Original subtitles

- [Narrator] San Francisco, 1851,

a violent time of violent men,

men who fought like animals at the drop of a hat

over gold, women or fancied insults.

Also a time when the delicate niceties of Eastern society

began finding followers among San Franciscans.

- I tell you Martha, it's the greatest idea I ever had.

Think of it, just think of it for one moment,

every woman in town with a bug of social pretension

coming to the McGivern store for her gown,

a French gown, Martha, I'll mark you, a French gown.

- An I tell you, Mr. McGivern,

I'll have no French hussie in my my house.

- Now what makes you think that she's a hussie?

- Oh I've heard tell about these French women, Mr. McGivern.

- Mrs. McGivern,

dear, would you let me run my own business in my own way?

- It's my business too, Mr. McGivern.

- Now what are you two fussing about?

- Himself wants to turn my house

over to a French dressmaker.

- That's right, Madame Gerard arrives here today, Dion,

and she's going to stay with us too.

- She may stay here until she's located elsewhere

and then out Madame Gerard goes, out!

- She is-- - Pardon.

Is it that you mentioned the name Gerard?

Permit me to present myself,

I am Charles John Kristoff Gerard,

American representative of goddess.

- Monsieur Gerard, I'm so happy to meet you.

I'm Mrs. McGivern.

- Madame.

- Holy jumping Cicero, a he dressmaker!

Oh, I tell you,

we'll be the laughing stock of San Francisco, Dion.

(Dion laughs)

♪ California ♪

♪ California ♪

- [Narrator] The Californians.

♪ California ♪

♪ I've come to live where life is best ♪

♪ In the golden West ♪

♪ I'm gonna strike it rich in California ♪

♪ California ♪

(gentle, orchestral music)

- Ah yes, the vogue this year, dear Madame McGivern,

is for the (speaking a foreign language)

which does not reveal.

The material is for

the smooth velvet for the colder weather,

the delicate crepe, the second and lace when it is warm.

Worn, of course, with a chemise,

the wrap form petticoat and of course,

the ruffle, the pantaloon.

- (sighs) It sounds wonderful.

- Naturally, it is from Paris.

Oh Madame, these things, these lovely things,

they are most expensive.

- Oh, San Francisco is a very rich city, Monsieur.

- It is, there are lovely women here

with husbands who can afford high style?

- Hundreds of them.

- Madame, you have made me the happiest of mortal men.

(McGivern clears throat)

- Oh uh Jack, Monsieur Gerard was just telling me

about the new styles.

- Indeed.

- We're going to have our gowns for the 500 cotillion.

- 500?

- Yes, New York has its 400, we're going them 100 better.

- And with your gowns, Monsieur,

we'll make New York society look pretty sad.

- But I will need a place to work, Madame.

- Oh you'll work right here.

You'll have the parlor for your fittings--

- Now just a moment, Martha--

- Not another word, Jack.

- What do you-- - After all,

this was your idea.

Come along, Monsieur, let me show you your new salon.

(McGivern grumbles) (playful, orchestral music)

- Oh for all!

(Dion laughing)

What are you laughing at?

(playful, orchestral music) (women chattering)

- How is McGivern's little touch of Paris today?

- I'll give you a little touch of Paris.

- Looks like every woman in town's coming into your store.

- Yes, and not one of them spending a penny,

it's all going to that, that he dressmaker in there.

Him and his flittens and his skitterens and his bowing

and scraping and kissing of hands,

I tell ya, it's enough to make a man mad.

And all of the women hanging on to his every word

as if it was gospel.

Oh, here comes a sensible woman, at last.

(playful, orchestral music)

My dear, dear maiden, now what can I do for you, hm?

- Hm.

Calico.

- What?

What the devil did you expect?

- Me?

Satin.

(Dion laughing)

- That settles it.

(slams counter)

Martha, I-- (woman gasp)

Now look here,

what the devil are all those

undressed women doing in my parlor, hm?

- Nevermind that, just stay out.

- Look, you get that fellow out of here, do you hear me?

