San Francisco, open your golden gate,
You let no stranger wait outside your door.
San Francisco, here is your wandering one
Saying, "I'll wander no more."
Other places only make me love you best.
Tell me you're the heart of all the golden west.
San Francisco, welcome me home again.
I'm coming home to go roaming no more.
In San Francisco, Clark Gable, as
Blackie Norton, "makes with the sweet talk" to Jeanette MacDonald, as Mary
Blake, in the Barbary Coast's mythical Paradise Saloon. This 1936 M-G-M disaster musical introduced
the the famed song "San Francisco," which became one of two official city
songs on May 15, 1984.
During the movie's 1936 San Francisco
premiere some 1906 survivors became ill during the extraordinary earthquake
sequence, and left the theater.
The motion picture's title song,
"San Francisco," was written by Bronislaw Kaper and Walter Jurman, with lyrics
by Gus Kahn. The motion picture is shown each April 18th at the Castro Theatre
in commemoration of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.