The Cinema of politics and politics of cinema

"Gabriel Over The White House" (1933) might have been the primer on which Oliver Stone learned his ABZ's. At its heart, it is a political tract designed by William Randolph Hearst, purporting to tell the soon-to-be sworn in president Franklin Roosevelt how to beat The Depression and create world peace. It has been praised and condemned ever since - by the left and right - as protofascist, protocommunist, proto-benevolent dictatorship, and quasi-Christian propaganda.

It is as strange a film as a Hollywood Studio (MGM) ever produced. Gregory La Cava, better known for comedies (including W.C. Fields' movies), directed rather hurriedly, from a script credited to Cary Wilson, but based on a book by an Englishman who called himself Tweed. In fact, Hearst financed the film and is said to have personally written some of the speeches. Hearst supposedly submitted the script to FDR, who himself made some changes and signaled his approval to Hearst, who had supported his candidacy.

Walter Huston plays "Juddson Hammond," a party hack who wins the presidency the old fashioned way, by making promises he never intends to keep. He has a mistress (like Harding), refuses to be quoted by the press (like Coolidge), and considers every crisis, such as millions of unemployed marchers and rampant gangsterism, as "local problems" (like Hoover).

One day, he speeds his car over a cliff, and emerges from a coma a changed man, having seen a vision of Gabriel and / or Lincoln. He now fires his cabinet cronies, joins the masses of men marching on Washington, announcing the creation of an "Army Of Construction," a massive public works project to carry the nation's economy until private enterprise recovers.

When Congress rebels and threatens to impeach the president, he announces that Congress must "adjourn" or he will declare martial law. He admits to adopting dictatorial powers in order to preserve what he calls Jefferson's definition of democracy - goverment on behalf of the people.

He then invites to the White House the nation's leading gangster, offers to send him "home" to his country of origin, and when the gangster answers by sending a car full of henchment to riddle the White House with machinegun bullets, the president creates a federal police force which assaults the mobsters, tries them in military courts martial, free from "technicalities" like habeas corpus. They are quickly executed by firing squad in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

The president then calls the leaders of all nations to a conference aboard a U.S. naval warship and asks them to repay their war debts. When they plead poverty, he reminds them that they have used their resources to build armaments that will insure a future war. He threatens them with American military might. As a demonstration, American planes sink two obsolete battleships in view of the diplomats (like Billy Mitchell's demonstration in the 1920's).

The president demands that they sign a compact for world peace, predicting that the alternative will be a war that destroys all their cities and ends civilization.

As the nations all sign the document insuring lasting peace, the president's work is done. Gabriel calls once again and he dies, "one of the greatest men who ever lived."

As screwy as the plot is, the film accurately reflects the sentiments of a large portion of American thought at the time of its release. The Great Depression was at its depth, 25% or more unemployed; thousands of banks failing, taking uninsured life savings with them; farms and homes in foreclosure. Capitalism had no clue, democratic government was frozen in fear.

The crisis demanded new ideas, cries for any action, however radical. But the only new ideas that seemed to be feasible were those that made the trains run on time in fascist Italy, the five year plans of the Soviet Russian workers paradise, and the newly empowered National Socialism in Germany.

Mainstream political thinkers admitted the bankruptcy of the American consitutional system and conceded that a period of emergency dictatorial power was the only solution.

F.D.R.'s apparent approval of the notions expressed in the script of this film and the language he used in his Inaugural Address, referring to the need for emergency powers, seemed to signal his willingness to assume dicatorial powers. Indeed, over the 12 years of his presidency, the claim would be made many times that he had done so.

But the fact is that F.D.R. always used the democratic process to carry out his policies. He persuaded, created consensus, compromised over and over with Congress, business, local governments, foreign leaders, even his own wife who wanted quicker reforms. Unlike Hitler, he never burned his Reichstag, never resorted to a secret police.

F.D.R. ruled by sleight of hand rather than an iron fist. He was a "confidence man" in the literal sense, inspiring confidence even when all the evidence should have inspired fear. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" is a motto that was nonsensical on its face. But starving people cheered him.

In this trait, he equaled Hitler. Sarving Germans cheered Hitler, too, when he told them that though they had been defeated, humiliated, impoverished, they were a great nation which would rise to dominate the world.

"Gabriel Over The White House" was supposed to be Hearst's blueprint for an American saviour. F.D.R. conned Hearst but never succombed to the temptations of power as Hearst outlined. The megalomaniacal magnate quickly became disillusioned with F.D.R. and turned to Herr Hitler whose leadership style was more consistent with the Hearst way of doing things.