- Monsieur Gerard stays right where he is.

- He will-- - Now,

I won't hear another word.

(door clatters)

- I was never so embarrassed in my whole life.

Imagine a man walking in here and seeing me like this,

a man.

- [Narrator] The days that followed Monsieur Gerard's advent

into San Francisco were a holiday for women,

educational as well as interesting.

He brought to San Francisco a novelty,

its first sewing machine.

(machine rattling) (playful music)

But life grew more difficult for Jack McGivern.

(items clattering) (Martha giggling)

(McGivern clears throat) - No!

- Oh!

(playful, orchestral music)

(pin cushion thumps)

Women!

Foo for all.

- Well if you're gonna sit there and growl,

I'm going to bed. (McGivern muttering)

Don't lock the front door, Monsieur Gerard isn't in yet.

- Oh he isn't is he?

Where is Monsieur Gerard spending his nights of late,

might one ask?

- Well wherever he is,

you may be sure he's doing something elegant and cultural

that certain other men of this city

might do well to cultivate.

Goodnight.

- Elegant, cultural, foo for all.

(paper rustles)

(cheerful, piano music)

(audience applauding) (crowd chattering)

- Wine, if you please.

Your dance, it was very pretty, Susan.

- I learned it as a child.

- A child, one with flying hair,

bare brambled, scratched legs, running beside there, why?

Filling your mouth with a little wild berries.

Remember, Cherie, how good it tasted,

how good it was to be there.

- How did you know all that?

- I know a great deal about you.

What I don't know, I surmise.

I think I'm usually correct.

- You must have spent a great deal of time

thinking about me.

- Yes.

- Perhaps you entertain a certain fondness?

- Perhaps.

- Why me?

- You are a woman, a beautiful woman,

French woman.

And I,

(chuckles) perhaps I am lonely.

- You know I work here in the saloon.

- [Gerard] Yes.

- Then why aren't you like the others?

- I don't want to be like any others,

where you are concerned.

(Susan chuckles)

- Oh you're a funny little man.

- Well Susie,

Monsieur, I hope you ain't aiming to steal my gal here,

are ya?

- Oh, I was just asking Monsieur Gerard

to make me one of his gowns.

Wouldn't you like to see me as a fine lady?

- Well, I reckon.

Why don't you do that, Monsieur?

You whip up one of your very best for this little gal here

and send me the bill.

Reckon you'd like that, Sugar Bun?

- Oh,

(chair clatters)

I'd love you more than ever.

- (laughs) And wouldn't that be something?

Come on over here.

I wanna hug your neck and kiss your face.

I declare, sir,

if it had been anybody else I'd caught with my gal,

I guess I'd just have to call you out, yes sir,

but a man like me don't have to worry about a sissy.

(laughs) No sir.

Come on. (laughing)

(dramatic music) (glass crackles)

(glass rattles)

(gentle, orchestral music)

- What happened to you?

- (mutters) Nothing.

- Here, let me do that.

- Oh, thank you.

- Eh, somebody been whittling on you?

- Oh it's an old injury.

Monsieur, how does a man obtain satisfaction for an insult?

- Somebody insult you?

- Somebody?

Everybody since I came here.

The men look funny at me when they see me

and the women, (speaking a foreign language)

they shriek if their own husbands see them

on the (speaking a foreign language)

But they stand like patient cows

while I drape fabrics over their bodies.

Don't they realize, I too, am a man?

- Well you're pretty different

from what we're accustomed to out here.

- In what way, different?

- Well we just don't have very many male dressmakers.

- What is wrong with dressing women

and making them all beautiful?

- No, but--

- Monsieur,

is there such a word as sissy?

(Dion chuckles)

- Yeah, yeah there is.

- And it means?

- Well I don't know, it's uh,

man who grows up playing with dolls,

I guess that's what it is, you know, like a girl.

- You think I am this sissy?

- No, I (chuckles)

no I don't think so.

What is this business

about obtaining satisfaction for an insult?

- I have been insulted

and I intend to obtain satisfaction

according to the customs of this country.

- You mean a duel?

