the breed, which was really a fairly recent breed developed in the 1890s, was that they should bond intensely with one person rather than being friendly to everybody.

Lee just didn't let anyone else touch him, and in his journal he talked later about how he realized that that was perhaps extreme and that in subsequent generations of the Rin Tin Tin dogs, he was a little bit less possessive.

DAVIES: Did he snap at anybody famous?

ORLEAN: Well, he bit Jack Warner. He bit - and, you know, a lot of the various stuntmen who were used in the films in the fight scenes with Rin Tin Tin would complain about how vicious he was. When you see those scenes, they are pretty convincing. There's no question that Rin Tin Tin enjoyed filming those fight scenes.

And I assume that those actors were wearing very heavily padded suits because you see his teeth sink into the coat sleeve of a lot of his co-stars, and it's highly convincing, which makes me think that he enjoyed nothing more than giving a good chomp on someone's arm.

DAVIES: So what happened to Rin Tin Tin when the silent movie era ended?

ORLEAN: At the end of the silent film era, Warner Brothers terminated Lee's contract. They sent him a letter saying they were putting all of their attention as a company into this new medium of talking pictures, and everyone knows, as they said in the letter, that dogs don't talk.

In silent film, dogs and people didn't talk. Dogs then were on the same level as people in film. As soon as people were starting to hear speech in film, they became fascinated by it. They were obsessed with the technology. The fact that dogs didn't speak made them seem so much less interesting in a movie when people were so fascinated by the new capacity to hear sound in film.

So the 80 German shepherds that were starring in movies during the 1920s basically all lost their jobs, and really Rin Tin Tin is the only one among them who managed to sustain a little bit of a career. He started appearing in B-films that were coming out during that time. So he was no longer with a major studio, but he was still making films, whereas most of those other dogs just vanished and perhaps retired to a comfortable house somewhere in the country.

DAVIES: Dogs don't live forever, and in 1932, Rin Tin Tin dies. What was the impact on the entertainment world?

ORLEAN: It was a huge event. It was on a scale that is hard for us to imagine now. When Rin Tin Tin died in 1932, radio programming around the country was interrupted with a news bulletin announcing his death.

The next day there was an hour-long radio program in his memory. Every major newspaper carried a significant obituary extolling his virtues and talking about the loss of Rin Tin Tin as a tragedy, as an irreplaceable figure in American and international culture.

And I just think it was viewed as a loss that was insurmountable. A lot of movie theaters hung pictures of him, and a lot of stores around the country, the shop owners would put - had a picture of Rin Tin Tin in their window as a sort of memorial to him and his passing.

DAVIES: Our guest is Susan Orlean; her new book is "Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend." We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC]

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, our guest is writer Susan Orlean. Her new book is called "Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend." I want to talk about Lee Duncan, the man who was Rin Tin Tin's trainer throughout, you know, so much of the life of the character. He got Rin Tin Tin as a soldier in World War I. Just tell us a little about his background, why he got into the Army.

ORLEAN: Lee was born in the late 1890s in California. His mother was a young woman who had fallen in love with a man who proved to be not very reliable, and after she had a second kid, he abandoned her. She was really not able to take care of her kids very well, and she put them in an orphanage for what turned out to be five years. She was finally able to reclaim both Lee and sister when her own circumstances were improved a little bit, and she moved to a huge ranch that her parents were managing.

So Lee grew up on that ranch. He was a pretty lonely kid with no special ambition. The one thing he really wanted to do was to fly, and when World War I began, and the opportunity to enlist presented itself, he did enlist, I think mostly imagining that he'd get a pilot's license out of it.

Of course he ended up in a horrific piece of history. He was stationed in France and was in a squadron that was really in the thick of the battle. His greatest affection had always been animals. So what he did when he had time and was on furlough and so forth was actually tour the countryside looking for a dog to bring back with him when the war was over.

DAVIES: And one of the fascinating parts of the story that you relate here is the way as many as 16 million animals were used in World War I. I mean a lot of them, you know, mules and horses pulling artillery, but dogs were used not by the United States but by the European armies. What were some of the roles that dogs played in the military then?

