Originally Posted by Catlady
Actually, according to Susan Orlean's book, he did make talkies, including some serials for Mascot Pictures after Warner canceled his contract: Lone Defender and Lightning Warrior.
She mentions that Rin Tin Tin would have had to be retrained for talkies--for silents, he would have been trained for voice commands, but for talkies, hand signals would have had to be used.
But the interesting point she makes is that for silents, a dog actor could be basically equivalent to a human actor--neither of them spoke, the story was told through action and the story cards. But talkies gave the human actors an added dimension that the animals could never have. It took the focus off the animals and put it on the human actors.
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