AWARDS AND HONORS

San Francisco received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Assistant Director, Best Original Story, Best Director and Best Actor for Spencer Tracy. It won for Best Sound.

THE CRITIC'S CORNER – SAN FRANCISCO

"With those earthquake scenes, with Miss MacDonald's golden voice and beauty, with the dimpled Mr. Gable in a he-man role, and with Mr. Tracy quietly humorous, quietly powerful as the understanding priest, San Francisco does not have to worry much about length or anything else."
– The New York Sun

"It is a cunningly screened pattern of cinematic hokum. While the narrative is not to be recommended for its dramatic or emotional integrity, W.S. Van Dyke has shot the works in his direction and the performers have given the material the over-emphasis necessary to make it a showy entertainment. Mr. Gable, as Blackie, is the most successful member of the company...Spencer Tracy is not so fortunate in the part of the Holy Father, but the role is not one that lends itself to the actor's particular talents...As for Jeanette MacDonald, she is almost entirely nonplused by proceedings. When she is chanting ragtime ditties in a Barbary Coast cabaret she is engaging and believable, but there is not much to be said for her rendition of operatic fragments when she has been taken up by the dudes, and she scarcely ever achieves any power in her straight acting."
– The New York Herald Tribune

"An earthquake, noisy and terrifying and so realistic that the customers will be dodging the falling buildings and mentally hurdling the crevices that yawn in the studio streets, is San Francisco's forte. That sequence, quite lengthy, alone is enough, but the picture has other assets and exhibitors can depend on it to do about everything but chop the tickets...For Gable and Miss MacDonald the leading roles were tailor-made. Virile gents are Gable's specialty, and in this assignment, besides the opportunity to act generally hard-boiled until seeing the light at the finish, he's given the chance to kayo three different guys. Miss MacDonald not only has a desirable part from a romantic standpoint, but enjoys so many singing chances that the picture nearly classes as a musical...Spencer Tracy plays the priest, and it's the most difficult role in the picture. It was a daring piece of writing to begin with and only the most expert and understanding handling could have kept it within the proper bounds."
- Variety

"Out of the gusty, brawling, catastrophic history of the Barbary Coast early in the century, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has fashioned a prodigally generous and completely satisfying photoplay...During its two-hour course...it manages to encompass most of the virtues of the operatic film, the romantic, the biographical, the dramatic and the documentary. Astonishingly, it serves all of them abundantly well, truly meriting commendation as a near-perfect illustration of the cinema's inherent and acquired ability to absorb and digest other art forms and convert them into its own sinews...San Francisco's earthquake comes. It is a shattering spectacle, one of the truly great cinematic illusions; a monstrous, hideous, thrilling debacle with great fissures opening in the earth, buildings crumbling, men and women apparently being buried beneath showers of stone and plaster, gargoyles lurching from rooftops, watermains bursting, live wires flaring, flame, panic and terror. Out of it, inevitably, comes the regeneration of Blackie Norton, the happy ending of the love story and a new San Francisco...For so impressive and thoroughly entertaining a picture, only a round robin of appreciation would do justice to the many who shared in its making. Miss MacDonald's voice seemed more melodious than ever...Mr. Tracy...is heading surely toward an award for the finest performance of the year...And, finally, Anita Loos' screenplay is well-knit and tautly written."
– The New York Times

"San Francisco...offers cineaddicts views of two unusual phenomena: the San Francisco earthquake...and Jeanette MacDonald acting with her teeth. Of the two, the latter is the more appalling. The earthquake, however, has more noteworthy sound effects. In addition to glimpses of tables falling, walls caving, bricks pouring, houses toppling, streets gaping and a city burning, it includes enough squeaking, howling, booming and crashing to shake the rafters of the sturdiest cinemansion. An earthquake in the real Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer manner, it lasts for 20 minutes on the screen and in all respects except casualties no doubt betters its original of 30 years ago."
- Time Magazine

"MGM's old war-horse just about scrapes by on starpower - Gable's cynical saloon keeper, MacDonald's showgirl, and Tracy's Irish priest battle for each other's souls - until San Francisco gets clobbered by the earthquake of 1906. Then it's another matter entirely, for this is one of the greatest action sequences in the history of cinema, rivalling the chariot race in both Ben-Hurs as well as the Odessa Steps in Battleship Potemkin. It's a symphony of editing and special effects that more than makes up for the first 90 minutes or so."
- The TimeOut Film Guide

"Top-grade entertainment with extremely lavish production. Jeanette overdoes it a bit as the belle of San Francisco, but the music, Tracy's performance, and earthquake climax are still fine."
- Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume