A VINTAGE ORIGINAL 5 3/4 X 3 1/2 INCH CANDID PHOTO OF LEE AAKER OF RIN TIN TIN FAME
Lee William Aaker was an American child actor, producer, carpenter, and ski instructor known for his appearance as Rusty of "B-Company" in the 1950s television program The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. He was the final surviving cast member of the series.
Lee William Aaker (September 25, 1943 – April 1, 2021)[1] was an American child actor, producer, carpenter, and ski instructor known for his appearance as Rusty of "B-Company" in the 1950s television program The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. He was the final surviving cast member of the series. In 1952, Lee Aaker appeared in Desperate Search with Howard Keel and Keenan Wynn.
Early years
Aaker's mother, Mrs. Myles Wilbour,[2] was the owner of a dancing school in Los Angeles.[3] (Another source says that she "ran a children's theatre academy" and that when Aaker was 4, she had him "singing and dancing at local clubs.")[4]
Film
On television as a young child, he started appearing uncredited at the age of 8 in films such as The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and High Noon (1952).[1] He quickly moved to featured status by the end of that year.
He showed talent as the kidnapped "Red Chief" in a segment of the film O. Henry's Full House (1952) and another kidnap victim as the son of scientist Gene Barry in The Atomic City (1952).
In 1953, he co-starred in the John Wayne western classic Hondo (1953) as the curious blond son of homesteader Geraldine Page.[1]
He also appeared in other film styles such as the film noir thriller Jeopardy (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, the horse opera drama Arena (1953) with Gig Young, and the comedies Mister Scoutmaster (1953) with Clifton Webb and Ricochet Romance (1954) with Marjorie Main.
Television
In 1953–54, Aaker was among the many child actors who auditioned for the role of "Jeff Miller" on the original 1954 Lassie series, which later aired as Jeff's Collie. That role went to Tommy Rettig. Two weeks later, Aaker won the role of "Rusty" on The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin, co-starring James Brown (1920–1992) as Lieutenant Ripley "Rip" Masters.[1]
Aaker and Rettig were friends, and both shows were popular with audiences. The two actors and the two star dogs appeared together in a photograph used on the cover of the July 2, 1955 issue of TV Guide.[3]: 236
Later years
Aaker told a newspaper reporter that when he reached the age of 21, he was paid a $10,000 lump sum (equivalent to $94,400 in 2022) by the studio that produced Rin Tin Tin "and he spent the rest of the '60s traveling around the world 'as sort of a flower child.'"[5] Unable to find work as an adult actor, Aaker got involved as a producer and later worked as a carpenter.[1]
Personal life
In the late 1960s, Aaker was married to Sharon Ann Hamilton for two years.[4] He resided in Mammoth Lakes, California, for many years and was the first adaptive sports instructor for Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra at Mammoth Mountain.[1]
According to Paul Petersen, an advocate for former child actors, Aaker experienced poverty toward the end of his life, and had struggled for years with substance abuse. Petersen said Aaker had suffered a stroke and died in Maricopa County, Arizona, near the city of Mesa, on April 1, 2021, and was listed as an "indigent decedent". Petersen was arranging Aaker's burial.[6] As a US Air Force veteran during the Vietnam War, he was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix.
Recognition
In 2005, Aaker won the Golden Boot Award[7] as Kids of the West.
