The Johnstown Flood (1926)

Nearly 37 years later, director Irving Cummings dramatized the event in The Johnstown Flood. George O’Brien stars as Tom O’Day, a civil engineer concerned with the dam’s instability and the vulnerability of the workers living in the valley below. Costars Janet Gaynor and Florence Gilbert, representing opposite sides of the social divide, are the two women who love him. The Johnstown Flood is noted for its innovative special effects in depicting the film’s disastrous events.

Historian Robert A. Harris notes that “the importance of The Johnstown Flood to film history is difficult to overstate.” This screening includes a guest appearance by noted silent film musician Rodney Sauer, who leads a quintet in a score created expressly for the film.