Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Fourty-Three: One Disaster after another

Throughout the 1930s the film industry was mainly run by the studios who contracted various stars to appear in their movies. Two of the biggest studios at the time were MGM and 20th Century Fox and in the late 30s they were run by Louis B Mayer and Darryl F Zanuck respectively. Over the years of 1936 and 1937 both studios produced big budget films concentrating on two separate famous historical disasters that occurred in U.S. States.

First up was MGM's San Francisco a film that looked at 1906 era San Francisco in the build upto the famous earthquake. It sees Clark Gable corrupt nightclub owner Blacky Norton who hires and later romances Jeanette MacDonald's club singer Mary Blake. MacDonald is eventually tempted away from Norton and his Paradise Club and ends up singing at the opera and dating a wealthy opera scion. Meanwhile Norton's childhood friend, now a priest, tries to get his old friend to change his ways and also tries to convince Mary that Norton isn't all bad. In the end Mary returns to Norton with a performance of the song San Francisco that wins The Paradise Club an award. Just after this however the earthquake hits and the final 15 or so minutes of the film sees the specially constructed scenes as the quake followed by the fire as Norton tries to find Mary and he has to pray to God, something he's refused to do up to now, eventually finding her alive. In the impressive final scene the survivors of the earthquake march hand in hand singing as the shot of the wreckage of the earthquake dissolves into the San Francisco of the 1930s. The final earthquake montage sequences were the most impressive and obviously cost the most to make, the film also made a star out of MacDonald, who had previously been noted for her work with Maruice Cheavlier. However Clark Gable didn't seem to have a good time filming the movie clashing with MacDonald and also almost refusing to deliver the final breakdown scenes claiming that he would make him come off as soppy. Despite putting in a great performance it was actually Spencer Tracy, as the priest, who got a Best Actor Nomination even though he was the support to the Gable character. The film also one the award for Best Sound and was nominated for director, assistant director and original screenplay. But this was the year that over-hyped Great Ziegfeld won Best Picture so there was no chance for San Francisco despite in being a pretty impressive picture.

A year after the release of San Francisco, Fox decided they were also going to release a disaster picture and picked the Chicago Fire as their backdrop. They tried to cast Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the lead roles however they were both tied to MGM so in the end the roles went to Tyrone Power and Alice Faye . The film starts with the O'Leary family travelling to Chicago when the father dies, the mother becomes a washerwoman and with her three sons begins running a farm. Years later Dion is a dodgy club owner, Jack is a respectable lawyer and Bob helps his mother out. Dion begins a relationship and later marries club singer Belle despite his mother's protests. Dion then helps Jack run for council in Chicago and pays off a lot of his underworld friends to make this happen so Jack can do Dion's bidding however Jack finds out and the two brothers go to war. Again disaster strikes as the fire starts thanks to an incident provoked by Mrs. O'Leary's cow, the fire sequences themselves were said to cost over $150,000 and the set is said to have burned for three days. Although up to this point the film hadn't been up to much the final disaster is what everyone had been waiting for. In terms of Oscars it won one more than San Francisco as Alice Brady as Mrs. O'Leary was the second woman to win the Supporting Actress award and the Assistant Director was also honoured. The Life of Emile Zola beat the film out for Best Picture and In Old Chicago also received nods for its score, sound and original screenplay.

Of the two films I think I preferred San Francisco I think the plot had more to say it was glamorous, had big musical numbers and I enjoyed the themes of greed vs religion and the relationship between Spencer Tracey and Clark Gable while I thought In Old Chicago was a film that was just waiting for its expensive conclusion and didn't really care about the rest of the plot despite some good performances from Alice Brady and Don Ameche as Jack. Both of these films should be watched to see what big budget disaster movies looked like back in the 1930s and I reckon both certainly deserved their places in the Best Picture list.