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SPOILER ALERT!
Before watching an old movie, it is usually a good idea to know when it was made, so as to put it in the proper historical context. Most of the time, the release date will suffice, which in the case of Gabriel Over the White House was March 31, 1933. This was less than a month after Franklin Roosevelt had been sworn in as president on March 4. However, production on this movie began over a year earlier, in February 1932, while Herbert Hoover was still president. As can be seen from the title, this is a political movie, so that difference is worth noting.
We also gather from the title that this movie will be about religion as well as politics. Gabriel, of course, is an angel, but why was this one picked, I wondered. Later in the movie, we find out through dialogue that Gabriel is known for his assistance to Daniel. But ultimately, I believe that the name “Gabriel” is the one most easily recognized as being that of an angel. Had the title been Michael Over the White House, people would have been wondering who Michael was. And if the title had been Uriel Over the White House, people might have been expecting a comedy. As in politics, so too in religion, name recognition often wins the day.
It is inauguration day when the movie begins, and Judson Hammond (Walter Huston), with his hand on an open Bible, is being sworn in as president of the United States, after which he bends forward and kisses it.
At the reception, he seems like a pretty friendly guy, with a lighthearted view of the whole business. When his nephew Jim (Dickie Moore), who is around seven years old, shows up with a toy pistol, he is asked if he wants to be a soldier. He says he’d rather be a gangster. Hammond admits jokingly, “I guess it’s more profitable at that.”
Later, he talks to his chief political consultant, Jasper Brooks, to whom he says he owes his presidency. Hammond says he’s a little worried about all the promises he made to get elected. Brooks, who is to be Secretary of State, assures him, “By the time they realize you’re not going to keep them, your term will be over.”
After most people have left, Hammond turns to his personal secretary, Hartley Beekman (Franchot Tone), and says of the White House, “Pretty big place for a bachelor president.” This is unusual. We have had only one bachelor president, James Buchanan, whose term of office was just before the Civil War. The voting public is a little skittish when it comes to electing a bachelor. They find it reassuring if a man has a wife for his sexual outlet. That way they don’t have to worry about any disconcerting sexual activity on the part of their president.
Despite those apprehensions about bachelors, however, Hammond was elected. Sure enough, no sooner has Hammond retired to his study than an attractive, self-assured woman enters the White House and deliberately stands right on the Presidential Seal. She presents her card, introducing herself as Miss Pendola Malloy (Karen Morley). Beekman tries to explain that the president has had a trying day. She replies with world-weary understanding, “Yes, I know, inaugurations are very trying.” When Beekman asks what she wishes to see the president about, she replies, “About Miss Pendola Malloy.”
When Beekman shows Hammond her card, he tells Beekman that she can see the president at any time. She is admitted entrance to his study. There are some polite exchanges where they establish their nicknames: “Major” for Hammond; “Beek” for Beekman; and “Pendy” for Miss Malloy. That being done, she dismisses the president’s secretary, saying, “Goodnight, Beek.” Before he leaves the White House, Beekman picks one of her hairpins up off the Presidential Seal. This is even more offensive than her standing on it. Women go to a lot of trouble to look beautiful for us men, which we appreciate, but we don’t like seeing all those little female things lying about.
While being interviewed by reporters, Hammond expresses his small-government philosophy. He says that unemployment is a local problem. When asked about John Bronson, leader of a million unemployed men that are armed, Hammond says that Bronson is a dangerous anarchist, who, if he comes near the White House, will be arrested. As for racketeering and “notorious gangsters like Nick Diamond,” they too are a local problem. Such things as bootlegging will disappear, Hammond says, once people have been better educated to respect the Eighteenth Amendment. Then Hammond expresses his faith in the American people to weather the storm of the Great Depression on their own without any government assistance. Later on, while we hear Bronson pleading for food for the unemployed in a speech on the radio, Hammond is oblivious, too busy playing a game of “treasure hunt” with his nephew, hiding a marshmallow, which Jim gets to eat when he finds it.
We also find out, through intermittent remarks, that Hammond’s ignorance of foreign affairs is matched by his indifference, which would suggest an isolationist attitude. He orders the War Department to fly the latest issue of his favorite detective magazine to Annapolis, where he is going to give a speech, because it isn’t yet on the newsstands.
On the way to Annapolis, Hammond is having a good time driving his own car, going over a hundred miles an hour. Then he loses control and crashes. He has a concussion, leaving him unconscious for days. Eventually, the doctors conclude that it is only a matter of hours, that “he’s beyond any human help.” With that qualifier, “human help,” we know that it is time for divine intervention. We see the curtains of the president’s bedroom window suddenly move, but it is no ordinary breeze. Rather, it is the spirit of Gabriel.