ORLEAN: Dogs played an enormous number of roles. They were sentries, of course, and worked as guard dogs. They laid communication wire. They carried messages. They worked as cadaver dogs, meaning that after a battle had ended, they - dogs who were trained for this purpose were released onto a battlefield to quickly identify to the medics which of the bodies still had life in them.

They were many times carrying supplies, first aid supplies, out into a field so that any soldiers who were injured could - and who were able to help themselves in some way – could get the supplies from the dogs, or if they were dying, they could have the companionship of a dog as they were in their last moments.

DAVIES: And just so I'm clear about this, the cadaver dogs would be trained to, when it smelled - it distinguished the smell of a live soldier from a dead one and then bark when he found a live one?

ORLEAN: Exactly. I mean, when you think of a huge battlefield strewn with bodies, and many of them were beyond help, but a medic had to quickly find the soldiers who still had some life in them and not waste their time stopping at each body. So the dogs helped basically work as a triage unit and head out into the field, and dogs can distinguish between a live and a dead body. So they would sit beside the soldiers who were actually still alive, so the medics could quickly get to those people.

It was an incredibly important role, when you look at the numbers of soldiers involved in some of these battles in World War I and imagine that there could be 1,000 bodies laying out in a field and only a few medics who had to get to those soldiers who were still alive as quickly as they could.

DAVIES: Other dogs carrying, as you said, medical supplies onto the field. And I love this: terriers that were saddled with packs of cigarettes to cheer up the troops.

ORLEAN: Yes, I think these were probably the most popular dogs in World War I, the cigarette dogs, and they were often - they used little dogs, these terriers. They were just saddled with packs of cigarettes, and they would wander around among the troops delivering the cigarettes, and I'm sure they were warmly welcomed.

DAVIES: All right, so tell us about how Lee Duncan found Rin Tin Tin.

ORLEAN: Lee was stationed in the Mews Valley(ph) in France, and he had been sent to examine a battlefield that the Germans had just been pushed out of, just to see if it would serve as a suitable landing strip for the Allies. When he got to the field, he noticed a building that had been hit by artillery but he recognized that it was a kennel. He decided to just take a look and see what was left of this kennel. Inside he found the bodies of a dozen or so dogs that had been killed by the shelling. At the last minute he heard a whimpering in the back of the kennel.

So he made his way through this array of dogs who had been killed and found a female who was alive and had just given birth. She had a litter of five puppies. He, being an animal lover, simply could not walk away, even though in the middle of a very intense period of World War I having dogs would not be a very convenient thing, moreover not - having a mother and newborn puppies, but he could not leave them. He wrangled them somehow into his vehicle and took them back to the barracks and decided to take care of them.

DAVIES: Susan Orlean's book is "Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend." She'll be back in the second half of the show. Here's a song about Rin Tin Tin recorded by actor James Brown, who played Rip Master in the TV series "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin." I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC]

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross who is off this week. We're speaking with writer Sue Orlean, whose new book is about Rin Tin Tin. Not just the 1950s TV series, but the Rin Tin Tin who dominated the silent screen in the 1920s. Her book is about the dogs in the Rin Tin Tin story and the people who managed them and were affected by their celebrity. It's called “Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend.”

You know, most of the folks in my generation know of Rin Tin Tin from the TV series in the 50s. And you write about this. This was a big revival of the Rin Tin Tin career. What was Lee Duncan's situation in 1952 when TV was growing and this idea came out?

ORLEAN: The early 50s were kind of a difficult period for him. During World War II, he had been very purposeful. He had been involved with the Army, helping them trained the K-9 Corps and Rin Tin Tin was the U.S. Army's mascot during that period. So he felt very purposeful and was earning enough money to be comfortable. But when the war ended he was a little bit lost. There, he made one movie right after the war, which starred Rin Tin Tin called “The Return of Rin Tin Tin,” and then nothing was really happening. You know, dog movies were not the big deal that they had been in the '20s. He was very skeptical about television, which was a very new medium at the time. So he was casting around, and I'm not quite sure what he thought would happen.

