Although an internal MGM synopsis had labeled the script "wildly reactionary and radical to the nth degree,"[REF] studio boss Louis B. Mayer "learned only when he attended the Glendale, California preview that Hammond gradually turns America into a dictatorship," writes film historian[REF] Leonard J. Leff.
Released only a few weeks after Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration, the film was labeled by The New Republic "a half-hearted plea for Fascism."[REF]