weezeralfalfa Review of The San Francisco Story

The San Francisco Story (1952)

A David and Goliath story, with cute Yvonne de Carlo a prize.

[7/10 · 9 February 2018]

Films where an all powerful megalomaniac is opposed by a lot of little people who need a leader to organize their opposition were a dime a dozen in the 'golden age' of Hollywood. In 1935, Joel McCrea costarred in one of numerous films about a wannabe kingpin located on the Barbary coast of San Francisco, called "Barbary Coast". His antagonist was played by the dramatic Eddie Robinson, who claimed he owned everything and everybody in SF worth owning. In the present B&W film, the considerably less charismatic Sidney Blackmer , as Andrew Cain, has taken advantage of the loose legal system in that time and bullying tactics to acquire most of the important businesses , as well as police and court system. Additionally, he has ambitions to elect puppet leaders, if not himself, to the state legislature, Joel McCrea, as Rick Nelson, saunters into town with his sidekick Shorty(Richard Erdman), for a change of scenery from his prospering gold mines. Old friend Captain Martin inquires if he's interested in joining a new vigilante committee, as SF badly needs one like the previous one of which Nelson was a member. Nelson declines, as he does later on repeated requests. As things turned out, it wasn't necessary for Nelson to join a vigilante committee to accomplish the goal of bringing down Cain and his cronies. Informally, he charged Cain with dirty dealing, inducing Cain to accept a dueling challenge. Very unusually, this duel took place while on horses, rather reminiscent of duels between knights in the Middle Ages. Each had a shotgun loaded with two cartridges. They slowly sauntered toward each other, apparently each deciding when to shoot. However, Cain had arranged a dastardly way to hopefully guarantee that he would win. Luckily, it didn't quite work, aided by Cain's inexplicable decision to gallop ahead, instead of immediately shooting at a prone Nelson. ....The token woman in the story is the beautiful Yvonne de Carlo, who is actually more than a token presence. She's Cain's moll, whom Nelson is immediately smitten with. She's also attracted to him, although slower to show it. Nelson takes her for a couple of moonlit buggy rides, and chances a passionate kiss or two, while she's still trying to makeup her mind who to follow in the future. Nelson sometimes gets some negative feedback in their dalliance, as when she slapped him hard while on a moonlight ride, and made him walk back to town. Then, she arranged for him to be mugged and shanghaied. Miraculously, he got out of that jam before the ship sailed, ending up at Sadie's seaside bar. Sadie was an old friend, who made some money procuring drunk seamen as crew for ships. Despite these setbacks, Yvonne eventually decided she liked Nelson better than Cain, and fumed when she read in the paper that Nelson had been murdered, presumably by Cain's agents. Fortunately, this turned out to be an exaggeration, but Nelson was plenty shook up about the bad wound he received. That wound healed mighty quickly! He vowed to kill Cain in retaliation. This is when the afore mentioned duel was arranged. Believing Nelson dead, Yvonne told Cain she was going to expose some of his bribing, etc. that she knew about, but thereby exposing her involvement in some of his schemes. Thus, she joined Nelson on his hit list. Fortunately for her, authorities decided to overlook her involvement , as she made known her intension of accompanying Nelson back to his mining business. If I were Nelson, I would be leery of her opportunistic tendency and temper..... As usual, McCrea was mostly laconic, lacking the in-your-face charisma of some of the other top western actors. Yvonne made great eye candy, as well as a feisty romantic interest for the hero, and she had more screen time than in most of her films. ...The film shows it's low budget status by a small independent company in several ways. However, it may be worth your viewing, as at YouTube, especially if you like Yvonne. Would have been nicer in Technicolor to see Yvonne's outfits. Otherwise, this wasn't necessary.