"Keystone Teddy" the Wonder Dog, arguably the first canine superstar of
the American cinema, was a fawn or lightly marked brindle Great Dane
featured in numerous shorts at Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Co. The
popularity of Teddy was such that he became one of Sennett's highest
paid "actors," commanding the sterling salary of $350 a week. He
performed with some of the top stars at the studio, including Baby Peggy,
Chester Conklin, 'Charles Murray (I)", Ford Sterling, and Slim Summerville. Teddy also
provided stalwart support to "America's Sweetheart, Canadian-born
Mary Pickford, in her sentimental pot-boiler Stella Maris (1918), wherein America's Best
Friend was billed rather pompously as "The Sennett Dog." Aside from
such august company, Teddy's most frequent co-stars were
ophthalmologically challenged Ben Turpin and Pepper the Cat.
The star of at least 18 movies, his most famous picture was the short
Teddy at the Throttle (1917), a classic of the canine genre that was highly evocative of the
Keystone product. The film combined absurd chase scenes, including a
race against time to save the heroine (Sennett bathing beauty Gloria Swanson)
from being run over by a train, slapstick comedy, satire and animal
comedy. The film also co-starred future Best Actor Academy Award-winner
Wallace Beery as the heavy.
In the movie, Teddy the Wonder Dog -- who was then relatively underpaid
at $35 per week -- sang with Gloria, danced with her maid, and saved
her by stopping a train, thus enabling her to be reunited with her true
love. Interestingly, Swanson claimed that she did not recall making the
film, in which she was upstaged by the famous pooch.
Teddy appeared with fellow Sennett superstar Mabel Normand in The Extra Girl (1923) (a.k.a.
"Millie of the Movies"), one of his last flicks. He retired from the
Hollywood "dog eats dog" rat-race in 1923.
