THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926) with Rodney Sauer and Members of the Cleveland Photoplayers

In 1889 the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania failed, killing 2,209 people in the deadliest flash flood in American History. Thirty-seven 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. 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. September 18, 2026, 7:30 pm, Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art. $25/$22 CMA, CSFF members.