The Johnstown Flood

Irving Cummings, Fox, 1926. George O'Brien, Florence Gilbert, Janet Gaynor (an early billing) in a melodrama built around the 1889 South Fork dam failure. Silent, about sixty-eight minutes. Cummings spending the money on water: the club, the valley, the wall. Gaynor not yet a star, already the face the flood is supposed to endanger. The disaster is Pennsylvania history; the love triangle is Fox insurance.