Charles Coburn plays J.P. Merrick, the wealthy, sinister millionaire and owner of his own department store, where the overworked and underpayed workers, led by Joe O'Brien (Robert Cummings) are protesting. In order to eliminate all the ringleaders of the employee protest movement, Merrick, who's face isn't known by any of the employees, changes his name to Tom Higgins and becomes an employee in his own department store. While working in the dreaded shoe department, Higgins meets the charming Mary Jones (Jean Arthur), who takes pity on Higgins and befriends him, not knowing that he's her evil boss.Higgins, when not gathering the names of protesters in his organization, also falls for one of his "co-workers", Elizabeth Ellis (Spring Byington). Higgins is faced with a problem however, when he discovers that Mary Jones' boyfriend is none other than Joe O'Brien. Yet over time Higgins' unlikely friendship with these people makes him forget about his sinister original plan and he becomes a new man who cares for his employees.
Now that the equally great comedy with Charles Coburn and Jean Arthur, "The More the Merrier", has been released on dvd, why can't this underated classic get a dvd release? Sure, some of the dialogue is dated and corny, but that's just part of the charm with an old-fashioned comedy like "The Devil and Miss Jones". Jean Arthur was terrific and absolutly charming as usual, but Charles Coburn really stole the show with his great performance. Charles Coburn was an incredible actor who could play very likable characters, or the worst of villians, as in "Kings Row". Robert Cummings was good in this as well, although his speech at the police station was vomit-inducing. The supporting cast, especially Spring Byington and Edmund Gwenn (who plays the grouchy section manager of the shoe department where Higgins works) is wonderful. Surely we won't have to wait too much longer before this great comedy is released on dvd!
Two films: "The More the Merrier" and the one I'm reviewing now, "The Devil and Miss Jones" are the testimony of the great chemistry and rapport that existed between this two great comedians, Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn.
Last night I watched this wonderful Comedy for the first time and believe me, I hadn't seen a Comedy of this quality and class, in a long time. It's so perfect that it's difficult to really describe the effect it had on me.
The plot of the film tells the story of what happens when a millionaire (Coburn), who among many, many assets, owns a Department Store in New York, arranges to be infiltrated into the Store as a simple Shoes (more precisely "Slipper") Salesman, in order to investigate who, among its employees, participated as agitators and were responsible for the hanging of his effigy, when protesting against the Store's policies regarding workers, working conditions and Unions.
Among the employees of the Store, Coburn meets fellow Shoes Saleslady, Jean Arthur, who befriends him, not only believing he's an employee, but also a poor, almost destitute old man.
Coburn is delightful as the millionaire; I'd dare to say that it's his best role ever, along with the one he played in "The More the Merrier". Jean Arthur plays much more a "human" character than a plain-comedic one and Bob Cummings is also very good as her boyfriend and the main "agitator", getting to play together a couple of very believable love scenes.
An excellent supporting cast includes among others, Spring Byington as Arthur's sweet friend and co-worker, Edmund Gwenn as the rather nasty Head of the Shoe Department and S.Z. Sakall as Coburn's butler.
Kudos to Norman Krasna for his excellent screenplay and for the handling of social issues regarding Labour, which are timeless and still very pertinent.
This film ought to be on DVD.
Buy The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) Now
in this very funny story of how the richest man in the world decides to go undercover as a shoe salesman in a store he forgot he owned until labor agitators hang him in effigy. It's Charles Coburn's intention to infiltrate the labor movement and bring these "wrongdoers" to justice or at least unemployment. He doesn't bargain on what happens when he begins to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi, and how meeting with the peppy Miss Jones (Jean Arthur) will change his outlook on labor and ultimately life.Jean Arthur is very appealing as this working class heroine, but it's Charles Coburn who runs away with the picture. His transformation from a Rockefeller-type cold as ice businessman into a tuna popover eating funlover is aces, especially in his dealings with the surprisingly unpleasant Edmund Gwenn as the manager of the shoe department. Ironic that Gwenn returned to the department store scene a few years later to buck authority himself as Kris Kringle in "Miracle on 34 Street". A point worth noting is that much of the dialogue concerns the misunderstanding about Coburn's true identity, and his consequently being abused as an older worker with limited skills in an emerging modern world. Although 60 years ago, this still rings true today, and gives us some food for thought.
