Product Details

• Actors: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt, Jessie Ralph
• Directors: W.S. Van Dyke
• Writers: Anita Loos, Robert E. Hopkins
• Producers: W.S. Van Dyke, Bernard H. Hyman, John Emerson
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301978331
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,520 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

"San Francisco, open your Golden Gate...." If the classic city anthem isn't part of your life already, it will be after a viewing of this 1936 hit, a wonderful blend of cornpone, spectacle, and song. It's set in 1906, the year the earthquake flattened much of Baghdad by the Bay. Like the disaster movies that followed (including In Old Chicago, a Fox cash-in from a couple of years later), San Francisco slowly establishes its characters before unleashing the destruction. Clark Gable is Blackie Norton, a cocky and ruthless Barbary Coast character whose heart is--well, not softened, but at least dented by the arrival of an opera singer (Jeanette MacDonald) looking for a job. He hires her for his rowdy club, while his childhood chum, Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy), disapproves. As they would subsequently demonstrate in Test Pilot and Boom Town, Gable and Tracy have great he-man rapport together (Blackie's rampant maleness is challenged only by the fact that he knows the priest could punch him out). Director W.S. Van Dyke (The Thin Man) keeps everything cracking along, except for those moments when Cultcha rears its head and MacDonald sings an aria. When the quake hits, and the fire follows, the movie uncorks some really quite awesome special effects, including the unforgettable image of a street heaving up and separating under people's feet--much superior to the disaster effects in The Last Days of Pompeii, made just a year earlier. Needless to say, this could only be MGM in its heyday, laying on the big budget, an acceptable level of naughtiness, and a dose of religious turnaround in the end. It worked then; it still does. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MGM All-Star Classic Still Shines!, August 11, 2006

By	Benjamin J Burgraff (Las Vegas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: San Francisco (DVD)

"San Francisco", MGM's 'Showcase' film of 1936, demonstrates why no other studio could 'touch' Metro at it's prime. Take the biggest star in Hollywood, team him with the 'Queen' of 1930s MGM musicals, add the greatest film actor of a generation in support, then top things off with a 'no-expense-spared' recreation of the most famous earthquake in American history, and an instant Classic was born!

Seventy years later, the film has lost little of it's luster; certainly the 'Message' is a bit heavy-handed, the long opera sequences may make some viewers cringe, and some of the effects (involving double exposures) seem quaint in an era of CGI...but Clark Gable still projects his signature cockiness and virility, Jeanette MacDonald is still radiant (and can sure belt out "San Francisco"), and Spencer Tracy is still magnificent (it is easy to see why he received a 'Best Actor' nomination, in what was obviously a supporting role; he easily steals the film, in every scene he's in).

Directed by the remarkable W.S. ('Woody') Van Dyke, a consummate craftsman, and one of MGM's fastest directors (contradictory terms, but he combined speed and style, effortlessly), with a screenplay, surprisingly, by future "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" author, Anita Loos (from a story by Robert Hopkins), "San Francisco" exudes confidence, from the riotously decadent New Year's Eve, 1905, opening scene, to the finale, as Gable, MacDonald, Tracy, and, apparently, most of the survivors of the earthquake and fire march to a hilltop, vowing to build a 'better' city, and singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", as they view the smoking ruins, which dissolves into the 'modern' San Francisco of 1936.

Corny? Certainly! But undeniably rousing, as well!

The 'Special Features' are excellent, as well; the TNT documentary, "Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Clark Gable", while glossing over some 'seamier' chapters of Gable's life, does offer insights by the daughter he secretly fathered by Loretta Young, and the son he died before ever seeing...and the biography is VASTLY superior to the one offered in the "Gone with the Wind" Special Edition. An 'alternate ending' is barely different from the actual one, other than offering more views of the city, but the 1936 MGM cartoon ("Bottles") is astonishingly well-crafted and gorgeous in Technicolor, and two Technicolor 'TravelTalk' short features, from 1940, on San Francisco, and Treasure Island, at the time of the 1939-40 World Exposition, are both very entertaining and a visual 'time machine' back to a simpler era.

This is a wonderful DVD, certainly worth owning!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MGM`s GREAT DRAMA/DISASTER/MUSICAL/ROMANCE EPIC, December 10, 1998

By A Customer

From the mid 20s till the mid 50s, METRO-GOLDWYN MAYER(MGM) boasted they had more stars than there are in the heaven. MGM was the first studio to release a film with more than two stars(it was in 1932 - the Academy Award winning GRAND HOTEL starring Garbo, Beery, Crawford and Lionel Barrymore). SAN FRANCISCO proved to be one of the finest that ever came out of Hollywood. 3 Stars; Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy; strong story containing drama, music, song, romance A N D disaster; set decorations by Cedric Gibbons, special effects that has never dated, realistic scenes from ol`Frisco, though everything was shot in the MGM studios at Culver City. SAN FRANCISCO is a film that will never lose its appeal because of all these ingredients. This film is a MUST-SEE. One of the best that was ever made.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS REALLY DESERVE A "6", July 12, 2004

By	Henning Sebastian Jahre "Judy-Viv" (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Now this is what all-timers must have meant when they snapped "they don`t make`m like that anymore!".
MGM`s San Francisco offers us star names, good plot and dialogue, superb photography, special effects, scenary(Cedric Gibbons), sound(Douglas Shearer, brother of Norma), music, song.... The Hollywood of 2day should look back and really learn that you just can`t throw in spcial-effects, PRAY - a n d have hope for a good movie. The Day After Tomorrow is great, but sadly lacking star names like in this 1. Today - more often - the effects are the stars... It didn`t use 2 be like that(The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno to name but a few)...

I name SAN FRANCISCO(with Mutiny on the Bounty), the best MGM b&w melodrama of the 30s... 20th Century-Fox made "IN OLD CHICAGO" 1937 but as with the MGM musical.... NO ONE COULD TOP METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER AT THEIR ZENITH.