Infused with that spirit, Hammond opens his eyes. Now that he has found God, or rather, now that God has found him, we expect him to change in some way, but the change is most unusual. Whereas before, even if we disagreed with his small-government philosophy, we could see that he was a nice guy, friendly and fun-loving. No more.
There is nothing unusual about religious fanatics in movies being unlikable. In Rain (1932), for example, Walter Huston plays Alfred Davidson, a missionary. He is so determined to reform Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford), a prostitute, that he becomes unpleasant, even mean. However, we never suppose that Davidson has actually been inspired by God to be like that. We just figure that he went off the deep end all by himself.
There aren’t many movies, set in modern times, where we know for sure that a man has been inspired by God and not merely believes himself to be so, fewer still where we get to compare how a man is before with how he is after. At the very least, we would not expect such a man to become less likable than he was before. Whatever our views are regarding religion in real life, we don’t expect that in a movie. So, what is strange about this movie is that after Hammond has been inspired by God, through his angel Gabriel, he quits being the kind, loving man he had been before and becomes cold and hard. From this point forward, he usually seems to be angry.
For example, although we are supposed to disapprove slightly of his having a mistress right there in the White House, at least he was nice to her. Therefore, when he comes under the influence of God by way of the angel Gabriel, I thought he might do the right thing and marry the girl. Instead, he stops calling her Pendy, now addressing her as Miss Malloy, treating her as if she were nothing but Beekman’s assistant. I guess a man of God is not supposed to care about sex.
Immediately thereafter, he stops addressing Beekman as Beek, now calling him Mr. Beekman, telling him to arrange a cabinet meeting in one hour. Beekman protests that an hour is not much time, but Hammond will brook no delay.
When the cabinet forms, while awaiting the arrival of the president, they express concern among themselves about Hammond’s recent illness, apparently fearing that he may no longer be up to the job. Their concern, however, is not for the country but for the Party. Jasper Brooks assures them, “No matter what happens, the Party comes first.” When Hammond enters the room for the meeting, he refuses to shake Brooks’ extended hand.
And yet, while Hammond is cold with the people he knows personally, he now cares deeply for the American people. This is paradoxical, but not unrealistic. Sometimes the people who profess so much concern for their fellow man are the very ones that seem not to care much for those they know personally. It reminds me of The Boy with Green Hair (1948), where a married couple become so determined to help war orphans that they abandon their own child.
Speaking of children, I started wondering how Hammond would now treat his nephew Jim, of whom he was once so fond. Apparently, it would simply be too much to see Hammond have the same attitude toward a child that he now has toward Miss Malloy and Beekman, for Jim is absent from the rest of the movie.
Hammond refuses to call in the military to keep the Army of the Unemployed from descending on Washington, as Brooks wants him to do. When Brooks threatens to resign over the matter, Hammond accepts his resignation. Brooks tries to back down, but Hammond insists that he accepts his resignation, meaning Brooks is fired.
In the meantime, gangster Nick Diamond tries to enlist the help of Bronson, promising to feed and clothe the Army of the Unemployed, provided they remain in their camps. His reason is that the police will be so occupied with them that they won’t have the resources to deal with Diamond’s illegal activities. But Bronson refuses. So, when the Army of the Unemployed begin their march on Washington, singing “John Brown’s Body,” Diamond has his men shoot Bronson with a submachine gun.
The Secretary of War refers to the Army of the Unemployed as “vagrants,” urging Hammond to use soldiers to disperse them. Hammond refuses, instead ordering him to see to it that those unemployed people receive food, shelter, and medical care.
Before his concussion, Hammond told reporters that he was not to be quoted; after his concussion, he says the president wants to be quoted.
Beekman and Miss Malloy are starting to admire him. She says, “I’m beginning to have a faith in him I never had before.”
Beekman says, “The way he thinks is so simple and honest, it sounds a little crazy.”
Miss Malloy replies, “He’s doing the things you wanted. And if he’s mad, it’s a divine madness. Look at the chaos and catastrophe the sane men of this world have brought about.”
Hammond goes to Baltimore where the Army of the Unemployed has encamped. The head of the Secret Service doesn’t want him to go alone into that mob, but so he does. He meets Bronson’s daughter, Alice. He says to her:
My poor child, I am with you in your grief. I pay tribute to the martyr, John Bronson, who gave his life in this effort to arouse the stupid, lazy people of the United States to force their government to do something before everybody slowly starves to death.
He tells the people in the camp, many of whom are veterans of the Great War, that he is going to form them into an Army of Construction, where they will be paid the same wages as soldiers, but they will be usefully employed as civilians until they can eventually be eased back into the private sector.
That evening, Miss Malloy brings Hammond the address to Congress that she says he had written. As he is about to deny that he wrote it, we see the curtains once again being moved by the breeze, and he realizes that Gabriel wrote that speech for him. Or rather, Gabriel now occupies Hammond’s body, so he knows it is his speech. The metaphysics of all this is not clear.