This picture has only two things going against it: First is its terrible title. Not only does it not really make any sense given the plot of the film, but it later got co-opted as the title of a famous porn film, "Devil IN Miss Jones", so that even the librarian where I took this out gave me the once over, thinking I was taking out a smutty film. I'll bet few people ever do rent this movie because of its dubious monniker. The second thing that's not so hot is a police station scene where Robert Cummings tries (and fails) to be a Capra-esque "ordinary man" hero bucking authority by appealing to the Founding Fathers' principles. The scene is so bad it brings the movie to a complete standstill; I was afraid it would be downhill from there, but it picked up again. My advice is that should you ever rent or buy this film, as soon as Cummings enters the station, fast forward to the next scene to save yourself some grief.
Other than those two points, "The Devil and Miss Jones" is a real winner, and I still give it five stars for a funny script and Coburn's marvelous performance.
Read Best Reviews of The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) Here
I just caught this film one late night on TCM. I was familiar with the title but had never seen it before. What a simply wonderful comedy which stars the beautiful Jean Arthur, the gruff character actor Charles Coburn, as well as Bob Cummings and Edmund Gwenn. Coburn is J.P. Merrick, the millionaire owner of a large department store. When the employees of the store start trying to organize a union, he decides to go undercover to find out who the ringleaders are. He takes a job as a shoe salesman calling himself Tom Higgins. He is immediately confronted on his first day by the shoe department manager Mr. Hooper (Gwenn) who plays a nasty role for once and tells Higgins he had the lowest intelligence score he's ever seen.Tom is assigned to sell women's slippers and befriends two women In the department, Mary (Arthur) and Elizabeth (played by Spring Byington). When Tom says he doesn't eat lunch, the women take pity on him because they think he's broke and give him money and some of their food. Later Tom agrees to meet Mary at night and soon finds himself in the middle of a hopeful union meeting. It turns out that Mary and her boyfriend Joe (Cummings) are the ringleaders and even use "poor" Tom as an example of a man who's down on his luck due to being tossed out by his previous employers.
At work, Tom is constantly under criticism from Hooper who thinks he's too old for the job. Tom keeps a notebook and writes in bold letters "Fire department manager!!" He wants to do a good job and so he his butler come in with the daughter of one of the servants to buy a dozen shoes. The plan goes hilariously awry when the girl screams she doesn't like the shoes and Hooper decides to take over AND get credit for the sale.
And so it goes with Merrick as the fish out of water, learning not only about these employees but himself as well. In another scene Tom and Elizabeth join Joe and Mary for a day at Coney Island beach. Tom brings along some very expensive wine but the others think he was taken with some cheap stuff and it makes for a classic clash of cultures.
The Film was directed by Sam Wood who made such classics as Goodbye Mr. Chips, A Night at the Opera, And the Pride of the Yankees. The film is very Capra-esque however with great performances from the entire cast. Hilarious, poignant and warm.
Reviewed by Tim Janson
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The star of this video is Charles Coburn and not Jean Arthur: the comic old goat steals the movie once again, as he did in "The More the Merrier," and other comedies from this era. But the supporting cast is superb: the comedic Jean Arthur, Bob Cummings from the early TV sitcom, "Love that Bob," Spring Byington, who starred in George Kaufman's "You Can't Take It With You," and Edmund Gwenn, Kris Kringle himself of "Miracle on 34th Street."Determined to find the employees creating a union problem in his store, Charles Coburn, the wealthy owner of the department store and business tycoon, goes undercover and poses as a clerk and works humbly behind the counter, and is abused and bullied by management until befriended by Jean Arthur, Bob Cummings, and Spring Byington....This movie is a fun indictment on capitalism--when such was allowed in Hollywood, prior to the blacklisting days of Joe McCarthy--and a call to more socialistic values. When would a business tycoon take his entire staff of store employees on a cruise to Hawaii just for the fun of it? Move over, all you CEOs....If only all such miraculous conversions could occur in the workplace within a span of 92 minutes!
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