San Francisco

OSCAR WINNER: Best Sound A romantic drama that combines humor and starpower with lavish spectacle, San Francisco received six Academy Award nominations, including "Best Picture." This extravanganza's street-splitting, brick-cascading, fire-raging recreation of the cataclysmic earthquake remains "one of the greatest action sequences in the history of the cinema, rivalling the chariot race in both Ben-Hurs" (Adrian Turner, "Time Out Film Guide"). Clark Gable plays rakish Barbary Coast kingpin Blackie Norton. Jeanette MacDonald portrays a singer torn by her love for Blackie and her need to succeed among the opera-going elite. Earning the first of nine career "Best Actor" Oscar nominations, Spencer Tracy is a priest who supplements spiritual advice with a mean right hook. He urges Blackie to change. But if love and religion can't reform Blackie, Mother Nature will.