Movie Review: Gabriel Over The White House

What if FDR had been an archangel, but the archangel was Mussolini?

I have a friend from the 1930s. I don't know how she ended up in 2021, but we’re glad to have her. She makes me watch 1930s movies sometimes, and the most recent, Gabriel Over The White House (released ~December 1932), made an impression.

The plot: it’s the depths of the Great Depression. Judson Hammond (played by Walter Huston) is inaugurated as a new US President. He's not an evil man, exactly. But he’d rather hang out and party with his rich friends than do the hard work of helping the country. During a press conference, a reporter tells him how ordinary Americans are groaning under the strain of poverty, unemployment, and gang violence. He disarms the potentially awkward moment with his usual charm and folksy manner, then takes off early to go on a joyride - which ends with him crashing at 100 mph.

Doctors return his comatose body to the White House. When he wakes up, he seems different. Less charming. More focused. The immediate crisis is an upcoming march on Washington by a Bonus Army-style group of unemployed people. His rich friends and advisors and Cabinet Secretaries tell him to send in the army and break up the vagrants. He says no. He is going to meet with them, treat them as brothers and sisters, and accept them as an indictment of the entire economic system. His rich friends and advisors are scandalized. One (maybe the Secretary of State?) threatens to resign. The President accepts his resignation, then marches purposefully out of the room.

When he reaches the Bonus Army encampment, he strides in purposefully (over the protests of his security detail) and gives a stirring speech about how America has betrayed its grand ideals and they deserve better than this. He promises to turn them into a vast army for creating public works for the common good, and says he will give them good conditions and excellent pay. They all cheer, for (we are told) none of them are lazy or communists, they are just work-loving people who have been cruelly barred from labor by the unfair system oppressing them. We pan back to the White House, where the President's rich friends and advisors are meeting in secret to discuss what to do about him. As they are gloating about the secrecy of their meeting, the President's personal secretary marches in and hands each of them a card, which turns out to say "You're fired" or some flowery 1930s statement to that effect. The advisors are flabbergasted - how did the President know they were there? Can he really fire the whole Cabinet and White House staff in one fell swoop?

For his part, the President's personal secretary is also flabbergasted - how did the President know they would be meeting there? What gave him the sudden courage to fire all his corrupt advisors and become such a force for justice? He discusses this with the President's sexy female secretary, who says, and I'm quoting from memory as best I can, "I'm not a religious person, but I wonder if sometimes the Archangel Gabriel might personally descend to Earth and possess people for the cause of righteousness." The President's handsome male secretary agrees that this is the most reasonable explanation.

The next day, President Hammond goes before Congress, asking for $4 billion to create his new Army Of Public Works. But his rich friends and advisors have gotten there first, and proposed impeachment: the President has clearly gone mad. Congress is pretty on board, because they're all scared of anybody less rich and corrupt than they are. But Hammond comes in, gives a stirring speech on American history and George Washington and so on, and...nope, Congress still wants impeachment. So President Hammond suggests that they “read the Constitution”, which states that the President can declare martial law. Congress is aghast - this is a violation of democratic principles! But (asks Hammond) is it really? Isn't it even more of a violation of democratic principles that the President - a good man, a man elected by the people to fight for their rights - can be stymied by a bunch of corrupt rich people who don't care about the people at all? Isn't that the real violation of the Constitution going on here? Makes you think!

Having declared martial law and solved the unemployment crisis, President Hammond moves on to the gang crisis. He strong-arms Congress into repealing Prohibition, but we cut to a scene of gangsters laughing and gloating because it will take years to get the states to sign on, and during that time they can continue killing and robbing whoever they want.

The President summons the head gangster to the White House and demands he go back where he came from (the head gangster is a shifty-looking Eastern European immigrant). The head gangster laughs - the President can never get him, because while he (the head gangster) can do whatever he wants, the President has to abide by laws and regulations and habeus corpus (the head gangster laughs hysterically as he pronounces "habeus corpus" in his outrageous accent). Then he walks out of the White House, secure in the knowledge that nobody can hurt him. As a parting gesture, to show just how secure he is, he orders his goons to pull a drive-by shooting on the White House. They shoot the President's sexy female secretary. The President's handsome male secretary falls to his knees and confesses his love for her, a stirring scene whose pathos is only mildly lessened by the none of the previous plot having suggested this even the slightest bit. Then the President tells his handsome male secretary this was a fortuitous event. For only now, with his true love wounded, will the handsome male secretary have the internal fortitude and iron will to do what has to be done. The President appoints him head of the Federal Police, a new military police force charged with destroying all gangsters.

The handsome male secretary gets a battalion of tanks and drives them to Gangster Headquarters. Inside, we cut to a shot of the head gangster and his flunkies laughing: even though they shot the President's sexy female secretary, he can't do anything because he's hamstrung by his insistence on "laws" and "procedures". Then the President's secretary's tank battalion shells Gangster Headquarters. The headquarters collapses and everyone dies except the head gangster, who is brought out by police. He is still insisting that this doesn't matter because they can't convict him of anything because Procedures. But the handsome male secretary has been appointed head of a special military court, and declares the head gangster guilty. They execute him by firing squad in front of the Statue of Liberty, which the movie plays as patriotic and inspiring and not at all ironic.

