Gabriel Over the White House
A Cosmopolitan Production (1933) Dir. Gregory La Cava
Released by MGM
86 min. / B&W / 1.37:1 / 1080p / DTS-HD MA English 2.0, SDH
Pre-Code films are sometimes racy, bizarre, and unusual, with a handful so outré that it’s hard to comprehend them as part of the same cinematic universe to which we're accustomed. Of this latter category, meet a religious parable-cum-political fantasy, the astonishing Gabriel Over the White House.
March, 1933, and in the depths of the Great Depression, Judson Hammond (Walter Huston) is sworn in as the new President of the United States. At his post-inauguration ball for cronies and friends, he promptly declares his loyalty to his political party, shacks up with his beautiful secretary (Karen Morley), and makes his intentions known that he’s going to do as little as possible since all the nation’s problems are “local.” He seems surprised to learn that there’s an army of unemployed men about to march on Washington, and besides diddling his pretty secretary, he cherishes playing with nephew Dickie Moore in the Oval Office while the nation starves.
AND THEN...
Surviving a near-fatal car crash, President Hammond is visited by the Angel Gabriel, who whispers in his ear and changes his disposition. Hammond declares martial law, suspends the Constitution, adjourns Congress, sets up military tribunals (headed by Franchot Tone) with quick executions for enemies of the state, and demonstrates a powerful show of force to convince other nations to pay their war reparations debts and stop all armament campaigns, lest they be destroyed, all in the name of America First. Happy ending.
Yes, MGM released a film in 1933 that suggested that America's path back to greatness and out of the Depression was to give the President dictatorial powers, just like Hitler. Fill in your own 2025 analogies here.
The film was concocted (from a science-fiction novel set in the far future year of 1950) by Walter Wanger and William Randolph Hearst; unsurprisingly, Louie B. Mayer hit the roof when he saw it and ordered a lot of cuts and the addition of new scenes to pry the pretty secretary out of the arms of the shilly-shallying President Hammond, as well as withholding its national release until after his friend Herbert Hoover was out of office. Still, this is simply one of the most astonishing films I've ever seen, and one of the oddest releases EVER from a major U.S. studio. If this were a Monogram picture with Samuel S. Hinds at the President, people would say “Of course!” but Walter Huston had just been celebrated for playing Abraham Lincoln in a film, for gosh sakes (and there are plenty of Lincoln references to remind us of that). Why, the Pre-Gabriel President even makes a joke about using the pen with which Lincoln freed the slaves to sign a garbage-removal order for Puerto Rico.
Karen Morley had a great career in the 1930s (Scarface, Mask of Fu Manchu, Flesh, Dinner at Eight) but her leftist politics left her unemployable after HUAC got hold of her in the late 1940s. One wonders what the Committee thought of THIS film; in fact, one wonders what SHE thought of it.
Director Gregory La Cava went on to great success with Stage Door and My man Godfrey and should be better remembered today.
The Warner Archive Blu-ray is stellar and includes a trio of fun 1933 cartoons from Warners; in those days, the cartoon folks were emulating Walt Disney’s success with Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies by offering character-driven (Looney Tunes) and music-driven (Merrie Melodies) offerings. The two Looney Tunes here give us a Bosko and his replacement Buddy, and the musical cartoon has numbers from early Warner Bros. musicals as a soundtrack for cartoonish gags. They’re all in HD and all highly enjoyable.
One of the best discs of the still-young year, and a film never to be forgotten.
