Which 1936 disaster drama ends with the 1906 earthquake and fire in its title city?

The 1936 disaster drama that ends with the 1906 earthquake and fire in its title city is San Francisco.

Directed by W. S. Van Dyke for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, San Francisco dramatizes the disaster that struck on April 18, 1906. Clark Gable plays Blackie Norton, the proprietor of the Paradise nightclub; Jeanette MacDonald plays Mary Blake, a singer; and Spencer Tracy plays Father Tim Mullin. Their personal conflicts unfold against a rapidly changing city and its uneasy mixture of entertainment, religion, ambition and vice.

The earthquake arrives during the city’s annual Chickens Ball, creating the film’s major catastrophe sequence. Afterward, fires spread through the wreckage, while authorities use dynamiting to create firebreaks. Blackie searches the devastated city for Mary and eventually finds her in a refugee camp in Golden Gate Park. The story closes with survivors moving forward together as San Francisco begins rebuilding.

The movie is not a documentary: its characters and melodrama are fictional, and some historical details are shaped for spectacle. Its earthquake effects, including a shaking barroom set and montage work by Slavko Vorkapich, helped make it a landmark early disaster film.