Gabriel Over The White House: The Sequel

In 1933, in the darkest days of the Great Depression, MGM released a film titled “Gabriel Over The White House.” Chances are you have never heard of it – unless you’re a classic movie nerd like me. And yet, this is a movie I find myself thinking about more than usual.

Of course, there is always the Wikipedia page, but having seen the movie more than once, the description feels light. So here goes.

Based on a novel that had been released earlier that year, the movie chronicles the Presidency of Judson Hammond (played by Walter Huston – ironically a Canadian). We join the story as he takes office, and we are introduced to a pretty greasy fellow. Hammond is clearly corrupt and engages in cronyism. He’s also crude and objectionable. In one scene, he jokes about how he used the pen that Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation for the purpose of signing a bill for sewers in…wait for it…Puerto Rico.

I think you know where this is going, but let’s not jump ahead.

Hammond is traveling in his motorcade and decides that it is moving too slow, so he demands they stop and let him behind the wheel. He’s the President, after all. So, he takes the wheel, floors it, and promptly – if not predictably – crashes horribly.

Now, back at the White House, under the care of doctors, the prognosis is not great. People do not expect him to survive. But wait – a ray of light shines through the window and he begins to recover. It’s a miracle – literally.

As the story evolves, President Hammond recovers his health, but he is a changed man. Not only is he no longer a corrupt and vice-ridden man, but he has gone full-bore in the opposite direction, with all the predictable zeal of a recovered alcoholic who has found Jesus and wants the rest of humanity to get on board.

Over the course of the story, he takes on organized crime and seedy power brokers (in a very ‘direct’ way), but he also marches into Congress and essentially declares he has the power to do what he wants and throw any of them in prison if he so chose. He also decides that the best way to achieve world peace is to convene a summit where he invites the other leaders and representatives on board the deck of a US naval destroyer. There, he offers a demonstration of what destructive power his forces can unleash, then politely suggests that those countries grab a pen and sign a treaty if they know what’s good for them.

Eventually, after he has accomplished all the tasks before him, he goes to bed and quietly dies as the avenging heavenly spirit departs his body.

Let’s see - an American President with course and crude tendencies, who survives a near-death experience, transforms himself into some ‘avenging angel’ out to settle scores everywhere and anywhere, with no distinguishing between friend or foe, who departs the stage once he’s fulfilled his mission.

Well, thank God it’s just some Hollywood celluloid from 91 years ago and not the real world…