Music
The title song may be the best-remembered part of the film. It was composed by Bronislaw Kaper and Walter Jurmann, with lyrics by Gus Kahn. It is sung by Jeanette MacDonald a half-dozen times in the film, and becomes an anthem for the survivors of the earthquake. It has now a popular sentimental sing-along at public events such as the city's annual earthquake commemoration, as well as one of two official city songs, along with "I Left My Heart in San Francisco".
Early in the film the song "The Darktown Strutters Ball" can be heard; this is a historically inaccurate inclusion, since the song was written in 1917.
During the two operatic scenes in the film, MacDonald sang excerpts from Charles Gounod's Faust and Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata.
Read more about this topic: San Francisco (film)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“To know whether you are enjoying a piece of music or not you must see whether you find yourself looking at the advertisements of Pears’ soap at the end of the libretto.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“I used to be angry all the time and I’d sit there weaving my anger. Now I’m not angry. I sit there hearing the sounds outside, the sounds in the room, the sounds of the treadles and heddles—a music of my own making.”
—Bhakti Ziek (b. c. 1946)
“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
—André Previn (b. 1929)