San Francisco

W.S. Van Dyke, 1936

Released in the midst of a Great Depression in the United States of America, San Francisco revolves around a simple love affair between Blackie Norton (Clark Gable) and Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald). MacDonald plays “the virgin,” a parson’s daughter, who arrives in San Francisco and lands in the hands of Blackie, debonair owner of “The Paradise” club. Fascinated by the innocence of her operatic pipes and doe-eyed gaze, he hires her as a club singer where she gains a romantic influence over Blackie and Jack Burley (Jack Holt), owner of the Tivoli Opera House. With the love of two men, will she choose her career over the love of her life?

Marketed to the community as a romantic drama the film was also classified as a musical, familiar ground for MacDonald who had spent most of her career singing in various musical productions such as Love Parade with Maurice Chevalier. But the big question was whether Metro Goldwyn Mayer could successfully market a musical film in the midst of a depression that would last throughout the 1930s? What could Van Dyke incorporate into this film to make it more appealing to an ailing generation?

First off, he had Clark Gable, who was not only one of the most swooned-over leading men in Hollywood at the time, but a 1934 Academy Award winner for It Happened in One Night. Second, the story behind the film was able to provide a message of hope for the people who were out on the streets and out of work. This was seen in the last scene of the movie when it was announced amongst the earthquake victims that the fire within the city had stopped and they were now free to rebuild. There was mutual agreement that the community would build a bigger and better San Francisco. The last shot in the film was a shot of a San Francisco that had not yet come to light. It is believed that the intention of this shot was to give hope to a depression stricken America as well as provide climatic relief to the film’s own story.

And finally, the opening sequence of this film hinted at the film’s eventual outcome. The film had opened to a screen that had read “5 13 AM April 18, 1906”. For those uncertain about the significance of this date, it was the same date that the city of San Francisco was nearly demolished by an earthquake which the film does its best to depict through falling debris, split sidewalks, fatal casualties. In 1936, this event would have been as significant as Hurricane Katrina or 9/11.

According to Richard Maltby in “Hollywood Cinema”, the film San Francisco could very well fall under the category of a “women’s film” which would later be known as a melodrama, due to the film’s classification as a romantic drama depicting the “working girl” (103) who eventually finds happiness with the “reformed” club owner. Mary is able have her “sweetheart” without compromising the possibility of her career.

Ashley Atkins