Gregory La Cava, one of the major directors during the Depression Era (Stage Door is his best-known film) directed Gabriel Over the White House, a bright and timely political satire.
Walter Huston (father of director John Huston and grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston) plays Judson Hammond, a political hack who is elected President of the US.
After suffering a near-fatal car accident, he is inspired by the angel Gabriel to seize dictatorial powers in order to lead the nation out of its woes.
Amiable but corrupt U.S. President ‘Judd’ Hammond (Huston) tells his secretary Harley “Beek” Beekman (Franchot Tone) that only two people should be allowed to see him: his young nephew Jimmie (Dickie Moore) and Miss Pendola “Pendie” Molloy (Karen Morley), the President’s mistress and Beek’s assistant.
At a press conference, Beekman explains that a man named Bronson is leading a march to Washington of a million men wanting work. Hammond is glib until one young reporter (Mischa Asher) details the collapse of American democracy.
Hammond is the kind of politico who uses the pen that Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to sign a bill for sewers in Puerto Rico.
Bronson is killed in a drive-by shooting, but the marchers carry on. In Baltimore, the President walks into the crowd alone and tells Alice Bronson (Jean Parker) that her father was a martyr who died trying “to arouse the stupid, lazy people of the US to force their government to do something before everybody slowly starves to death.” He promises to create an Army of Construction. Has Hammond gone mad?
Pendie and Beek admit that since the accident, they have felt that the President was two men. “What if God sent the Angel Gabriel to do for Hammond what he did for Daniel?” Pendie asks.
The President fires the Cabinet and forces Congress to adjourn, declaring that his dictatorship is based on Jefferson’s idea of democracy: the greatest good for the greatest number. He then broadcasts his plans, an end to foreclosures, a National Banking Law, aid for 55 million agricultural workers, attack racketeering.
The first U.S. Government Liquor Store is bombed, and machine gun fire rakes the White House, gravely wounding Pendie. The President makes Beekman head of the new Federal Police. Diamond believes his lawyer will get him off, but the trial is a court martial, and the racketeers are executed.
Hammond holds a worldwide broadcast to demonstrate the power of his new Navy of the Air. Disarmament will free the billions wasted on obsolete weaponry. Hammond signs The Washington Covenant, using the Lincoln quill, and collapses.
The light on his face changes, evoking an image of Lincoln. Beek and Pendie announce that the President is dead. Outside, the flag is lowered to half-staff, to the last notes of “Taps.”
Producer Wanger, “a staunch Roosevelt supporter,” bought the story in January 1933, two months before FDR’s inauguration. After 2 weeks of script work, he secured the financial backing of media magnate Hearst.
Walter Huston had recently portrayed Lincoln in the 1930 biopic Abraham Lincoln, adapted for the screen by Stephen Vincent Benét, author of the epic poem John Brown’s Body, winner of a 1929 Pulitzer Prize.
Louis B. Mayer did not see the script before the shoot and, as staunch Republican and supporter of Herbert Hoover, held the film back until the inauguration of Roosevelt on March 4.
Hammond is a wild man with a purpose—and the new U.S. Wanger rushed the movie into production (Hearst himself wrote some of Hammond’s most flamboyant flights of political rhetoric) and rushed it into production (they shot for two weeks in February) so that it could be released soon after the inauguration.”
Wanger faced higher authority—the censorious Hays Code office, which required some reshoots that blunted the sharpest political satire.”
Although an internal MGM synopsis had labeled the script “wildly reactionary and radical to the nth degree,” Louis B. Mayer “learned only when he attended the Glendale, California preview that Hammond gradually turns America into dictatorship.”
According to Bernstein’s biography of Wanger, however, “Mayer was furious, telling his lieutenant, ‘Put that picture back in its can, take it back to the studio, and lock it up!'”
The movie made a modest profit of $206,000.
Cast
Walter Huston as President Judson Hammond
Karen Morley as Pendola “Pendie” Molloy
Franchot Tone as Hartley Beek Beekman, President Secretary
Arthur Byron as Jasper Brooks, Secretary of State
Dickie Moore as Jimmy Vetter
C. Henry Gordon as Nick Diamond
David Landau as John Bronson
Samuel S. Hinds as Dr. Eastman
William Pawley as Borell
Jean Parker as Alice Bronson
Claire Du Brey as Nurse
Credits:
Directed by Gregory La Cava
Written by Carey Wilson and Bertram Bloch