Miss Malloy is aware that something spiritual is going on. After she leaves Hammond’s room, she tells Beekman that she is not very religious, but she wonders, “Does it seem too fanciful to believe that God might have sent the angel Gabriel to do for Judd Hammond what he did for Daniel?”
Beekman replies, “Gabriel? I thought he was a messenger of wrath.”
“Not always.” she says. “For some he was the angel of revelations, sent as a messenger from God to men.”
Beekman says, “Hmm. Grabriel over the White House.”
These two people sure know their Bible. I had to Google “Gabriel” to find out what Miss Malloy was talking about, which I assume is Daniel 9:22, where Gabriel promises to give Daniel “skill and understanding.”
Anyway, after this conversation, the element of wrath Beekman referred to is reinforced when Hammond hears the Army of the Unemployed singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which we associate with Abraham Lincoln. In particular, we hear them singing this well-known part:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord / He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored / He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword / His truth is marching on.
To reinforce this intended similarity between Hammond and Lincoln, the camera focuses on a bust of that president of the Civil War. Even more connections between Hammond and Lincoln are made later in the movie.
At a secret meeting of the cabinet, called by Jasper Brooks, Beekman shows up with messages to each of those remaining members of the cabinet, demanding their resignation. The next day, at what appears to be a joint session of Congress, Senator Langham, the Majority Leader, calls for the impeachment of Hammond. Just then, Hammond walks in and is given the floor. He asks Congress to declare a state of national emergency and adjourn until normal conditions are restored, saying he will take full responsibility for the government.
“Mr. President,” Langham replies, “this is dictatorship!”
Hammond replies:
I believe in democracy, as Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln believed in democracy. And if what I plan to do, in the name of the people, makes me a dictator, then it is a dictatorship based on Jefferson’s definition of democracy. A government of the greatest good, for the greatest number.
“This Congress refuses to adjourn!” Langham says defiantly.
Referring to his role as Commander in Chief of the Army and the Navy, Hammond declares martial law, after which he disdainfully walks out of the room. Congress backs down and adjourns indefinitely.
That having been done, Hammond announces some of the emergency acts he will implement: providing food, shelter, and medical care for the unemployed; forbidding foreclosures of mortgages by the banks; protecting the money people have in those banks; and giving direct aid to farmers.
To further show he is a man of the people, he abolishes the custom of rising when the president enters the room.
Then he talks about that “cesspool” known as the Eighteenth Amendment, which has allowed gangsters like Nick Diamond to flourish, a “cancerous growth eating at the spiritual health of the American people.” He says the repeal of this amendment will take too long, so before that happens, these racketeers will have to be eliminated.
Hammond decides the American people are spending too much money on bootleg liquor, so he decriminalizes alcohol and establishes a United States Government Liquor Store, presumably the first of more to come, which is controlled by the federal government to provide the American people with alcohol at a fair price. However, it comes under attack by Diamond’s gangsters, who throw bombs through the window, destroying the place.
The sympathy we have felt for the neglected and callously treated Miss Malloy is relieved when it appears that she and Beekman are growing close. Just as they are expressing affection for each other in the lobby, with her standing on the Presidential Seal again, Hammond enters the lobby too, though he seems indifferent to what they are saying to each other. Instead, he tells Beekman about the bombing. Just then, gangsters drive by, machine-gunning the lobby, hitting Miss Malloy.
Sometime later, as Miss Malloy lies in bed, recovering from her wounds, Beekman tells her he loves her, and she asks to be kissed. Just as their lips meet, Hammond walks in the room and says, “Beekman, you’re fired!”
But then he says, “I’ve got a better job for you.” Hammond wants Beekman to head a mobile unit of the United States Army, to be known as the Federal Police, to eliminate gangsters, saying, “I need a man who has suffered a terrible personal hurt, a man whose energy and efficiency will be at white heat. A man ruthless and merciless.” He implies that what has been done to Miss Malloy will make Beekman that man. Then, in the only warmth he has shown since his concussion, he says to the two of them, “That is, if you’re willing to postpone your wedding for a while.”
In the next scene, armored vehicles line up in front of Nick Diamond’s warehouse, with Beekman demanding that Diamond and his gang surrender. Diamond isn’t alarmed. He tells his men that it’s just another pinch, saying, “My lawyer will habeas our corpus out of that district attorney's office in ten minutes.”
This was bound to get a rise out of the audience in those days. It reminds me of Scarface (1932), where the title character says he got out on a “writ of hocus pocus.” It was frustrating the way criminals could pervert the law to their advantage, and it was especially irksome the way they would show contempt for this very principle of habeas corpus that kept them from being locked up for more than a brief period without being charged with a crime. We already want Diamond and his gang to get what is coming to them, but his snide remark about habeas corpus is intended to put us in the mood for having him get his punishment without respect for his constitutional rights. Furthermore, this is another connection to Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.
