The Third Alarm
About The Third Alarm
Dan McDowell drives horse-drawn engine number seven. The chief motors the house and retires Dan on a small pension when he cannot handle the new pumper. The five horses, Bullet among them, are sold. Dan’s son Johnny is a year from finishing medical school. Dan digs ditches, sees Bullet beaten, and is jailed when the horse is found in his shed. Johnny leaves school and joins the firehouse. A fire traps June Rutherford, who went back into the building for her dog. The ladder is short. Johnny scales to the balcony and gets her and the dog down, then a falling safe pins them. Dan, let out of jail, rides Bullet through the fire and pulls the safe clear. Dr. Rutherford buys a farm for the old fire horses. Dan keeps them. Johnny keeps June.
Cast & crew
More about The Third Alarm
Emory Johnson directed. His mother, Emilie Johnson, wrote the story and the screenplay. Pat Powers produced. FBO released it in January 1923. Henry Sharp photographed. Seven reels, about 6,700 feet, 70 minutes. Ralph Lewis is Dan. Johnnie Walker is Johnny. Ella Hall, Johnson’s wife, is June. Virginia True Boardman is Mother McDowell. This was the second film in Johnson’s eight-picture FBO contract.
Themes
Background
City firehouses were dropping horse engines for motor pumpers. Dan’s pension is that change, and Bullet’s sale is the same change.
Making
Johnson’s picture is a fire melodrama built on one retirement: the horses go, the father goes, and both come back for the third alarm. Emilie Johnson supplies the family plot. Sharp shoots the ladders and the safe.
Look
Henry Sharp shot the horse engine, the motor pumper Dan cannot drive, and the Rutherford fire, including the ladder that does not reach and the safe that falls through the floors.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
Incomplete copies are at Gosfilmofond and UCLA. Restored versions run about 57 to 59 minutes, short of the 70-minute release.
Notes
- Dan resents Dr. Loren Rutherford for having saved another child ahead of Dan’s own sick son.
- Johnny beats Bullet’s overseer, then tells his father to find other work.
- The police arrest Dan, not Johnny, after the horse is found in the woodshed.
- The third alarm is the Rutherford building.
- Incomplete prints are at Gosfilmofond in Moscow and at UCLA. Restored copies run about five reels, 57 to 59 minutes.
- Frankie Lee and Wilbur Higby are also billed.
Scenes
- Dan fails the motor pumper and the chief retires him.
- Bullet is sold, then found in Dan’s shed.
- June is on the top balcony with her dog and the ladder is short.
- Dan and Bullet pull the fallen safe off Johnny and June.
Also available
- UCLA Film and Television Archive
- Wikimedia Commons ("The Third Alarm" (1922).webm)
