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.
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