“The Johnstown Flood” (1926)

About this event

In 1889, the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, failed, killing 2,209 people in the deadliest flash flood in American history. 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.