page_title: Thunder the Dog
section_title: Fox Films, 1926-1927
hierarchical_section_title: Thunder the Dog / Film career / Fox Films, 1926-1927
caption_attribution_description: English: Lobby card for the 1926 film Wings of the Storm.
context_page_description: Thunder the Dog was a male German Shepherd that performed in American silent films from 1923 through 1927. Although Thunder's filmography is rather brief, his six- and seven-reel features were much longer and more elaborate than the films in which many of his fellow canine actors appeared during the silent era. His releases did, though, have to compete in the 1920s with other feature films starring rival German Shepherds such as Peter the Great, Napoleon, Rex, and, most notably, Strongheart and Rin Tin Tin. During his career, Thunder worked for Paramount, Gotham Pictures, and Fox Film Corporation; and he shared screen time with Clara Bow, Dorothy Dalton, William Russell, Caryl Lincoln, and other prominent actors of the period.
context_section_description: While Gotham produced most of Thunder's films, Fox developed two of his last three pictures: Wings of the Storm, released in November 1926, and Wolf Fangs, his final film, released a year later.  Thunder still impressed theatergoers in his farewell performance in Wolf Fangs. The St. Petersburg Times summarized the 1927 film as a "novel situation of a puppy lost among the wolves and raised as one of their pack." The Florida newspaper's reviewer marveled again how the dog exhibited "almost human intelligence" and "amazes every member of the audience" with his stunts. Wolf Fangs also includes the fourth and final appearance of Thunder's "beautiful mate" White Fawn.
  
  Thunder's last film was released when the number of dog-hero films was beginning to decline in the closing years of the silent era. A witness to that decline, Frank Davis described in a 1963 interview how "When sound came in, dog pictures went out." In fact, trade publications even by 1925 were reporting an overabundance of canine actors in the film industry, as well as signs of dog-picture fatigue at some production companies. In its April 1, 1925 issue, Variety mentions Thunder in its remarks about the glut of trained dogs seen in casting offices and on studio lots:
  Since the success of such screen canine stars as Rin-Tin-Tin, Strongheart and Thunder, propective dog stars have cropped up by the dozens, according to the men who have turned in photographs and alleged stunts their dogs can do. One casting office has enough trained dogs on its list to start a dog circus were they all put together under one tent. The principal dogs before the public now bring their owners in comfortable weekly stipends.
  Some public reactions to Thunder's final release provide further evidence that dog-centered action films had indeed peaked in popularity by the late 1920s. After he presented Wolf Fangs in his theater in Louisville, Nebraska in 1928, Frank Johnson reported in the Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World that the Fox drama, while "suitable", had "Just a bit too much dog and not enough human acting".
  Dog heroes, such as Rin Tin Tin, continued to star or costar in features, featurettes, and shorts into the 1930s and beyond, just in less numbers than in the silent era. One other later star was "Flash the Wonder Dog", a character who first appeared as a puppy in His Master's Voice and is credited as a "son of Thunder". There is, however, no documentation that links Flash genetically to Thunder either as that film puppy or later as a different, fully grown canine star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
caption: Lobby card showing Thunder and White Fawn watching actors hold their puppies in Wings of the Storm (1926)
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