Filmography
Film
Year Title Role Notes
1951 Benjy Benjy
1952 The Greatest Show on Earth Boy Uncredited
1952 Something to Live For Alternate Boy Uncredited
1952 My Son John Boy Scenes deleted
1952 No Room for the Groom Donovan
1952 High Noon Boy Uncredited
1952 The Atomic City Tommy Addison
1952 O. Henry's Full House J. B. Dorset aka Red Chief (The Ransom of Red Chief)
1952 Desperate Search Don Heldon
1952 Hans Christian Andersen Little Boy Uncredited
1953 Jeopardy Bobby Stilwin
1953 Take Me to Town Corney Hall
1953 Arena Teddy Hutchins
1953 Mister Scoutmaster Arthur
1953 A Lion Is in the Streets Johnny Briscoe Uncredited
1953 Hondo Johnny Lowe
1954 Ride Clear of Diablo Boy Uncredited
1954 The Raid Larry's Friend Uncredited
1954 Her Twelve Men Michael Elliott Uncredited
1954 Ricochet Romance Timmy Williams
1954 Destry Eli Skinner
1954 Black Tuesday Little Boy Uncredited
1957 The Challenge of Rin Tin Tin Rusty
1963 Bye Bye Birdie Student leader
Television
Year Title Role Notes
1952 Your Jeweler's Showcase Episode: "Teacher of the Year"
1953 Fireside Theatre Sandy Episode: "The Boy Down the Road"
1953–1954 The Ford Television Theatre Tony Evans / Joey 3 episodes
1953–1955 Letter to Loretta Jimmy Preston / Myron 2 episodes
1954 Schlitz Playhouse of Stars Episode: "Pearl-Handled Guns"
1954 General Electric Theater Tim Kelly Episode: "Wild Luke's Boy"
1954–1959 The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin Rusty 164 episodes
1955 The Adventures of Spin and Marty on Walt Disney Presents Russell
1955 The Lone Ranger Tommy Righter Episode: "The School Story"
1955 Screen Directors Playhouse Cowhide Episode: "The Brush Roper"
1956–1957 The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford (two Christmas episodes, with Rin Tin Tin)
1957 Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers Govinda Episode: "The Glass Necklace"
1959 The Millionaire Tommy Spencer Episode: "Millionaire Henry Banning"
1959 Rescue 8 Billy Episode: "Runaway"
1959–1961 The Donna Reed Show Walter the Wizard / Kenny 2 episodes
1959–1962 Disneyland Willy / Chuck Taylor 4 episodes
1960 Make Room For Daddy Charles Crane Episode: "Rusty Meets Little Lord Fauntleroy"
1963 The Lucy Show Cadet Blake Episode: "Lucy and the Military Academy"
ee Aaker, a child actor in the 1950s who starred as the orphan Rusty alongside a German shepherd on ABC’s The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin and in films including Hondo and The Atomic City, has died. He was 77.
Aaker had suffered a stroke and died April 1 near Mesa, Arizona, Paul Petersen, the former Donna Reed Show star who serves as an advocate for former child actors, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Aaker had battled drug and alcohol abuse during this life and was alone with one “surviving relative that could not help him,” Petersen said, adding that Aaker’s death certificate lists him as an “indigent decedent.” He was helping him get a proper burial.
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For Petersen, it marked another sad end to the life of a Hollywood child actor. “You are around just to please everyone,” he said, “and when there’s nothing left, they are done with you.”
On The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, which ran on Friday nights for five seasons (1954-59) and 164 episodes, Aaker starred as Rusty, a youngster being raised by U.S. Cavalry soldiers (including James Brown as Lt. Rip Masters) at Fort Apache after his parents were killed by Native Americans.
Earlier, Aaker portrayed the kidnapped son of a nuclear scientist (Gene Barry) in The Atomic City (1952), the son of an Arizona homesteader (Geraldine Page in her film debut) in the John Wayne-starring Hondo (1953) and the son of a desperate woman (Barbara Stanwyck) trying to save her trapped husband (Barry Sullivan) in Jeopardy (1953).
Lee Aaker
Aaker was born on Sept. 25, 1943, in Inglewood, California. His mother owned a dancing school, and he and his brother had a song-and-dance act. Director Fred Zinnemann spotted him on a live KTLA program one Saturday night and cast him as the title character in Benjy (1951), which won the Oscar for best documentary short.
In 1952, Aaker appeared in uncredited roles in Zinnemann’s High Noon, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth and Charles Vidor’s Hans Christian Andersen and was billed above Marilyn Monroe in O. Henry’s Full House — just four of the nine movies he was in that year.
His credits around that time also included the films Arena (1953), Mister Scoutmaster (1953), Ricochet Romance (1954) and Destry (1954) and the TV series The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The Lone Ranger.
In a 2011 interview, Aaker said he got $250 an episode to start with on Rin Tin Tin, with his salary growing to $500 per installment during the final season.
After Rin Tin Tin, he guest-starred on The Donna Reed Show, Route 66 and The Magical World of Disney and appeared in Bye Bye Birdie (1963) as acting jobs increasingly became scarce.