- You have duels?

- Sure.

- What kind of duels?

- Oh pistols, swords,

we had two miners who fought with broadaxes,

but I guess the worst of all are the no-holds-barred,

rough and tumble.

- How is that?

- Kicking, gouging, biting,

anything to mangle or kill your opponent.

Who is it you're planning to challenge?

- Buck Carterie.

- Well he's the worst of the lot.

He's good with pistols, he's good with a sword.

- Then if I beat him, I will prove what I am.

Goodnight, Monsieur.

Thank you.

(door clatters)

- Where's the hem stitcher off to in such a hurry?

- You know,

I think he's gonna challenge Buck Carterie to a duel.

- Carterie will kill him.

We've got to stop this, Dion.

You just wait there 'til I get my coat.

(gentle, orchestral music)

- Why you get in here, come on.

Now come on, Little Sugar.

Well blast your eyes, sir.

Don't you know any better than to disturb a gentleman?

Oh, it's you, Froggy.

Well little Susie here is too busy right now

to have her measurements taken.

- Please go away, don't be a fool.

- [Carterie] Yeah,

I guess you'd better get out of here, Froggy.

- Monsieur, I resent being called Froggy.

I must insist on an apology.

- Pay no attention to him, Buck, he's forcing a quarrel.

- I'm waiting for the apology, Monsieur.

- Me, apologize to you?

Now sissy--

Doggone.

I guess he means it.

If you'll name your second, sir.

- Hold on, Carterie--

- Please do not interfere, Monsieur.

- It's too late to stop this now, McGivern.

Name your second, sir.

- Will you act for me?

- Don't be a fool, Gerard.

- [Dion] You don't really wanna fight him.

- Monsieur Dion Patrick, Monsieur Jack McGivern.

- My friends will call upon them tomorrow.

- Please Buck.

- He hasn't got a chance and you know it.

- Believe me, my friend, once I get him at sword's point

or over the sights of a pistol,

I hold no man too small to kill.

(foreboding, orchestral music)

- You know how I feel about these absurd shivs

and their ridiculous code duels.

Now how would it look if I were a party

to a murder of an innocent?

I, who fought the entire system of dueling.

- Stop yelling at me, it wasn't my idea.

There was nobody else he could call on.

- Well I don't know about that, but I'll tell you this much,

he's going to have to call in some new seconds.

- Well you speak for yourself, Jack,

I'm as much against dueling as you are,

but I'm gonna see that Gerard at least gets a fair shake.

- Fair shake, Carterie will carve him up like a leg of lamb,

or fill him as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.

This isn't going to be a duel, Dion,

this is going to be murder.

Ah, Gerard, will you tell me something?

How the devil did you get yourself into such a mess?

- Monsieur, why does a man fight the duel at all?

For honor and a woman, of course.

- Woman, what woman?

- Mademoiselle Susan.

- You mean Susie,

at the Golden Nugget Saloon?

- I'm not concerned with that,

I'm concerned with her future and mine.

- You mean you're serious about her?

- If I survive this engagement with Monsieur Carterie,

I shall make her my wife.

- Oh, congratulations.

If you're going to survive at all,

you'll need some instruction on arms.

- Is there such a (speaking a foreign language)

in San Francisco?

- Yes, I believe so, uh,

Dion, what's the name of that uh,

French fencing instructor from New Orleans?

- Um, George, George Tibow.

- Eh yeah, that's the fellow.

- Will you take me there?

- (chuckles) Well, one lesson with a sword

won't help you much when you're up against Buck Carterie,

but come on.

- Martha, come out and mind the store for me,

will you please?

(gentle, orchestral music) (metal clanking)

- Monsieur, there is nothing I can teach you in this school.

(cheerful, orchestral music)

- At the count of five, turn and fire.

One,

two,

three,

four,

five. (gun blasts)

(cheerful, orchestral music)

- Dead center on the pip.

Young man, do you always shoot like that?

- In self defense, of course.

- I never heard of anything so outrageous,

putting that poor, little man

up against a brute like Buck Carterie.