Some people tell the President that he has solved Unemployment, solved Crime, and yet America is still in danger because it's running out of money. The only hope is to collect on the debt European nations owe us from World War I. But the European nations refuse to pay, giving mealy-mouthed excuses like "we're in a Great Depression too" and "help, we are literally starving here". The President declares that he shall make them pay. "Should I prepare a conference room?" asks his handsome male secretary. "No," says the President, "there have been enough conferences in rooms". Instead, he asks that the conference be planned on board the Presidential Yacht, which is apparently a thing, and adds as an afterthought "And tell the Secretary of War to have the whole US Navy there, surrounding us."

So they meet aboard the Presidential Yacht. The European diplomats are crafty-looking people with beards and glasses and outrageous accents. They all protest that there's no way they can pay their war debts. The President gives a speech on the importance of honor and keeping promises. The British diplomat protests that even if they wanted to, they just...don't...have enough money to pay!

Hammond has been waiting for this. He gives an order to the Navy. Some planes swoop down and bomb a nearby battleship (which was previously emptied of sailors and placed under "radio control"). Hammond announces that he has proven that the era of battleships is over. New technologies are so powerful and destructive that further war is unthinkable. If there were ever to be another war, it would feature explosives of unimaginable destructive power (this is actually a really impressive prediction) and death rays that would leave the earth completely devoid of life (they should have stopped when they were ahead). And because further war is unthinkable, everyone should mutually disarm, and use the extra money from not having a military to pay their debts to America. Everyone agrees, and there is a touching scene where ambassadors from every country individually sign the disarmament treaty and give short speeches about how historic it all is.

The final signature is President Hammond's; he uses the same pen Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. As he finishes signing, he falls over dead, followed by a close-up shot on a flickering window curtain suggesting an angel is flying back to Heaven. Everyone declares Hammond the greatest president ever, maybe the greatest human being ever. The end.

The first thing I told my friend after we finished the movie was "I bet FDR watched that and masturbated furiously the whole time". I was right. Commentators describe FDR as "a big fan", and he apparently invited the actor who played President Hammond to the White House for drinks. Critic Jeff Greenfield says that "it was designed as a clear message to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt" by the tycoons who made and financed it (including William Randolph Hearst), and that it was "more than coincidental" that FDR's first hundred days included some of the same themes as the fictional President Hammond's (though this is weasel language and I can’t find anyone positing specific connections).

When reading Hoover's biography, I was struck by his theory that FDR was part of the same phenomenon as Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin - the US version of a worldwide longing for a fascist strongman who could come in and solve everything. Watching Gabriel Over The White House moved that from conjecture to drop-dead obvious fact.

I was most impressed by how few antibodies against dictatorship we had in 1933. Like, I'm being kind of unfair above - using the word "fascist" in order to link Hammond with Hitler and all the awful things he did like WWII and the Holocaust - when Hammond started no wars and killed no ethnic groups. If you don't have the history of the 30s and 40s imprinting your brain with a connection between strong-armed dictatorship and atrocity, maybe having a strongman who clears away all the rich corrupt cronies and institutes the will of the people sounds - I guess pretty good? It certainly did to the people of 1933 America. Movie critics panned Gabriel Over The White House as populist garbage, but it was a pretty big success and made a lot of money.

Aside from the fascist elements, parts were just...weirdly bad? In the beginning, the movie heavily hints that the President is having an affair with his sexy female secretary. This gets dropped when the President transforms into Gabriel, but then when the gangsters shoot the secretary, the handsome male secretary professes that he has been in love with her the whole time? And this never really gets mentioned again? I can’t imagine a modern movie adding a romantic subplot this ham-fistedly; it's just totally outside of the distribution of how bad 2020s script-writing can get.

And also, in 2021 this reads as basically a vanity film. An angel takes over the President of the United States, making him implement what is clearly one particular guy's preferred political program. And it goes great and makes him the best politician in history. If only people would implement my preferred political program, it would start a new golden age! I have daydreams like this sometimes, but I don't inflict them on the movie-going public, and it's weird that you could get away with this in 1933.

People who should watch this movie: anyone who wants to see a completely innocent defense of dictatorship, written by people unaware it could go badly. Anyone who doubts that FDR surfed into power on a wave of fascism. Anyone who wants to see a shootout between blocky 1930s tanks under the command of the President's personal secretary vs. fashionable gangsters holed up in a ritzy Prohibition-Era warehouse. Anyone who enjoys crazy stuff which follows its own logic without compromise. Anyone who want to see how a truly excellent and talented actor portrays Franklin Roosevelt possessed by an archangel.

People who should not watch this movie: anyone who likes good movies.