He was in some financial straits. In fact, at that point, he had had a sponsorship with Ken-L Ration and that's where he got his dog food for free. And Ken-L Ration basically came to him and said, you know, you're not really doing enough right now to warrant us treating you as one of our sponsors, so we're going to cut off your dog food. And Lee's financial circumstances were tight enough that that really mattered. To lose the free dog food really mattered. So he thought I've got to do something and obviously the big excitement at the moment was television. So he finally opened himself up to the idea that maybe Rin Tin Tin's future would be in TV and not in film. And it turns out he was right.

DAVIES: I believe a stunt man brings this producer, Bert Leonard, to visit Lee Duncan, right?

ORLEAN: Yes. And Bert had an idea the minute he met Lee and saw the dog. He hatched a plan - he was a great storyteller, and he came up with this idea that Lee loved, which was to set the show in the late 1870s. It would star a boy and the dog who were the only survivors of an Indian raid. And who are taken in by a cavalry troop in Arizona, and live with them and have their adventures together. And Lee loved the idea, so did Screen Gems. And the next thing we knew, Rin Tin Tin was debuting on American television in the fall of 1954 and was an immediate huge success - once again, having the kind of acclaim that he had had in the 1920s, both in the U.S. and all over the world, because the show was broadcast internationally, as well.

DAVIES: Right. And TV had this enormous reach and there was merchandising, right? There were Rin Tin Tin lunchboxes and thermoses.

[SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER]

ORLEAN: It was - there was Rin Tin Tin, practically everything you wanted was available in a Rin Tin Tin-branded version. And this was the early beginning of merchandising. You know, there was no merchandising before the 50s. Rin Tin Tin was one of the early big licensors. And kids went crazy. There were Rin Tin Tin products of just every sort, both identified with the dog and with the stars of the show, Rusty and Sgt. Rip Masters who were - became huge stars in and of themselves.

DAVIES: When Rin Tin Tin was a star in the 1920, it was - 20s, it was, at least we believe - this one dog doing the acting, doing the stunts, living the life. He was the star. What was the case in the TV world? Was it one dog? Was it several dogs?

ORLEAN: It was several dogs. And, you know, it had - it changed. Rin Tin Tin in the 20s was a dog who became an actor and appeared in movies, performing roles. In the 1950s Rin Tin Tin had become an idea. He was a character played by a multitude of dogs. It was generally three dogs who played the part. But it had become at that point the idea of Rin Tin Tin and it remained intact in that way.

DAVIES: And nobody cared that there wasn't a dog who was Rin Tin Tin? I mean there were personal appearances still, right?

ORLEAN: Yes. And I think people believed it was one dog. And there was every effort made to make it feel like it was one dog. But there were definitely three dogs who were used to shoot the show and then a fourth dog who did most of the public appearances. And - but I think people believed it was one dog and the dog who lived with Lee and his wife and daughter was, in a sense, the Rin Tin Tin.

DAVIES: And this is amazing. There was a road show that they did with the actors from the series and the dog. And they would sell out Madison Square Garden?

ORLEAN: It's incredible. They were a huge road show. And somebody sent me a little clip of them arriving in Houston. There was the phalanx of police cars at the airport to meet them and a crowd of kids screaming as if it were the Beatles arriving. And they were a huge success, existing not just on the screen, but also out in the world. And that's the way it's always been with Rin Tin Tin. He was both on a screen and in the real world, which gave him a sort of dimensional quality that made people really believe he was a real dog who they could they could live, they could dream about that maybe they would have that dog in their life.

DAVIES: The series went off the air in 1957, then there were Saturday reruns. Do you think there's another comeback in store for this character? Are you it?

[SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER]

ORLEAN: I guess, in a way, he's now appearing in nonfiction, literary nonfiction. But, you know, the idea of a hero is one obviously one of the enduring columns that holds up the whole idea of art and storytelling. So the way that Rin Tin Tin is a hero makes him a character that can be revived endlessly. And I feel like we've come to look at dogs with a great deal of admiration again - the way that we did in earlier decades. We've seen them again in service, in the last decade or two, that has made them seem heroic again. Dogs doing search and rescue after 9/11. Dogs working in therapy roles. I think that we've, once again, started to look at them not just as pets but as these rather extraordinary creatures who live with us and can work for us. And it makes me think that Rin Tin Tin would once again resonate with a lot of people.

