Artifiction: Rin-Tin-Tintin

By the time the original Rin Tin Tin passed away in 1932, the world's most famous German Shepherd had already starred in dozens of Hollywood movies, thereby contributing greatly to the financial success of the Warner Bros film studio that employed him. Meanwhile in Europe the popularity of Belgian cartoonist Herge's most recent graphic creation, a teen-age newspaper reporter mononymously dubbed Tintin, was rapidly increasing in popularity. With the publication the year before of a book treatment of the youngster's latest escapades, Tintin in America, the adventures of the comic sleuth had attracted the attention of a whole new family of fans in the United States. Meanwhile, Hollywood child actor Ninnian J. Yule, Jr., a recent transplant from New York who had that same year appeared in his first, though uncredited, film role, was giving thought to a costume he might wear to a Tinseltown Halloween party, finally deciding on a mashup of the Wonder Dog and the Boy Reporter. With the aid of a low-level MGM makeup artist, young Yule attached a pair of cloth canine ears and a prosthetic nose to a real-human-hair fabrication of Tintin's signature quiff -- the entire ensemble held together with a web of rubber bands. To don his disquise, the young Ninnian first placed the artificial nose over his own pug, adjusting the false nostrils so as to allow optimal breathing. He then positioned the ears on the top of his head, leaving space for the golden tuft between the two. Thought lost until 2022, this one-of-a-kind object, though in less-than-pristine condition, sold at auction the following March for just short of 185,000 dollars.