The President Vanishes

Financial and industrial titans meet. Led by a lazily malign Charley Grapewin, they decide on war, which will make them lots of money. They have Congress sewn up. Even though President Arthur Byron is steadfastly against war, there are enough votes to over-ride his veto. And so the bill passes both Houses, and the President steps out for a walk on the White House grounds and disappears. All business of government stops -- there being no 25th Amendment yet -- and Secretary of War Edward Arnold is put in charge of the investigation. Is the President dead or alive? Who grabbed him? Is it the Gray Shirts, led by megalomaniacal Edward Ellis? Communists? Half-witted delivery boy Andy Devine?

If this seems like a mystery movie, it's because it's based on a book that was published anonymously, but later turned out to have been written by Rex Stout. Clearly ancestral to political thrillers like Seven Days In May, its contemporaries in the field were those which toyed with fascism as a good idea, like GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE. Although when it comes to good guys versus bad guys, director William Wellman, and his writers, Carey Wilson, Ben Hecht, and Charles MacArthur were going to side with peace and the little guy.

What's most remarkable about this movie is that it's 80% older men talking, yet it's always very cinematic. Credit cameraman Barney McGill and editor Hanson Fritsch, as well as performances by actors you've seen a hundred times, but here they turn up the wattage, often until they seem insane, like Ellis, or oily like Osgood Perkins.

In the decades following WWI, Americans became more and more disillusioned with the country's involvement in this war. More and more folks began demanding our nation stay out of external fights and a strong neutrality movement began. So, in light of this, stories like "The President Vanishes" make a lot of sense.

In this story, the American president is a decent sort of man who is bent on keeping the US out of wars. However, when a new war breaks out in Europe, various evil war profiteers in the States push to get Americans to join in on the war simply in order to make money. As one says, in the previous war 'there were just 400,000 casualties '! And so with their urging, the "Save America's Honor" program began...and the Grey Shirts begin agitating in favor of this war. So, with most opposition crushed by these thugs, the only major impediment left is this peace-loving president...and he's their next target.

The 'Grey Shirts' in the movie are obviously modeled after the Fascist paramilitary thugs, the Italian Black Shirts and the German Brown Shirts. Both organizations enforced obedience and compliance through violence and threats.

While the movie might seem a bit quaint and naïve when seen today, it clearly represented what most Americans were thinking at the time...that foreign wars were a waste and that profiteering industrialists were behind such wars. It's hard to imagine that just a few short years later, the US would be back at war!

So is this film any good? Well, it is an interesting curio. It also is a bit uncomfortable to watch, as the movie seems to excuse dictatorial powers by the Secretary of War, ultra-nationalism and martial law...all in the name of pacifism! Strange...but also tough to stop watching. Well acted and most unusual...a film history teachers in particular should enjoy.

Overall, a very strange 'what if' scenario...and one of the oddest studio films of the 1930s.