DAVIES: Our guest is Susan Orlean. Her new book is “Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend.” We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC]

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with writer Sue Orlean. She's a staff writer for The New Yorker, and the author of the “Orchid Thief.” Her new book is “Rin Tin Tin.”

You’ve been writing for a long time. But I know you're also a prolific user of twitter. You have over 200,000 followers. And when I look at your Twitter feed it seems you are often responding individually to fans who, you know, who tweet things in your direction. I don't know, what interests you about Twitter? What do you get out of the use of it?

ORLEAN: I think, for me, Twitter is the equivalent of working in an office and having those casual conversations that make a day feel less - that make you feel less isolated in the course of writing. Because writing is so solitary - it's such a private enterprise. Not the reporting part of it, when you're out in the world, but the writing part of it. I first got involved with Twitter when I began writing this book and I was spending day after day entirely by myself. I was living out in the country. And here was a way to sort of chat with people, and in some cases, use them as a cheering squad.

I would often post my word count for the day. And people would say, you know, go, you can do it. And I began to find this relationship with the world of Twitter that I had been missing since the last time I had been working in an office, where I would be stuck on a story and I'd come out of my office and wander the halls at The New Yorker and look for some encouragement from a colleague. It became very natural to me, and something that I could do for my desk and feel like I was engaged in the world. And it served, actually, to keep me from feeling very, very lonely while I was working on the book.

DAVIES: So, now everybody knows you can join Susan Orlean's office for free.

[SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER]

ORLEAN: Right.

DAVIES: I also have to - you’ve begun raising a lot of animals. And you wrote, I think it was in The New Yorker, about your experience with chickens.

ORLEAN: Yes.

DAVIES: What interests you about chickens?

ORLEAN:I fulfilled what I had suddenly, some years ago, became completely obsessed with the idea of having chickens. And when I moved to the country, the realization that I could really have them came as this great excitement. And I started with four and then added, and then began adding a few other animals. I now have turkeys and guinea fowl and ducks, and just got some geese. It was, I think - the fact is I like animals in general. I never had livestock and it was really fun to have the experience of having animals that weren't house pets, but were, kind of, workers. And yet taking care of them gave me this enormous satisfaction. And chickens are really funny and they're a lot of fun to watch and be around. And I like the fact too that they were useful. I mean we - I haven't bought eggs in years because my chickens provide them for me.

DAVIES: Right, but when you bring the mentality of a pet owner to this, do you then find you're taking your chicken to the vet when it gets sick?

ORLEAN: Yes. And I will say this was a great realization that I was not a true farmer. One of my chickens was sick and I called a poultry farm in my area to ask them for the name of an avian vet and there was a long pause on the phone. And the owner of the poultry farm said, well, if the chicken is sick then you cull it, which I realize is a very nice way of saying you kill it. And it's a very practical response if you have a poultry farm of thousands of chickens. But I couldn't bring myself to do it and I took my chicken to the vet, which made me, probably, one of the few people in my community that had brought their chicken into the vet. And the vet was a little surprised. For some reason, when I made the appointment, they didn't know that it was a chicken and she opened the crate expecting a kitten.

[SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER]

DAVIES: Did the chicken have a name?

ORLEAN: Yes. Her name was Beauty. And although on her prescription it said Chicken Orlean, which I found...which I found incredibly funny and touching. And, you know, I don't bring my chickens into the house. I don’t, you know, have them in the bathtub with me. I mean, people can certainly – there are people who treat chickens like pets that way, and I don’t. They definitely live outside. But when you have a small enough flock that you can name all of them, your relationship with them is quite different from if you're a farmer with, say, 100 chickens. And there are just certain practicalities to how you treat them when you have that many.

DAVIES: Well, I have to ask – did Beauty get better?

ORLEAN: Beauty did not get better. So we took her to the vet and had her put down and did have her cremated.

DAVIES: Well, do you still eat chicken? Has it affected your taste for chicken?

