Though some of its special effects have not dated well, San Francisco can still strike an emotional cord.
In 1905 Mary Blake (Jeanette McDonald) arrives naďve and fresh-faced in San Francisco. She seeks a singing job at Blackie Norton’s (Clark Gable) Barnaby Coast gambling and drinking establishment. Blackie ends up hiring her but not before checks out her legs. She faints from hunger (and probably embarrassment since she is really a preacher’s daughter). Her musical skills lean towards operatic singing, but Blackie trains her in the music hall ways of singing and signs her to a two year contract.
Blackie is a secret supporter of Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy) who is his old childhood friend. One evening socialite Jack Burley (Jack Holt) and Maestro Baldini (William Ricciardi) of the Tivoli Opera House and are taken with Miss Blake’s singing. They desperately want to sign Miss Blake for the Opera but she feels loyalty to Blackie and has to refuse their offers. Mary gets the impression that Blackie’s offer of chop suey in his apartments and heads off to the Tivoli.
Her big night arrives at the Tivoli and Blackie shows up, much to Burley’s annoyance, with a process server (comedian Edgar Kennedy) to stop Mary’s performance. Seems he never really gave her permission to break her contract and she’s in violation of it by appearing on the Tivoli stage. Burley buys time by saying that Mary doesn’t go on till the second act.
Mary is star of the show and goes on first and Blackie is infatuated with her singing and ends up knocking out the process server and the show goes on. Blackie is thrilled and proposes to Mary and she accepts, thereby entering her into another type of contract that binds her to Blackie’s club. Father Tim attempts to intervene because the club is not the kind of place for Mary.
Blackie slugs him and Mary decides to go back to the Tivoli for good. Burley, anxious for revenge, brings the law down on the Barnaby Coast and effectively closes it down. Seems the club owners have a competition every year called the “Chicken Ball” and the winner of the talent performance gets a trophy with $10,000 gold in it. Blackie has won the last three years in a row.
Mary's dignity
However, with all of Blackie’s people in jail from Burley’s raid he has no-one to compete. One of Blackie’s girls is at the contest and insults Mary and Burley and Mary finds out exactly how Burley got his revenge upon Blackie. She feels bad and goes on the stage for the Barnaby Coast and wins the contest. Blackie arrives to see her win, but throws down the prize since he’s still mad at Mary. Just about that moment, the big quake of 1906 hits. Blackie wanders the destroyed streets looking for Mary, will he find her and set things right with her?
San Francisco put me in mind of James Cameron’s Titanic in a way. We know that the earthquake destroyed San Francisco and we know that the big boat sinks. We know the disaster is coming, but I was somewhat taken aback because it happens out of the blue in San Francisco (or at least I didn’t recall the exact time that it was going to occur). I’m sure that this film was the large event film (ala Titanic) of 1936 and featured state of the art special effects (for the time).
Some of the effects have not dated well (the screen process shots) but some still hold their impact (the physical effects – the streets tearing apart and walls falling on people). I’m not sure I should mention it, but Gable wandering around the destroyed San Francisco reminded me of the poor souls stumbling around New York on 9/11 looking for their loved ones.
I only say this because I can imagine that the real event left people as devastated as the events of 9/11. I only hesitate in mentioning it because we know that this is a movie and Gable and his love will be reunited – victims of the quake and 9/11 were not so lucky. I was also not aware that large portions of San Francisco were dynamited to prevent the fire from spreading. Gable also has a religious redemptive scene at the end which might cause today’s filmgoers to roll their eyes. Not that his conversion isn’t or couldn’t be genuine (many turn to prayer after such disasters) but it’s handled way over the top by the studio with rhapsodizing choirs and the like.
San Francisco is presented in fullscreen as it was originally shown. This disc (of all the discs in the Gable box set) has the more recent of the special features. That feature is the 1996 TNT special “Clark Gable: Tall, Dark, and Handsome.” It’s hosted/narrated by Liam Neeson and has interviews with actress Carroll Baker, director Mel Shavelson, Hollywood columnist James Bacon, Clark Gable’s daughter Judy Lewis, actor Robert Wagner, actor Robert Stack, actor Eli Wallach, producer Frank Taylor, and Gable’s son John Clarke Gable.
This was shown on TNT and the commercial breaks and lead ins are still in the show on the disc. The rest of the special features are of the vintage variety. The first is a 10 minute cartoon called “Bottles” and is about the nightmare that a druggist has. The next is 8 minutes, called “Cavalcade of San Francisco”, and is a travelogue of the city.
The next is “Night Descends on Treasure Island”, runs 8 minutes, and is a travelogue of the island that was used in the 1939-40 World’s Fair. There’s also a 45 second alternative ending to the film that uses multiple shots of modern (circa 1930s) San Francisco instead of the static shot that ends the picture. The final special feature is the film’s theatrical trailer.
Has anyone seen Mary
San Francisco is a great film in the minds of classic film lovers and fans of Clark Gable. Like Titanic, it has a fictional love story in the middle of a real life disaster. Some of its special effects are dated, but if it strikes you in the right frame of mind they can still be effective (I’m thinking of the wounded Gable wandering around the destroyed city looking for his lost love). This would be my second favorite film out of the Gable box set.
San Francisco is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information. The film is also part of The Clark Gable Signature Collection DVD set available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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