Rin Tin Tin was a German Shepherd rescued during World War I, and his popularity in movies naturally led competing studios to make dog pictures of their own with similar-looking canine actors. One such silent was His Master's Voice, starring a dog named Thunder.
The structure of the movie is a bit interesting. Thunder is much older and has a son, Flash, and the two can talk to each other as it were through the use of title cards, not that the humans would have known this. Anyhow, Flash asks his dad how his dad's master became the hero he is, which goes back to the Great War. So, once again, we get a flashback....
Before the US entered the war, Bob Henley (George Hackathorne) was an architecture student in one of those small towns, with a girl Mary (Marjorie Daw) he was interested in, although piece of work Jack tries to steal Bob's girl because he knows Bob is a coward who won't stand up for himself. Even worse is that when there's a contest to design a new library for the town, Jack "offers" to take Bob's design into the office to submit it, even though it should be obvious that Jack is going to submit it under his own name.
As for that war that's about to come to America, Bob has no desire to fight, and his mom has no desire to let him go off to Europe. But the draft board comes, and not only drafts Bob, but finds that Thunder would be great for service with the Red Cross. Now, you'd think this would be a perfect opporunity to have Bob be Thunder's handler and work in the ambulance corps or some such, but the US military being assholes, they split Bob and Thunder up.
Over in France, Bob is about to desert since he's still a coward who is unable to fight. But then he sees Thunder, and the two being reunited, Thunder becomes Bob's mascot in the trenches. Bob gets sent on a dangerous mission, and at least this time it's not his cowardice that lets him down, but in fact getting injured by German fire. Thunder is there to save the day, however, as well as let Bob take credit for heroism. It even makes Bob able to stand up to Jack when he returns home, so that we can have our requisite happy ending.
To be honest, the story in His Master's Voice is kind of sappy. But the production is actually fairly well handled, for a movie that clocks in at a bit under an hour. That short running time, however, makes things feel a bit more like a skeleton of a story than something that's fully fleshed out. His Master's Voice is another of those movies that's certainly not bad, but not great, and memorable more for the fact that the dog is a main character here.
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