ORLEAN: I do eat chicken. And – although, I'll tell you, I won't eat – I will not buy eggs that aren't from cage free chickens and I try to – I make every effort to only buy chicken meat that is from an organic farm. Now that I have seen the way chickens are and know what factory farming is like, it is really sickening to me and I just don’t want anything to do with that. But I do eat chicken. I don’t eat my own chickens.

I mean, I would never have eaten Beauty, besides the fact that she was sick. I don’t eat my chickens and I'm really not interested in eating them. But I don’t not eat chicken because I have them.

DAVIES: I think you should come up with a recipe and call it Chicken Orlean.

ORLEAN: Unfortunately, when I Tweeted about chicken Orlean being on the prescription bottle, I got many, many, many responses with recipes for chicken Orlean which even I found very funny. But it was sad, and she was really sick. It was really sad to see her miserable. But I could still see the humor in it.

DAVIES: Well, Susan Orlean, we're out of time. It's been fascinating. Thanks so much for spending some time with us.

ORLEAN: Thank you.

DAVIES: Susan Orlean is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of "The Orchid Thief." Her new book is called "Rin Tin Tin: the Life and the Legend."

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC "A CHICKEN AIN'T NOTHING BUT A BIRD"]

LOUIS JORDAN: (Singing) Everybody's talking about chicken. Chicken's a popular word. But any way you go you're bound to find a chicken ain't nothing but a bird. Some people call it fowl. That's the story I've heard. But let 'em call it this and let 'em call it that, a chicken ain't nothing but a bird. You can boil it, roast it, broil it, put it in a pan or pot. Brown it. Eat 'em with potatoes, rice, or tomatoes...

(Singing) ...chicken is still what you've got, boy. It was a dish for ol' Caesar. Also King Henry III. But Columbus was hip. He said take this tip: a chicken ain't nothing but a bird.

[END SOUNDBITE]

DAVIES: That’s singer Louis Jordan. Coming up, Ed Ward tells us about Dore, a Los Angeles record label that made rock n' roll hits in the 1950s. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVIES: Believe it or not, in the mid-1950s Los Angeles didn’t have much of a pop music scene. The film industry dominated everything. But there were some tiny record labels hoping for hits and, sometimes, getting them. More labels sprung up with the appearance of rock n' roll. Rock historian Ed Ward tells us about one of them named Dore' and the guy who ran it.

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC]

[END SOUNDBITE]

ED WARD: Someday, some genius is going to do a "Mad Men"-type show about the little record labels of the late 1950s. And yes, I'll happily serve as a consultant. My first suggestion is that the L.A. part be set in what was known as Record Row, a bunch of cheap studios, record-company offices, promotion companies and music publishers essentially bounded by Selma, Sunset, Argyle and Vine in Hollywood.

It was here, in 1955, that Era Records opened an office on North Vine. Era was run by Lew Bedell, who'd had a comedy act for some years, and Herb Newman, a younger guy who'd had some record business experience. Lew put up $7,500 of his own money on the suggestion of his Uncle Max, who knew people and thought this would be a good idea.

In fact, it was: Era had a number of hits by people like Gogi Grant and Art & Dotty Todd, artists who performed in local nightclubs, and their promotion folks were canny and effective, which meant that even the non-hits made money. Lew did well enough to marry his fiancée, Dede Barrymore, from the famous acting family, but it was becoming evident that he and his partner didn't see eye to eye on the rock 'n' roll stuff that seemed to be selling. So in 1958, Lew started a subsidiary label named after his new son, Dore', and bought a couple of unreleased recordings from a New York producer.

[SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AFTER SCHOOL ROCK"]

UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing) Do-be-doobie-do do wop wop. Do-be doobie-do do wop-wop. Do-be doobie-do do wop wop. Do-be-doobie-do do wop wop. Do-be-doobie-do do wop wop. That’s how to do it, the after school rock. Come, come, jump (unintelligible) and dance. Our music can't be stole. Asked the man for a soda pop, then you start doing the after school rock. Rock and roll...

[END SOUNDBITE]

ED WARD: "After School Rock" was one of those records people who didn't understand rock 'n' roll thought was rock 'n' roll, and it tanked. Still, the doors at Dore'were always open, and one day a couple of teenagers who called themselves The Teddy Bears walked in with something they'd recorded at Gold Star Studios.

