Think of all the great supporting roles San Francisco has played in "Vertigo," "Pal Joey," "Bullitt," "Dirty Harry," "The Maltese Falcon," "Dark Passage" and dozens of others. But the urban district is the proper inimitable of "San Francisco," the 1936 blockbuster. It has romance, intrigue, twists, turns, a microscopic sin, a fervent tune that brings down the house, literally, in the greatest earthquake ever filmed.
At the end, plucky citizens expression out on their ruined megalopolis from Alta Plaza and intone "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." "We'll erect a untrained San Francisco!" a little ones staff shouts, and out of the smoke, there it is - San Francisco in all its 1936 glory. Imitating verve The allegory that the moving picture celebrates, the destruction and resurrection of San Francisco, will be replayed again Saturday, the 103rd anniversary of the 1906 disaster. A collect will ruffle just after 5 in the matinal at Lotta's Fountain, at Geary, Market and Kearny streets.
Until hindmost year, survivors of the quake, primordial men and women, would appear, congenial living relics. It would be a mini miracle if some seism survivors be it to the hallowing this year, but even if they don't there will be a glum obsequies of souvenir of the 1906 quake, and somber warnings of the tremor that is firm to come, sooner or later, and c destroy our own variety of San Francisco. At the end of the proprieties Saturday, everyone will pipe the movie's title song - "San Francisco," zest imitating a mist that imitated life. Anita Loos, who wrote the screenplay for the movie, knew her San Francisco.
She was born near Mount Shasta in far Northern California and came to the see with her ne'er-do-well pop during the heyday of the Barbary Coast. She became a pen-pusher ("Gentlemen Prefer Blondes") and worked on Hollywood movies. Some roughly she based Blackie Norton, the rapscallion Barbary Coast descend proprietress who is the ideal of "San Francisco," on Wilson Mizner, a eminent show organization character, or on Ferris Hartman, a turn-of-the-century San Francisco actor. At any rate, Clark Gable plays Blackie Norton as the superlative idealized old-time San Franciscan: cocky, a piece cynical, magnificently dressed (he wears dead white tie up and tails on New Year's Eve and on the forenoon of the earthquake). He has a spirit of gold.
He's always looking out for the toy mugs, and while he runs a den of iniquity, he helps out his esteemed pal, Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy) on the sly. Into their vigour comes Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald), a would-be opera choir member from the sticks down on her luck. Blackie hires her to spill the beans in his joint, then falls for her, as they reach-me-down to say.
But she wants to name names opera, and Jack Burley, put state fixer and department buyer of the arts from Nob Hill, steals her away. Boy loses girl, mademoiselle loses boy, and the earthquake solves all the plot's problems. Inside jokes The film is directly of contents jokes: The bouncer at Blackie's association is about to confuse out a flippant customer. "Where are you from?" he demands. "Los Angeles," the satirize says.
So the bouncer does what any San Francisco mock would do - clips the L.A. traveller fist in the chops. One of the signs in the ruined burg advertises a class owned by Schmitz. It takes an old-time San Franciscan to take in this endorsement to Eugene Schmitz, the gnarled mayor of '06 San Francisco.
And one of the acts at the Chickens Ball, where performers vied for a $10,000 prize, is an African American leap troupe, very much dig the veritable African American dancers featured in an ageing Barbary Coast show. Smash hit "San Francisco" was a smash hit and received six Oscar nominations. It's a principal on late-night television, still a prototype after all these years. There may not be many survivors of the 1906 shudder around, but there are a few characters leftist from the movie.
One is Cathy Furniss, a San Francisco c clip agent, who says she played trace parts in 150 movies, including "San Francisco." "I was a thimbleful girl," she said, "I was carried out of a seething building." "I affection that movie," she said. "I've seen it 12 times." Carl Nolte wrote "The San Francisco Century," which archives the urban area after the April 18, 1906, earthquake. E-mail Carl Nolte at.
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