Quite an endearing little picture

If you can get past some of Heinie Conklin's tedious mugging and stunts, this is a surprisingly entertaining film. Your kids (and maybe even you) will laugh out loud at Rin Tin Tin's silly mustachioed disguise and boots, at what at least appears to be his remarkable range of emotion, and at his thrilling stunts. I watched this for Charles Farrell, but I must say the tail-thumping scene, in which "Lobo" forewarns the lovers whenever the woman's father or his associate is about to enter the parlor, is quite charming.

Ms Crabtree fans? You'll like this too, unless you can't bear to see her as a natural brunette.

But for Farrell's female admirers, this is a must. Farrell is a natural with dogs. The screen qualities for which so many female moviegoers adored him - gentle virility, kindness and naive unaffectedness - are cast into high relief in all his scenes with Rin Tin Tin. His bandaging of the dog's wounds spotlights those astonishingly beautiful hands of his, foreshadowing his famous shampooing of Gaynor in Lucky Star just four years later. It requires no stretch of the imagination to understand how women and dogs are quickly domesticated - no masculine cinematic hands were more graceful and soothing. Farrell's athleticism and horseriding abilities are shown to good effect here as well, though we 21st century viewers must keep in mind that these films were shot quickly, on shoestring budgets, and with little attention to some of the finer points of stunt work.

June Marlowe was no Janet Gaynor, but she's a fitting subject for Farrell's affections. In his scenes wooing Marlowe, he is wonderfully warm and charismatic. You can well understand the rumors that the strapping, 6'2 Farrell was scoring with every girl on the lot back in those days. At age 25, he was just stunning to look at, even under all that silent film-era makeup.