You're making yourself a partner to murder,

that's what you're doing.

And just because you've never liked Charles.

- Oh no, on the contrary, Martha,

I've developed a tremendous regard for the man.

If you've got any sympathy to spare, save it for Carter.

S'cuse me here a minute.

- I thought you were against duels.

- I am, I am.

Dion, give me a hand with this, will you please?

Now don't worry, Martha,

we're just going to have our little Frenchman

make a fool out of Carterie.

Move that thingamajig there.

- Mmhmm.

- Oh, oh incidentally, I suppose we should warn Gerard

not to kill Carterie.

I mean, if he wants to puncture his hide

in a couple of unimportant places, that'd be all right, hm?

- Dion, what's gotten into Jack?

None of this makes any sense.

- We were harboring a tiger

when we thought we had a mouse, that's all.

- Now what do you mean by that?

- Now let's see, ours is the choice of weapons, isn't it?

What's do you say to swords, huh?

- Does Charles know how to handle a sword?

- Well swords are all right, Jack,

but uh, bullet makes a neater hole, don't you think?

(Martha grumbles) - True, true true true,

yes, personally, I prefer swords myself. (laughs)

- [Martha] Good morning, Charles.

- Madame.

- Now about this ridiculous-- (talking over one another)

- You know that you're not supposed to be in here.

- I know that, but gentlemen,

I had forgotten to instruct you as my seconds.

- Well I think you should call the whole thing off!

- [McGivern] You hush!

- Will you please inform the seconds of Monsieur Carterie

that I will meet the principle in the rough and the tumble

with a no-holds-barred.

- [McGivern] What?

- Gerard, he'll mangle you.

- Those are my wishes, gentlemen,

please arrange the details.

(foreboding, orchestral music)

(McGivern grumbles)

- Please Buck, it is not that I am asking so very much,

he's such a little man.

Don't kill him.

- What's your interest in him, Susie?

- None.

Only he's my countryman and I feel pity for him.

Please Buck?

- Well I don't know about that now, Sugar Bun.

Huh?

(laughing) No.

- Has he apologized, there's no duel?

- Susie, you don't have to worry about Gerard,

I ain't gonna kill him after all,

just gonna twist him up a little bit.

- What does this mean?

- Gerard's gonna meet him and there's no-holds-barred.

- Oh, I'll tear that head of his

right off of that little chicken neck of his.

I declare I will and wear it for a watch file. (laughs)

Hey, where you going? (laughing)

- As you see, Madame, a tuck here, a fold,

a clever turn of material and viola,

an intriguing decoupage, one that does not reveal.

The secret of intriguing lady's dresses,

the suggestion that the gown may fall,

but never the actual catastrophe.

You are not listening to me.

- Aren't you worried about the fight tomorrow?

- I have fought before.

- Not this way, this is rough and tumble.

You may be badly hurt, Charles.

- I have been hurt before.

- Have you ever fought a duel?

- 20 of them, five with swords and the next time,

both 15 with pistols and (speaking a foreign language)

- Why not fight with weapons you're used to using?

- When I first came here, Madame,

it did not matter to me so much

that men laughed at me and mocked me.

I was taking money from their purses, Madame,

for dressing their wives,

money that would take me back to Paris.

Then--

- [Martha] Then what?

- I fell in love.

- The girl from the Nugget?

- Not only with Susan,

but with this wonderful, cruel,

capricious city of San Francisco.

I will not return to Paris, Madame, I will remain here.

To do this, I must make all men respect me

and know me to be a man.

A difficult thing, Madame,

when one is a lady's dressmaker in America.

- [Martha] Pardon me.

- Monsieur Charles Gerard?

- [Martha] Won't you come in?

- [Gerard] Please, sit down.

- I will stand.

I do not belong here.

- [Gerard] Then why did you come?

- To beg you to stop this foolishness.

- [Gerard] Surely you are not afraid

that I will hurt your Monsieur Carterie?

- Certainly not.

- [Gerard] Then why?

- Because,

Charles, stop being cruel to me.