He left Hollywood before he was 20, then worked as a carpenter for two decades and taught skiing to underprivileged children and people with disabilities at Mammoth Mountain in California, living on his $1,500 a month SAG pension
The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin is an American children's television series in the Western genre that aired from October 1954 to May 1959 on the ABC television network. In all, 164 episodes aired. The show starred Lee Aaker as Rusty, a boy orphaned in an Indian raid, who was being raised by the soldiers at a US Cavalry post known as Fort Apache. Rusty and his German Shepherd dog, Rin Tin Tin, help the soldiers to establish order in the American West. James E. Brown appeared as Lieutenant Ripley "Rip" Masters. Co-stars included Joe Sawyer as Sergeant Biff O'Hara and Rand Brooks as Corporal Randy Boone.[1]
The character of Rin Tin Tin was named after Rin Tin Tin, a legendary screen dog of the 1920s and 1930s. The character was ostensibly played by Rin Tin Tin IV, who was either a descendant or related to the original dog. However, due to Rin Tin Tin IV's poor screen performance, the character was mostly performed by an unrelated dog, Flame Jr.[2]: 195
Synopsis
Rusty and his dog, Rin Tin Tin (Rinty), are the only survivors of an Indian raid on their wagon train. The boy and his dog are adopted by the 101st Cavalry at Fort Apache, Arizona, where Rusty is commissioned as an honorary corporal. Throughout the series, Rusty and Rinty help the cavalry and the nearby people to establish order in the American West.
Cast
Lee Aaker - Corporal Rusty "B-Company"
James Brown - Lt. Ripley 'Rip' Masters
Rin Tin Tin IV/Flame Jr. - Rin Tin Tin
Joe Sawyer - Sgt. Biff O'Hara
Rand Brooks - Corporal Randy Boone
William Forrest - Major Swanson
Hal Hopper - Cpl. Clark
John Hoyt - Colonel Barker
Harry Strang - Sheriff
Dean Fredericks - Komawi
Mildred von Hollen - Mrs. Barrington
George Keymas - Black Billy
Ralph Moody - Silas Gunn
Tom McKee - Capt. Davis
William Fawcett - Captain Longey/Marshal George Higgins
Morris Ankrum - Chief Red Eagle
Lane Bradford - Barrows
Ernest Sarracino - Hamid Bey
Jack Littlefield - Karl
Dehl Berti - Katawa
Bill Hale - Cole Hogarth
Steven Ritch - Lone Hawk
Lee Roberts - Aaron Depew
Larry Chance - Apache Jack
Charles Stevens - Geronimo
Gordon Richards - Hubert Twombly
Pierre Watkin - The Vet
Tommy Farrell - Carpenter
Harry Hickox - John Carter
Andy Clyde - Homer Tubbs
Ed Hinton - Seth Ramsey
Patrick Whyte - McKenzie
Stanley Andrews - Ed Whitmore
Abel Fernandez - O-ye-tza
Louis Lettieri - Chief Pokiwah
Jan Arvan - Chief Running Horse
William Henry - Bill Anderson
Guest stars
Robert Fuller appeared as Stan in the 1958 episode "The Epidemic". Harry Cheshire appeared as Silas Mason in "The Misfit Marshal" (1959).
Brad Johnson (1924–1981) appeared in the role of John Quinn in the episode "The Iron Horse" (1955).
Robert Knapp was cast in the role of Allen in the 1955 episode "The Guilty One".
William Fawcett played an elderly marshal in four episodes, including the 1955 episode, "Higgins Rides Again".
Rico Alaniz appeared twice, as Big Elk in "Rin Tin Tin Meets O'Hara's Mother" and as Don Valdez in "The Invaders" (both 1956).
Other guest stars included Roscoe Ates and Dean Fredericks in six episodes. John M. Pickard appeared three times. Others included Ron Hagerthy, Ewing Mitchell, Ed Hinton, Lee Van Cleef and Harry Dean Stanton.
