San Francisco
Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Year Released: 1936
Rating: 1.5
Singer Jeanette MacDonald goes to the Bay to sing and lands a gig with "godless" leg man Blackie (Clark Gable, mixing in some creepiness with that machismo), but she has aspirations to be more 'artistic' and do opera (instead of some watering hole), which leads to conflicts with Gable. Somewhere in the middle of this is the Doomsday Priest Spencer Tracy telling everyone that the drinking and partying Frisco does makes them a "corrupt city," leading up to a massive earthquake. MacDonald's musical numbers are too frequent and break up the rhythm, and the God-fearing Tone is repellent - only once Gable's character turns his face to the Heavens for Help do the fires stop and the city become transformed (the tug-of-war for MacDonald's Pure Soul is so great it has to be Biblical). There should be nothing wrong with cavorting and gambling and trying to live one's own life: America needs its Castro Street.
