Gabriel Over the White House is an American Pre-Code film released in 1933 at the height of the desperation of the Great Depression.
Released by MGM, the movie was adapted from the novel Rinehard by Thomas Frederic Tweed and received financial backing and creative input by William Randolph Hearst.
The plot is as follows:
“In 1933, at the height of the bleakness and desperation of the Depression, MGM released this genuine curiosity piece — directed by comedy (!) director Gregory La Cava — concerning a Warren G. Harding-like partisan hand-shaker President of the United States who, after seeing a vision, revokes the Constitution, becomes a reigning dictator, and solves all of the nation’s problems. Walter Huston plays Judson Hammond, recently elected President of the United States, who treats his elected office as a joke and acts as a dispenser of Party favors. But after an automobile accident, he sees the Archangel Gabriel, who inspires him to declare himself dictator. His first line of business after his conversion is to fire his Cabinet. This leads to impeachment proceedings, but Hammond enters the Senate chamber and takes over the Congress. He then tackles unemployment by meeting with John Bronson (David Landau), the leader of masses of marching unemployed men. When gangster Nick Diamond (Henry C. Gordon) and his goons assassinate Bronson, Hammond uses his brown-shirted storm troopers to blast their way into Diamond’s headquarters and blow him away. The President then intimidates the leaders of countries that owe money to the United States to pay their debts then forces them to disarm and pledge world peace. Hammond rapidly becomes the most popular fascist President in United States history.” SOURCE
Several articles and thesis have been written recently comparing President Hammond to Pres. George W. Bush.
“As I read Ron Suskind’s dismaying cover story on President Bush’s religiously inspired certainty in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “Without a Doubt,” I kept experiencing déjà vu.
I’ve seen this storyline somewhere before: A president who had been a feckless, party-loving, hard-drinking man, is visited by a messenger of God and suddenly changes his ways. Thereafter, he knows what is right and will listen to no one who suggests otherwise. This president, convinced that he is doing God’s work–that he is God’s spokesman on earth–suspends civil liberties to fight crime. He repudiates international treaties and announces that the United States will build new weapons to put itself in a position of world dominance. He orders other nations to follow American dictates, or else. That the “or else” means using American military might for preemptive war is made clear to world leaders when they are assembled and shown a demonstration of American military power. They all immediately agree to do what the United States (and God) demands.
Then it hit me. The plot that sounds so much like the way George W. Bush sees himself and his presidency is that of a now obscure 1933 film produced by William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Studios, Gabriel Over the White House.”SOURCE
Below is first a short video about the movie followed by the full movie.
Full movie.
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