This remarkable silent film currently exists in a truncated print of poor quality available for download and viewing on YouTube. It is hardly known today, and probably its principal fame rests with the fact that it stars George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor--who went on to considerable movie celebrity from the latter 1920s through the mid-1930s. O'Brien and Gaynor appeared together one more time in the F. W. Murnau classic Sunrise in 1927. The Johnstown Flood movie also contains very brief extra appearances by future stars Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard. Its secondary importance rests on the film's impressive special effects work--outstanding for the time--in depicting the famous 1889 dam collapse that occurred near Pittsburgh, PA. The flood scenes compare quite favorably with those in the famous early disaster film Deluge (1933)--made some seven years later.
The actual Johnstown Flood was a monumental catastrophe---horribly and unnecessarily killing over 2200 people. The real story of this incident---with all its twists and irony definitely deserves a proper screen treatment today. Many liberties were taken with the pertinent facts in making the 1926 film version. A historically accurate retelling of the actual Johnstown Flood would be far more interesting and compelling to contemporary audiences than the rather dated melodrama that appears here.
Nevertheless, this film is important for what it does show--two (then) young up and coming stars making strong appearances in a significant early Hollywood effort--and exciting special effects that foreshadowed the even greater accomplishments in this area that were soon to amaze us in just a few years.
The actual Johnstown Flood was a monumental catastrophe---horribly and unnecessarily killing over 2200 people. The real story of this incident---with all its twists and irony definitely deserves a proper screen treatment today. Many liberties were taken with the pertinent facts in making the 1926 film version. A historically accurate retelling of the actual Johnstown Flood would be far more interesting and compelling to contemporary audiences than the rather dated melodrama that appears here.
Nevertheless, this film is important for what it does show--two (then) young up and coming stars making strong appearances in a significant early Hollywood effort--and exciting special effects that foreshadowed the even greater accomplishments in this area that were soon to amaze us in just a few years.