After its re-opening, the St. Francis hosted dozens of celebrities who came to San Francisco for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) of 1915, ranging from Helen Keller, three-time Presidential candidate and orator William Jennings Bryan, who came to San Francisco to speak against American involvement in the First World War, and former baseball player and evangelist Billy Sunday, who came to San Francisco to denounce sin and the theory of evolution. The exterior of the hotel appeared in the Keystone Studios newsreel/documentary two-reeler, "Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco", which followed the studio's biggest stars, Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle, as they toured the city and the PPIE. Former President Theodore Roosevelt stayed at the hotel in July 1915, (about midway through the nine-month-long PPIE) and used the occasion to denounce his bitter enemy, President Woodrow Wilson, and to call for American entry into World War I.