hlschmidt

Outstanding documentation of the open hearth steel making process! The tour of the mill that Steve Kostane (John Lund) is given is an excellent summary, from raw materials (including coke-making!) into the blast furnace to produce the iron, to steel in the open hearth, to teeming the red-hot ingots and readying them for the rolling mill. There are not many integrated steel mills like this left in the US, and none AFAIK use the open hearth process anymore (today steel is made in the BOF, basic oxygen furnace, or is melted from scrap). BTW, in addition to automaking, Kaiser Steel also had a large shipbuilding division which turned out Liberty ships in WWII.

OK, so while the movie IS a bit cornball, it's a great document in glorious living Technicolor©! It's a shame that it doesn't seem to be commercially available on DVD.