Episodes
Main article: List of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin episodes
Season Episodes Originally aired
First aired Last aired
1
34 October 15, 1954 June 3, 1955
2
38 September 9, 1955 June 1, 1956
3
40 September 7, 1956 June 21, 1957
4
26 September 20, 1957 April 18, 1958
5
26 September 19, 1958 May 8, 1959
Production
Brown and Rin Tin Tin on a 1955 publicity postcard
Development
Producer Herbert Leonard got the idea for the show while shooting at the Corrigan Movie Ranch. He had taken his lunch at the Fort Apache set and got the idea for the entire format, but he needed to convince "Rinty" owner Lee Duncan to get the rights.[2]: 183 Leonard convinced Douglas Heyes to work on the script and they presented it to Duncan. Duncan and Leonard made the agreement to do the show over a handshake and an initial payment of ten dollars.[2]: 184
Casting
Three different German Shepherds were used as the titular character. Rin Tin Tin IV and one other dog were descended from the original "Rinty" of movie fame.[3]: 20 The other dog used was an unrelated dog named Flame, Jr. Due to Rin Tin Tin IV's poor screen performance, the character was mostly performed by Flame, Jr.[2]: 195
Filming
The episodes were filmed on a low budget, with Screen Gems limiting it to less than $50,000 per episode.[2]: 198 Outdoor action was shot largely at Corriganville Movie Ranch northwest of Los Angeles in Simi Valley, where the production made ample use of the facility's set from the movie Fort Apache.[2]: 207 Additional action sequences were shot on the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, known for its huge sandstone boulders and widely recognized as the most heavily filmed outdoor shooting location in the history of Hollywood.[citation needed]
The show's troupe of twelve character actors was often required to play multiple parts in the same episode, sometimes to the point of one actor fighting himself, wearing a cavalry uniform in one shot and an Apache outfit in another.[citation needed]
Themes
As a show targeting the youth audience, it not only displayed stories with action, but also included moral lessons. Actor James Brown explained, "Our stories simply taught that right was right and wrong was wrong."[4]
Broadcast
The show ran for five seasons on ABC on Friday evenings from October 1954 to May 1959. ABC reran the series on late afternoons from September 1959 to September 1961.[3] During its first season (1954-1955), The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin finished at number 23 in the Nielsen ratings, making it the second-highest rated series on ABC at the time behind Disneyland, which placed number six.[5]
Reruns ran on Saturdays on CBS from September 1962 until September 1964. A new package of reruns was shown in 1976, and continued into the mid-1980s. The original black-and-white prints were tinted sepia with new opening and closing segments filmed in color in Utah.[6] Due to poor scheduling practices of local stations, the rebroadcasts were not successful.[4]
Modern syndication includes remastered episodes produced by Cerulean Digital Color and Animation, with lines redubbed for some scenes using actors other than those from the original series cast, with a different generic theme song.[citation needed]
Reception
Critics were generally positive, with TV Guide calling it "crammed with action, gunplay and chase scenes," and that it "makes fine viewing for kids and nostalgic viewing for grownups".[4] Variety, however, was much more critical, calling Aaker "precocious" and "not helped by the direction", and that "the dog does nothing exceptional either".[4]
References
Lee Aaker, best known as the 1950s child star of The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin, has died at 77. The news comes via a social media post by former child actor and activist Paul Petersen. Petersen said Aaker “passed away in Arizona on April 1st, alone & unclaimed, listed as an ‘indigent decedent.'”
Aaker was 11 when The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin first appeared on ABC. The western’s original run on Friday evenings lasted from October 1954 to May 1959. Aaker played Rusty, a boy orphaned in an Indian raid being raised at Fort Apache. He starred opposite James E. Brown’s Lieutenant Ripley “Rip” Masters and, of course, a number of German shepherds who portrayed the titular canine.
Aaker’s career began propitiously. Even before Rin Tin Tin, at the age of 8 he had uncredited appearances in films such as The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and High Noon (1952). Aaker then appeared opposite Barbara Stanwyck in director John Sturges’ noir thriller Jeopardy (1953). That same year he co-starred in five other films, including Hondo alongside John Wayne and Geraldine Page.
But it was Rin-Tin-Tin that solidified him in the public imagination. ABC reran the series in from 1959 to 1961. It was then picked up by CBS from 1962-1964. A new round of reruns began in 1976 and continued into the 1980s.
In the early ’60s, Aaker appeared in episodes of The Donna Reed Show, Route 66, The Lucy Show, Make Room for Daddy and The Magical World of Disney, among other shows.
His career thereafter did not continue apace. By the mid-sixties, the roles dried up.
According to Petersen, Aaker served in the Air Force, but died this month “alone & unclaimed…indigent.” Petersen indicated that he was working on a proper burial, which Aaker is entitled due to his service in uniform.