Big-budgeted disaster films, showing cataclysmic destruction of the earth by natural forces, have long been popular with the movie public. Many of these films include post-apocalyptic plots of the world's few survivors. Cinema's first "disaster" movie was August 1933 "Deluge."
RKO Radio Pictures' distributed the Admiral Production film. Admiral was a second-tier studio, but was able to fund a relatively large budget for the 'Grade-B' movie. Film critics praised the special effects occurring in the first third of "Deluge." "These effects are undoubtedly quite an achievement for the early 1930s," writes Mark Welsh, "even if the crumbling buildings are still obviously models, but the drowning of cities by mighty waves is fairly credible." So impressive were those early effects that RKO rented "Deluge's" footage to other studios to use in such films as 1935 'S. O. S Tidal Wave' and 1949 'King of the Rocket Man' among others. The 2004 disaster movie 'The Day After Tomorrow,' uses almost the exact gigantic wave action scenes in the same city, New York City, as the 1933 Admiral picture. The extensive use of its footage in other movies explains why "Deluge" was withdrawn from the market and was considered lost until an Italian print was discovered in 1981. A full English version emerged in 2016 and was fully restored.
As a 'post-apocalyptic' film, "Deluge's" catastrophe came about by a combination of an extreme low pressure system and a massive earthquake off the Eastern shore at the same time, creating floods throughout most of the world. Only higher elevations had remained dry, although they too have been damaged by the quakes. The movie focuses on the Webster family, Martin (Sidney Blackmer) and wife Helen (Lois Wilson), who are separated by the rising seas. Martin is separated from his family and is alone in a seaside (now high up) shack when he finds professional swimmer Claire (Peggy Shannon) passed out on the shore. She had just escaped the clutches of two ravenous men and has swum miles to arrive at the footsteps of Martin's abode, where the two fall in love. They end up in a former vacation resort town where the pair discover a surprise that'll change their relationship. Says film critic Danny March, echoing the consensus of "Deluge's" achilles heel: "the massive special effects sequence that starts the movie had a lot more thought put into it than all of the characters who wandered around after."
Actress Peggy Shannon's tragic life was all too common in early Hollywood. As a former Ziegfeld chorus girl on the Broadway stage in the 1920's, Shannon was spotted by Paramount Pictures and tabbed to be the next Clara Bow "It" girl. Hours after arriving in Hollywood, she replaced Bow after the star had a nervous breakdown a couple of days before filming 1931's 'The Secret Call.' With a whirlwind schedule of several movie appearances in such a short stretch, Shannon began to hit the bottle to decompress after 16-hour work days. By the time she appeared in "Deluge," her reputation as a difficult and temperamental actress was well known throughout Hollywood,. After a couple years on the stage back East, she returned to film, but with minor roles.
Her husband, Albert Roberts, returned to the couple's North Hollywood apartment from a fishing vacation in May 1941 to see Shannon slumped on the kitchen table, a cigarette in her mouth and an empty glass in her hand, dead. An autopsy revealed she expired 12 hours earlier brought on by a heart attack with a damaged liver. Husband Roberts was so distraught over her premature death at 34 that three weeks later he shot himself in the same chair Shannon had died. He left a suicide note exclaiming, "I am very much in love with my wife, Peggy Shannon. In this spot she died, so in reverence to her, you will find me in the same spot."
