The city was the setting for the movie "The Deer Hunter" (1978), although none of the movie was actually filmed there (other mill towns in the Monongahela River Valley and elsewhere in the tri-state area were used). Even the opening scene, which features a large sign saying "Welcome to Clairton, City of Prayer," was shot in Mingo Junction, Ohio, although its phrasing is based on smaller signs posted at the city's boundaries during the mid-1960s (as a response to the Supreme Court's 1963 ban on sponsored school prayer).