James Brown; Lt. Masters On `Rin Tin Tin'

HOLLYWOOD - James Brown, one of the classically handsome, All-American faces to come out of Hollywood in the 1940s but probably better known as Lt. Rip Masters on the TV series "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin," died Saturday at his Los Angeles home of complications of lung cancer. He was 72.

Mr. Brown made the first of some 30 films in 1942 ("The Forest Rangers") and the following year began appearing in the three to four features annually that were to mark the rest of his career ("Air Force," "Corvette K-225," "The Food Fellows," "Young and Willing.")

His other credits included "Going My Way," "Objective Burma!," "The Big Fix," "Anna Lucasta," "Sands of Iwo Jima," "The Pride of St. Louis," "A Star Is Born," (the 1954 version) and "Irma La Douce."

He became Lt. Masters for the five-year run of "Rin Tin Tin," the TV spinoff of the old dog adventure pictures of the 1920s that began on ABC in 1954.

Brown left the entertainment industry in the mid-1960s to begin manufacturing weight-belts, but returned to television in the mid-1970s, appearing in "Gunsmoke," "Murder She Wrote" and "Dallas."