Bedell listened to the tape, a song called "Don't You Worry My Little Pet," and liked it enough to put up a few bucks for the group to record a B-side. Philip Spector, the group's songwriter, adapted the words on his father's tombstone for the trio's girl singer, Annette Kleinbard, and they recorded "To Know Him Is to Love Him."

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC, "TO KNOW HIM IS TO LOVE HIM"]

ANNETTE KLEINBARDI: (Singing) To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him. Just to see him smile makes my life worthwhile. To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him. And I do. And I do. And I do. whoo-oo. And I do and I do and I do. And I do and I...

[END SOUNDBITE]

ED WARD: The more Bedell listened to this, the more he liked it. Herb Newman was scandalized: It was a demo! You couldn't release a demo. But Bedell released it, and every day after school, Philip would drop in to ask, "How are we doing today, Mr. Bedell?" And Bedell would invariably say, "No word." Then, one day, there was word, from Fargo, North Dakota, that the distributor there had sold 18,000 copies and needed more.

His territory also included Omaha, and from there it spread and spread, topping the charts in September 1958 and becoming Dore's' first - and only - million-seller. Soon thereafter, the Welk Music Group approached Era/Dore' and offered $180,000 for the copyrights on five of their songs, including The Teddy Bears', and Newman used his part to buy his share of Era from Bedell and move into swankier offices. Bedell knew better: His next hit could walk in off the streets at any minute, and it did.

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC, "BABY TALK"]

JAN BERRY: (Singing) Bom ba ba bom bab um dab um dab um wa wa wa.
Bom ba ba bom bab um dad um dab um wa wa wa.
Bom ba ba bom um dab um dad um dab um dab.
I am only five years old and my baby's three.
(Bom ba ba bom um dab um dab um dab um dab.)
But I know that she's my girl just you wait and see.

(Singing) When I say I love my girl, she replies to me. Yeah.
Bom ba ba bom bab um dab um dab um da da.
Bom ba ba bom bab um dad um dab da da. Which means to say she loves me. In baby talk. To say she loves me. In baby, baby talk.

[END SOUNDBITE]

ED WARD: Jan Berry had already had a hit with local DJ Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg, but he and his friend Dean Torrance had rewritten a flop record by someone called The Laurels and had their friends Herb Alpert and Lou Adler take "Baby Talk" around town for them. Dot Records made them an offer, but they wanted a second opinion, and Bedell's opinion was that he wanted it.

It scraped into the national Top 10 in 1959, and Bedell bought himself a Jaguar XKE with "LEW B" licence plates. Dore' wasn't much into what's called today, artist development. Most of the artists who recorded there went elsewhere for their next records. Not John and Judy; a brother-and-sister act. They were being pushed by their mother, and their first record for the label, "Hideout," got them two more, which didn't do as well.

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC, "HIDEOUT"]

JOHN AND JUDY: (Singing) About a block down the street there's the place where we meet. Mm-hmm. It's a real nice spot and the music's real hot. Mm-hmm. There's always something going on and you can have a lot of fun at the hideout.

[END SOUNDBITE]

ED WARD: They kept going, and eventually John wound up as part of the Walker Brothers. Occasionally, there was an actual hot record on Dore'. Tony Casanova was a Puerto Rican kid whose best friend in high school was Ritchie Valens and he used to play guitar with him.

[SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC, "SHOWDOWN"]

TONY CASANOVA: (Singing) I hear there's a guy looking for me and he's been fooling with my baby. They say he's Johnny Brown. He says he'll run me out of town. Johnny Brown, Johnny Brown, you and I are going to have a showdown. Now I've got...

[END SOUNDBITE]

ED WARD: The Beatles, though, took Bedell by surprise, just like everyone else. One thing he noticed immediately was that, while his pop acts suddenly weren't selling, the black groups kept going just fine, because the black stations weren't playing the British groups. In 1964, he made the wise business decision to focus on soul. But that's a story for another time.

DAVIES: Ed Ward lives in France. You can join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at nprfreshair. And you can download podcasts of our show at freshair.npr.org.

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