Subtitles:

• None

Extras:

Just suppose—but you need'nt, if it revolts you—that you were the wealthiest man in all the world. Then suppose that a group of employees in a department store you didn't even know you owned hung your effigy outside the building as a token of their contempt for you. Would you, in a state of burning fury, take a job incognito in the store in order to find out the reasons for such a disrespectful attack? Maybe you wouldn't. In fact, it would be a most illogical thing for a man to do. But, anyhow, we are mighty happy that Frank Ross and Norman Krasna contrived to have Charles Coburn pretend to such an exalted position and do exactly that thing in their picture called "The Devil and Miss Jones," which breezed into the Music Hall yesterday. For the consequence is the frothiest comedy since—well, since "The Lady Eve."

Out of the sheerest gossamer the most captivating webs are sometimes spun. And out of a set of circumstances no more complicated than those recounted above, Mr. Krasna and Mr. Ross have strung a fable which clicks off laughs like the ticking of a clock. Any one with two grains of imagination knows what to expect, of course. The old boy—the devil incarnate-becomes mellowed by his contact with life. He falls in love. He gets the worker's outlook. And eventually he turns up as a resolute delegate on a grievance committee to negotiate with himself.

The Devil and Miss Jones is a social comedy with left-wing undertones. John P. Merrick (Charles Coburn), the world's richest man, gets word that someone is trying to unionize a department store that he owns. To thwart this blatant act of democracy, Merrick changes his name and takes a menial job at the store, the better to catch the union activists without detection. Once he himself is subjected to the humiliating treatment afforded his employees, Merrick starts to wise up -- and soften up. As things develop, it is Merrick himself who spearheads the union movement after discovering how duplicitous his hand-picked executives can be. The film also introduces Jean Arthur and Robert Cummings as fellow employees who fall in love before fadeout time. Keeping with the film's insistence upon equal treatment for everyone, Merrick himself is permitted a romance in the person of Elizabeth Ellis (Spring Byington). The Devil and Miss Jones was written by Norman Krasna and directed by Sam Wood.

Gary Tooze

April 16th, 2013