The Johnstown Flood

It's Johnstown, a lumbering town where the mighty dam holds back the water and makes it available for transporting the felled trees for Paul Nicholson's mighty enterprise. But engineer George O'Brien warns him that the dam is going to fall with the next heavy rainfall. Nicholson scoffs, so O'Brien quits and with a group of like-minded citizens, takes over the dam.

That might be enough in a B movie, but director Irving Cummings and writers Edfrod Bingham and Robert Lord put a bunch of subplots in. O'Brien is mighty fond of Janet Gaynor -- in her first major role -- and she is desperately in love with him. Meanwhile, Nicholson's niece, Florence Gilbert, and O'Brien are falling in love. Add in Paul Panzer as Miss Gaynor's father, Max Davidson as a shopkeeper, and Gary Cooper, Kay Deslys, Clark Gable, Florence Lawrence, and Carole Lombard as uncredited extras, as well as great set design and an amazingly photographed flood to stop every plotline, and you've got among the goldurnestest spectacles of the silent era. Once again, Irving Cummings demonstrates that he can handle any sort of picture with the best of them.