GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE

Gabriel Over the White House, released in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression and on the eve of Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration, is a political fable based on T. F. Tweed's novel, Rinehard. In the film, newly elected President Judson Hammond (played by Walter Huston) is transformed from a corrupt city politician to a benevolent dictator after a near-fatal car crash. He miraculously awakens from a coma, divinely inspired by the Archangel Gabriel, to rescue the nation from crime and economic disaster. Employing the radio to explain his aim to do "the greatest good for the greatest number," Hammond creates a dole to feed the hungry, musters an "Army of Construction" for the unemployed, declares war on rum-running criminals, imposes martial law, and steamrolls Congress into giving him dictatorial powers. He then invites world leaders to the presidential yacht and demands that they disarm to save their treasuries from bankruptcy and the world from war. The heads of state watch in horror as an American bomber plane destroys a battleship while Hammond warns that in the future warplanes will "bomb cities, kill populations." Mobilizing the navy and threatening force, he bullies the statesmen into promising to repay their war debts and into signing a new disarmament proclamation (with the same quill pen used by Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation). His work on earth done, Hammond dies a martyr to strains of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

To the modern eye, the film seems naive, heavy-handed, and dangerously fascistic, relying as it does on the not-so-subtle message that the United States required a benevolent dictator in order to solve its problems, and the world required a well-armed United States to keep the peace. Yet at the time, it was among the top six releases in the spring of 1933. In the days before the rise of Nazi Germany, the film reflected the belief in some quarters that the country—and the world—needed an iron fist to set things right. Certainly that was the feeling of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate whose Cosmopolitan Pictures produced and released the movie in conjunction with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Indeed, some historians have concluded that the film was a thinly veiled "blueprint" for the New Deal. Admittedly, it did foretell, albeit in extreme fashion, Roosevelt's use of broad executive power to combat the Depression, of radio to rally public support, and of air power to wage war.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cripps, Thomas. Hollywood's High Noon: Moviemaking & Society before Television. 1997.

McElvaine, Robert. The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941. 1984.

Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. 2000.

Roffman, Peter, and Jim Purdy. The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties. 1981.