The
Hagley Library recently presented a successful screening of three short films sponsored by the the American Rolling Mill Company (ARMCO) in Middletown, Ohio. Moviegoers gathered for the event at the Sorg Opera House in Middletown, the town that the American Rolling Mill Company called home from the time of its founding in 1899. ARMCO's former plant is currently owned by AK Steel, a Cleveland-Cliffs company.
Included at the screening was the premiere of a recently restored print of The Romance of Iron and Steel. The 1938 industrial film was one of the first films produced by the Cleveland-based Cinecraft Productions. Hagley acquired the Cinecraft film archive in 2019. In addition, Hagley screened two films produced by ARMCO in the 1970s. All of the films came from the Cleveland-based Cinecraft archive.
Before the screening, brief talks were given by Sam Ashworth, a former ARCMO employee and past president of the Middletown Historical Society, and Kevin Martin, Hagley Library's chief curator, who spoke about Hagley's effort to preserve industrial and sponsored films. The event was well attended by Middletown residents many who worked or had family that worked at ARMCO.
A special thanks to the National Film Preservation Foundation who funded the preservation work on Romance of Iron and Steel.
Read more about Hagley's film collection at www.hagley.org/film
Kevin Martin is the Chief Curator of Library Collections and the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Audiovisual and Digital Collections at Hagley Museum and Library