American Political Film and Fiction: Gabriel Over the White House
One of my favorite films with a political theme is an odd little number called “Gabriel Over the White House,” which you can sometimes catch on Turner Classics. The 1933 film stars the great Walter Huston as newly elected President Judson Hammond. Hammond is a self-satisfied, womanizing no-nothing with more than a superficial resemblance to G.W. Bush, and though there’s a depression on, he’s happy just to voice the party line and let the chips fall where they may. The film opens with the new president having his first and last unrehearsed press conference. After some softballs from the reporters, all of which he dismisses as local problems, he’s hit hard by a leftist journalist. The casting is pointed: the actor playing “Mr. Thieson” is Mischa Auer, a Russian native with an accent:
Mr. Thieson: Mr. President. My paper’s indictment against the government is a staggering one. Starvation and want is everywhere, from coast to coast, and from Canada to Mexico. Millions of dollars are poured into new battleships. Farmers burn corn and wheat. Food is thrown away into the sea while men and women are begging for bread. Men are freezing without coats while cotton rots in the fields. Thousands of homeless, millions of vacant homes. Over 5,000 gangland murders last year, yet only five gangsters in prison—not for killing, but for income tax evasion. What does the new administration say to this? What answer? What definite plan has the government to this indictment? This state of misery and horror, of lost hope, of broken faith, of the collapse of the American democracy?
The president listens impatiently, then answers dismissively.
President Hammond: Young man, I shall answer you directly, and through you I shall speak to all of my countrymen. America will weather this depression as she has weathered other depressions: through the spirit of Valley Forge, the spirit of Gettysburg, and the spirit of the Argonne. The American people have risen before and they will rise again. Gentlemen, remember: our party promises a return of prosperity.
Mr. Thieson: May the president be quoted?
President Hammond: The president may not be quoted.
Shortly thereafter, Hammond is in a near-fatal car accident and emerges a changed man. Animated by a supernatural power, he’s galvanized, an action president who seizes near dictatorial powers. He’s no longer George Bush, he’s… Dick Cheney!
Huston handles this transformation from good-time Charlie to the Death-Angel of Politics beautifully. “Gentlemen, I suggest you read the Constitution of the United States!” he tells his cabinet. “You’ll find the president has some power!” Unlike Herbert Hoover, he personally confronts an army of the unemployed and spontaneously creates the WPA (the “Construction Army”). Congress threatens to impeach him. He persuades Congress to go home instead, surrendering all powers to him. He declares war on organized crime. He forms his own domestic army, kind of like the SS, and convenes military tribunals instead of trials. You see, he’s just what we need, or at least someone’s conception of what we needed at that moment. On one hand, it’s the political pornography of its day, and on the other it’s completely mainstream–at this moment in our nation’s history, there were plenty arguing for various kinds of strong-arm leadership a la Italy and Germany.