- [Gerard] Sometimes it is necessary to be cruel

when you are in love with a woman

who will not open her heart to you.

- You shouldn't love me.

- Who's to say who should or should not love?

- [Susan] I am not the right kind of woman for you.

- You will be as my wife.

- You can forget yesterday as easily as that?

- We live for tomorrow.

We will open the shop here in San Francisco.

All the ladies will come and spend their husband's money.

- These ladies, they will never accept a saloon girl, never.

- These ladies will have no choice as Gerard gown

will be the badge of social achievement.

These dear ladies of the Wild Frontier

thirst for social achievement.

They will accept my wife as their equal

or there will be no Gerard gown for them.

You see, it is settled.

- You have thought of everything.

- Of course.

It's what a man is for.

- Oh Charles.

- After tomorrow, a new life begins.

We will become very rich, very fat,

we will have very many children.

- (chuckles ironically) Tomorrow,

tomorrow, you must not fight Buck,

you must leave San Francisco right away.

- No Cherie, San Francisco is to be our home.

Here we will stay.

- (crying) Oh.

(gentle, orchestral music)

- [Major] Irregular, sir,

highly irregular, everything is irregular.

- Now don't you fret none, Major.

Oh, I'll admit, this isn't exactly

a gentlemanly way of settling this business,

but it's not a bad way.

- Sir, there will be no credit come to you from this.

He's such a small fellow.

- Oh, I'm not looking for credit,

I just want to teach the little monsieur a lesson.

Besides, I'll bet he got the shuck out of here already.

These sissies don't have any real courage.

- Better have another think on that, sir.

(gentle, dramatic music)

I presume your friend intends to go through with this.

- Yes, he does.

- Then let's get it over with.

- Now do we agree that this thing is over

if either man gives up?

That way, we might save a mangling.

- [Major] Correct, sir.

- All right, if he gets you down, you give up.

Understand?

- Of course.

(gentle, dramatic music)

- Are you ready?

- Ready.

- All right, let's go.

(gentle, dramatic music)

(clattering bodies) (dramatic, orchestral music)

- Do you give up?

Say that you have had enough, Monsieur.

- Enough,

enough.

- Ah, it is understood that this is to go no further.

- Sir, I don't think anyone wants to take it any further.

- Well done, Jon, well done.

Well come on, Martha will have breakfast ready for us.

- You go on ahead, I,

I have some business here.

(gentle, orchestral music)

- Put that one there, will you please?

You can put that one right over there.

- What's going on, Jack?

- Ah, I'm setting up shop for Gerard.

I tell ya, Dion, this is biggest thing that happened

since the first bonanza.

First bonanza did I say, it's even bigger.

Every woman in San Francisco has been in here

asking when Monsieur Gerard can give fittings.

- Well uh, how many appointments have you made?

- Well I haven't made any as yet,

I'm waiting to have everything arranged, you know.

What's the matter with you?

What are you shaking your head for?

- I'll tell you.

We just left Charles and Susan,

we were helping them arrange their new shop.

- New shop, what do you mean?

- They've got a shop of their own.

- They can't do this to me.

I have arranged for them to open a shop here!

- You've been trying to get rid of him

ever since he arrived.

- That, that's different, that was before.

- You know, Jack, there is one consolation.

- What is that?

- You'll be known

as the Father of French Dressmaking in San Francisco.

- Father of French Dress-- (playful music)

(group laughs)

♪ California ♪

♪ Oh I've traveled here, I've traveled there ♪

♪ I guess I've been most everywhere ♪

♪ But I like where I am today ♪

♪ And here is where I'll stay ♪

♪ Now one thing I just can't endure ♪

♪ Is being broke and being poor ♪

♪ So I come West to take the cure ♪

♪ And here is where I'll stay ♪

♪ I've come to California ♪

♪ California ♪

♪ There's gold in them there hills in California ♪

♪ I've come to live where life is best ♪

♪ In the golden West ♪

♪ I'm going to strike it rich in California ♪

♪ California, California ♪

♪ There's gold in them there hills in California ♪

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