When the occasion calls for it, it’s my pleasure to play matchmaker between old films and new audiences.

The occasion calls for it. And if our current, real-life president finds himself with a spare hour and a half, he might get an inspirational kick out of this little-known 1933 political fantasy about a leader who blows straight through his political enemies to implement a highly aggressive agenda and save the world.

"Gabriel Over the White House" is one of the more astonishing wish-fulfillment fables to come out of Depression-era Hollywood. You can’t quite believe what you’re watching even as you’re watching it. Walter Huston, three years after he portrayed Abraham Lincoln on screen, plays the newly elected president, Jud Hammond. He’s genial, ineffectual, an easily manipulated party hack to the core.

Video: ‘Gabriel over the White House (1933)’

A scene from "Gabriel Over the White House."

A scene from “Gabriel Over the White House.”

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A near-fatal car auto accident puts Hammond at death’s door. Then, it’s implied visually, the archangel Gabriel pays him a visit and the president emerges from his coma a very different man.

The new Hammond is a born-again totalitarian, with an all-American twist. Beset by unemployment, gangland killings and unrest abroad, Hammond rolls up his sleeves and declares a state of national emergency, calling for a "temporary" ban on the U.S. Congress. He places the country under martial law. He ditches many constitutionally decreed civil liberties and makes himself all-powerful leader, answerable to no one but the Man Upstairs.

Hammond solves his country’s nagging crime and bootlegging crises the expedient if controversial way: by establishing presidential death squads. At one point, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, our hero’s personal army executes a long row of ugly-looking gangsters by firing squad. Ultimately this leader brings about world peace — tragic irony, given what was brewing in real life in 1933 — by threatening the rest of the world’s leaders with America’s military.

"Gabriel Over the White House" came out shortly after the start of Roosevelt’s first term in office. It speaks more to the depths of 1932 than to the winds of change that blew into town in ’33. Hammond is a divinely inspired combination of Democratic, Republican, socialist and fascist ideals. His far-flung public works program predates FDR’s New Deal. The death squads owe more to Hitler or Mussolini. Hammond is meant to be a politically incorrect man of action. He alone can save us.

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"The way he thinks is so simple and honest that it sounds … a little crazy," one Hammond adviser says. Another White House staffer answers with: "He’s doing the things you wanted. And if he’s mad, it’s a divine madness."

Directed in a sort of fugue state by Gregory La Cava, who went on to make the sunnier Depression fantasy "My Man Godfrey," "Gabriel Over the White House" is a little heavy on its feet; one wishes it had the energy of other pre-Production Code enforcement era artifacts. But watching it today, in this country, at this point in our nonfictional president’s adventures in political upheaval, it’s hard not to see how one era’s desperation and frayed nerves connects to our own.

The origin of "Gabriel Over the White House" is a peculiar one, illustrating the familiar if unsettling link between popular culture and politics. The script came from a British novel, "Rinehard," by Thomas F. Tweed, adviser to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Producer Walter Wanger and publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Studios put the movie version together, with MGM as distributor. Hearst contributed story ideas, uncredited; MGM brass, after seeing a preview version, freaked out. As reported by the New York Times at the time: "A number of film leaders here felt that because of economic and political conditions it was unwise to show a film which might be regarded by the nation at large as subversive."

Even after trims, "Gabriel Over the White House" remained a pungent example of what became known, briefly, in pre-Code Hollywood, as "the dictator craze." These movies were driven by ruthless, darkly charismatic men: James Cagney’s reform school overseer in "The Mayor of Hell," or Warren William’s department store overlord in "Employees’ Entrance." These snakes got the job done.

Our president’s favorite film, he has often said, is "Citizen Kane," a cautionary tale about a man lusting after fame, and wealth and the adoration of the public. It does not end happily. Nor does "Gabriel Over the White House," which is barely known today. The folksy autocrat Jud Hammond grabs hold of a broken nation by any means necessary. If it takes the dismantling of the American political process to save us, so be it. In its chaotic ideological craziness, the movie feels like it could’ve been made tomorrow.

"Gabriel Over the White House" isn’t easy to find, but it’s available on DVD from Turner Classic Movies (www.tcm.com; $14.95) and from Warner Archives (www.wbshop.com; $17.99). It’s scheduled for broadcast on TCM April 6.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

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