The Devil and Miss Jones Blu-ray Review
Undercover Boss, 1941 edition.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 1, 2013
At this point in what is hopefully its ever shortening shelf life, does anyone
really believe that the employees are
clueless when a bearded stranger shows up on
Undercover Boss followed by a film crew? The unlikely hit series
is of course built around the conceit that the "big boss" knows next to nothing about the
grunt workers under his (or her) command, and that if only he or she would get down in the dirt with the underlings,
everything would be
so much better. (This series just made front page news in my hometown of Portland,
Oregon, when one of its recent "bosses" turned out to be a former Portlander who according to the news stories had
done time in a federal prison
camp for some of his
questionable business practices here.) It's of course an incredibly appealing premise, at least to the proletariat
who more often than not feels like they're slaving away with little or no recognition, often under admittedly less than
ideal conditions. And that's pretty much exactly the premise of 1941's
The Devil and Miss Jones, a charming film
penned by Norman Krasna and directed by Sam Wood that has more than a bit of Frank Capra's aesthetic infusing it.
(The film should of course
not be confused with the legendary 1973 porn outing
The Devil in Miss Jones,
which only goes to prove how important changing a conjunction to a preposition can be.) Anyone who has watched
even one episode of
Undercover Boss will instantly recognize the setup to
The Devil and Miss Jones.
Charles Coburn plays reclusive gazillionaire J.P. Merrick whose many holdings include midtown Manhattan
department store Neely's, which has just made front page news when a gaggle of its employees hung an effigy of
Merrick (who hasn't been seen in public for decades) to protest working conditions. Initially Merrick's own gaggle of
simpering yes men tell him that a detective has been hired to look into who the rabble rousers are, but after meeting
with the private dick, Merrick gets the bright idea to infiltrate the store himself to find out what's going on.
We live in an increasingly peripatetic, even transient, society, and so one of
The Devil and Miss Jones' central
conceits—that some people at least
try to spend their entire lives working for one company, often with little to
show for it—may seem
hopelessly out of date and hard to relate to. But balancing that temporal scale may be the fact that even as
contemporary workers tend to change employers every few years, they share similar feelings of not being valued,
perhaps
one reason why they
do change jobs so frequently. The disastrous American economy of the past several years
has also made people thankful for
any job they might have, and one would think that
should have been
the case as well in 1941, as the United States was still pulling itself out of the doldrums of the Depression and didn't
yet
have the economic shot in the arm that the industrial and manufacturing elements of our entry into World War II
provided.
The "disposable employee" aspect of
The Devil and Miss Jones may hit closer to home than it may have in 1941,
however. The film makes the somewhat prescient point that even those with the best of intentions of staying with their
employer for life may find themselves booted out the door when younger, cheaper employees come along. Have you
ever wondered why so many local television news reporters tend to look like they're right out of college? It's because
they are! My wife, who spent many years in broadcast journalism, experienced this on a personal level. Though
she was never let go from any of her news positions (perhaps because she was in her twenties and thirties
when she pursued this career), she saw older, more experienced reporters and anchors repeatedly shown the door
simply due to their salary demands. Why keep a "moldy oldie" on board when a fresh young thing is willing to step in
for half the pay?
When Merrick decides to investigate the rabble rousing at Neeley's Department Store, he meets a gaggle of people
from all walks of life, an ironic situation considering the fact that he's assigned to the shoe department. He quickly
meets salesgirl Mary Jones (Jean Arthur), who in turn introduces him to elderly saleswoman Elizabeth Ellis (Spring
Byington) as well as the unctuous floor manager Hooper (Edmund Gwenn). Merrick takes a shine to Elizabeth,
accompanying her to lunch, but just as quickly develops an aversion to the rule spouting Hooper. That night, Mary
drags Merrick to a surreptitious employees' meeting, where she introduces Merrick to her erstwhile boyfriend, Joe
O'Brien (Robert Cummings), who of course turns out to be the leader of the quasi-unionizing forces, and who has in fact
just been fired from Neeley's.
There's nothing actually overtly "union"-ist about
The Devil and Miss Jones, at least not formally. Instead, these
workers are demanding nothing more than a recognition that if they devote so much of their lives to a company, they at
least deserve job security. While there are calls to strike running just beneath the surface of the film, this really isn't as
much a management versus worker scenario as it one of a fish out of water, as Merrick attempts to blend in with the
middle class.
There's an unabashedly sentimental side to Krasna's screenplay, which one must assume was done with a certain arch
self awareness. When Mary calls Merrick up in front of the employees at the after hours get together and tearfully
holds him up as an example of an elderly worker done wrong by a series of employers, she spouts some high-falutin'
flowery language that in fact could have easily been lifted from any given Frank Capra outing. But here it's played
simultaneously for laughs and for pathos. She's being unabashedly silly in her own way, something that is only
exacerbated by the fact the audience knows she's making a complete fool out of herself and that Merrick is both angry
and embarrassed to be there.
The film is full of great little character bits, and includes one of Charles Coburn's most winning performances (he was
Oscar nominated, and would in fact win a couple of years later for another Arthur film,
The More the Merrier).
Cummings is kind of bland and has virtually no chemistry with Arthur, but both Arthur and the lovely Spring Byington are
great, full of charm and low key vigor. Edmund Gwenn is despicably amusing as the uptight floor manager, the sort of
character
who would have probably banished Gwenn's Santa Claus from
Miracle on 34th Street from the store for not
wearing appropriate business attire.