Just to play “hard to get,” Diamond has his men start shooting at the armored vehicles out front. The guns that are part of the armored vehicles fire back, destroying the warehouse. After his gang is rounded up, Diamond says he’s entitled to a lawyer. Beekman replies that he will have one, but that it won’t be a court trial. Because the president declared martial law, it will be a court martial.
In short, having dispensed with the legislative branch of government, Hammond now bypasses the judicial branch as well. In the next scene, we see Diamond and his men before three officers of the Federal Police, the one in the center being Beekman, who lists all the crimes Diamond and his men have been guilty of, but for which they have managed to escape punishment by virtue of “technicalities of the law.” However, Beekman notes, Diamond and his gang are the last of the racketeers. “And why?” he asks rhetorically. “Because we have in the White House a man who's enabled us to cut the red tape of legal procedures and get back to first principles. An eye for an eye, Nick Diamond. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life.” The gang is lined up against a wall and blindfolded before a firing squad. Then, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, Beekman gives the order, and they are shot to death. So, in addition to being the arresting officer, Beekman is, as the saying goes, judge, jury, and executioner.
The Great Depression having been ameliorated, and organized crime having been eliminated, Hammond turns his attention to foreign policy. In particular, he is bothered by the fact that the European nations have not paid their debts to the United States, incurred during the Great War. He says the International Debt Conference will not be held in the White House as scheduled, but on a private yacht, so that the European politicians can witness a display of the full strength of the United States Navy. When asked by reporters if he intends to use force or wage war to get these European countries to pay their debts to the United States, he keeps repeating ominously, “The debts have got to be paid!”
The “private yacht” Hammond referred to turns out be a large ship. The diplomats are taken aback when they find out the conference will take place while people can listen in over the radio. Hammond has no use for secret diplomacy.
After much discourse about unpaid debts, Hammond puts on a demonstration of America’s “navy of the air,” in which biplanes swoop down on a couple of unmanned battleships, drop bombs on them, and completely destroy them. Looked at from our present vantage point, it is amusing to think that this demonstration with biplanes would impress upon the diplomats the utter destructiveness of future wars.
Essentially, Hammond proposes that the other nations of the Earth completely disarm, allowing them to balance their budgets and pay off their debts. Once all other nations have complied, America will disarm too. If the other nations refuse, then America will build an unsurpassed air-navy to enforce world peace.
The nations of the world agree to disarm. At the signing ceremony, Hammond, who seems a little unsteady, is the last to sign, using the very quill pen that Lincoln used to free the slaves. As soon as he does so, he collapses. He is carried to his room. As the doctor prepares some medicine for his heart, Miss Malloy watches over him. She sees, as do we, one image of Hammond replaced by one that is slightly different, indicating a transformation back to Hammond as he once was. When he regains consciousness, he says, “Hello, Pendy, old girl.” Hammond asks her to hold his hand. The curtains move for one last time as Hammond dies. Through the background music and the expression on Miss Malloy’s face, we know, as she does, the spiritual significance of what has happened.
It is easy to imagine this movie without any suggestion that Hammond has been guided by Gabriel, or, if you prefer, that Gabriel has temporarily taken over Hammond’s body, using it to carry out God’s will. After all, it is not uncommon for someone to be shaken by a close encounter with death, causing him to change his ways, without necessitating any supernatural influence. Larry Darrell undergoes just such an awakening in The Razor’s Edge (1946) when another man gives up his life to save Larry just before the end of the Great War. Therefore, by eliminating the business with the concussion, those who made this movie could have made it clear that Hammond’s brush with death alone had transformed him from being a party hack to a man determined to change the world. In addition, we could also imagine this movie without all the references to Abraham Lincoln.
In that case, the movie would have left it up to the audience to judge whether the ends justify the means, whether fascism is acceptable as a way of achieving a better world. As it is, while the message of this movie would seem to answer in the affirmative, it lacks the courage of its convictions, doubting that the audience would approve of Hammond’s actions based on results alone, even if we grant those results as depicted.
As a result, the movie insists that we approve of what Hammond did, first by asserting that it had the approval of God, and then by making him out to be another Lincoln. In so doing, the movie betrays the weakness of the case it is making in favor of fascism with its need to justify Hammond in this way. Furthermore, there is no vice president in this movie, especially remarkable given that the president dies. This is to keep us from thinking about how another man will now assume the office of the presidency with all those authoritarian powers still in place, and yet without the benefit of divine guidance.
On the other hand, we might glean a different message from this movie, unintended by those who made it. A fascist can rise to power if people believe that he has been chosen by God, and that he is akin to some heroic figure from the past.