"Gabriel Over the White House" - Classic Films and Current Problems
NPR's "All Things Considered" aired an interesting piece this week comparing the Marx Brother's classic film "Duck Soup" and the current economic climate. (Read and listen to this story here).It is amazing - and terrifying - how well certain elements of that film - made in 1933 - translate in late 2008. The story made mention of how the film has been used in other countries during economic hard times as a bit of comedic therapy. I briefly considered renting "Duck Soup" for the weekend.
Instead, I woke up early this morning and flipped on the TV to find Turner Classic Movies showing another film from 1933. This one I'd never heard of. It is called "Gabriel Over the White House" and the biggest star it boasts among it's cast is Walter Huston. (He went on to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.")
The film presents this situation: What if the President of the United States suffered a car accident and was saved by the Angel Gabriel who then guided him into helping relieve an economic depression through controversial means?
This film, too, translates eerily well at the end of a week 75 years later during which the two biggest news stories are a crashing stock market and a heated presidential race. In the movie, the Senate and House are trying to impeach their newly elected president while he tries to enact a dictatorship of sorts to create jobs and jumpstart the faltering economic infrastructure of the time.
"Gabriel Over the White House" is in short thought to be William Randolph Hearst's view of presidential perfection, his open letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt on how to handle the crisis of the 1930s. From Wikipedia: Hammond [the presidential character] as he exists prior to his accident is an amalgamation of caricatures of Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt's immediate predecessors. After his accident, he is Hearst's idealized image of the perfect president, the president he wanted Roosevelt to be. (Read More)
Here is an article written by a left-wing author comparing President Bush to the main character of this film.
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