...over the White House
I'm so vain & narcissistic that I'll watch any movie with my name in the title. There aren't all that many of them and this is probably one of the most interesting ones. Dating from 1933 the same year that the Marx Bros. made Duck Soup it stars Walter Huston, father of the now more famous John. When it was made his son had only just started on his screenwriting career that would lead on to becoming one of the more famous directors to come out of Hollywood.
The only other actors I recognized in the film were Franchot Tone playing his secretary and the wonderful character actor Mischa Auer who has a nice small part as an idealistic reporter wanting answers from the newly elected president.
The film begins with the Mr Huston being sworn in as the new president. We know little about him. His inauguration with microphones in the foreground unfortunately reminded my of the Marx Bros scene from A Night at the Opera when they depart pretending to be famous aviators and Harpo has to speak on the radio.
Anyway once ensconed within the White House which is quite an impressive set within the film he plans to act like any normal president would but after speeding too fast in a car he suffers a car crash which puts him into a coma.
Was the president ever allowed to drive a car? I know they aren't allowed to nowadays.
Something strange happens to him whilst recuperating. We are only shown a curtain flapping in the breeze and some slight lighting changes as well as his face appearing more peaceful and tranquil . When he awakens he is a new man, speaks with a different voice and has ideals that he now wants to live up to. For a start he arranged to meet with the leader of all the Unemployed who are desperate to find any sort of work during the Great Depression.
Unfortunately before they can meet up a Racketeer who unsuccesfully bribes the Leader of the Unemployed has his henchmen machine gun him down in cold blood. The Army of the Unemployed still marches on Washington to demand a change to their terrible status. Our heroic president makes a speech in front of them and promises to provide them with decent wages and proper jobs.
The rackateer attempts to bribe our Hero as well and when that fails tries to murder him too but only manages to injure the female secretary .
Fed up with this sort of treatment Prez managed to arrest the racketeer and the criminals are eventually all rounded up and put on trial in a scene that looks similar to an episode of The Twilight Zone made over 20 years later.
After being found guilty they are all executed by firing squad. The Statue of Liberty is shown in the background at one point during this bizarre scene
But our hero still has to save the world from any impending wars that might occur in the near future and he manages to persuade all of the leaders of other countries to sign non agression pacts and destroy some of their more old and useless weaponry of war by doing so himself to a couple of unmanned warships in front of their eyes. With the money that they save on not making new weaponry they can now pay off their old debts to America dating back to the War to End all Wars and we can all look forward to Peace in Our Time.
There's not much left for our hero to do so he conveniently dies in the last scene and the flag is lowered to half mast above the White House in the last image shown.
A very simplistic and wish fulfilment view of politics that was based on a novel whose author was not acknowledged anywhere within the film itself
If you want to know where the title comes from at one point the female secretary wonders if maybe our Hero hasn't been inspired by the Biblical Archangel Gabriel to do what he does in the following dialogue
"Gabriel? I thought he was the messenger of Wrath."
"Not always. To some he was the Angel of Revelations. A messenger sent from God to men."
"Huh... Gabriel over the White House."
Strangely enough having already played a real President of the United States only 3 years earlier
Walter Huston once again got to play a fictional president of the US of A only a couple of years later ....
I wonder if Neil Gaiman saw this some time and it inspired him to write his Prez story in Sandman ?
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Now then what year was this film made again ?
This German website has lots of good photos from the film but I can't read German