The Devil and Miss Jones, 1941

Classic comedy about trying to hold a job.

The "richest man in the world" (New York City businessman Merrick, played by Charles Coburn) is living on milk and crackers because of his constantly nervous and upset stomach, and when one of his minor possessions, a huge department store in NYC that employs some 2,500 people, gets into the newspapers because some of the workers there are trying to unionize, he wants the problem quieted down immediately.

During the photographed protest the workers had carried around an effigy of Merrick (they don't know what he looks like since he never allows himself to be photographed, so what they come up with is a ridiculous image of a 1920s tycoon with devil horns), and this agitates Merrick even further as he both hates personal publicity and he hates the look of the dummy.

Merrick's financial advisors want to send in a private detective, disguised as a shoe salesman, to spy on the store and discover who leaders are trying to unionize the employees (the unionizer happens to be a clerk named Joe, played by Robert Cummings). When unexpectedly the detective goes unavailable due to his wife going into labor in Philadelphia, Merrick impatiently decides to take over the job himself and pretend to be new employee "Tom Higgins," convinced that the ruse will be easy to pull off because he's sure he's dealing with "idiots" (which in a way is true, just not in the place he thought it was).

Joining the fifth floor at the department store as a shoe salesman, Merrick (as Higgens) is immediately befriended by store veterans Mary (Jean Arthur) and Elizabeth (Spring Bylington) who give him tips on how to keep his job and to stay out of trouble with the exacting store management. Mary is particularly astounded by 'Tom Higgins' naivete about how to keep his head down, with Merrick openly riled at the totalitarian way the shoe department is run by section manager Mr. Hooper ("a petty tyrant" says Merrick). Played by Edmund Gwenn, this boss is alternatingly arrogant, has a possessive eye cast upon Elizabeth, and appears to have the power to fire at will. When Merrick and Hooper start bumping heads, Mary becomes a kind of surrogate daughter and protector, even forcing Merrick to take money from her because she is certain he is so poor he is unable to afford lunch. Mary is so taken with Merrick she brings herself to tears just describing to others the poverty and difficulty she imagines Merrick has stoically been surviving through in order to get this low-end shoe salesman job.

Merrick, who thinks of himself as the smartest man in the store (if not the country) is constantly thwarted in his original goals because he's not a particularly good employee and simply doesn't know how to fend for himself (that task has always been handled by his butler George, played by S. Z. Sakall) and though he doesn't realize it, his attitude about the employees, who after all are all working for him, begins changing.

Soon Elizabeth is curing his stomach problems (with tuna popovers and other ordinary foods, which Merrick consumes at such a rate that Joe says "...he looks like a guy who just discovered his stomach") and then Merrick finds himself embroiled not only in the on-and-off love between Joe and Mary, but he is attracted to Elizabeth. A long section of the film takes place at Coney Island and features Merrick in trouble with the police and Joe (who Merrick instinctively didn't like because he's one of the ring leaders for unionizing the store's employees, i.e., Merrick's employees) helps to steer him out from under the problem by a combination of fast talking and unmoving stubbornness on Higgin's (i.e., Merrick's) civil rights. Merrick is not only experiencing a confusing change in understanding Joe, but then begins to worry because Elizabeth has already wondered out loud how a woman could marry a man with a lot of money, because there'd always be the doubt that she only wanted him for his cash, and Higgins (i.e., Merrick) is loaded with cash.

This kind-hearted comedy has a crusty edge at times with an efficient (though simplified) class warfare plot. Directed by Sam Wood with the screenplay written by Norma Krasna, it is one of those expertly machined films of the golden era of Hollywood production. Everyone in the main cast is given a lovable side to admire in the tale, except for the mean-spirited floor boss played by Ed Gwenn, and the duplicitous general manager of the whole department store, Mr. Allison (Walter Kingsford) who thinks he has outwitted the unionizers at one point, planning to fire the whole fifth floor to make sure he kicks out all the "troublemakers," wholly unaware he's ended up facing off against the man who owns the whole store.

While number three on the billing, Coburn is really the star here. With fairly generous screentime, he is able to fully expand on the curmudgeonly-type characters he had already played in numerous other films (particularly Bachelor Mother from 1939, which in some minor ways overlaps with this film).

Spring Bylington is given another sentimental role, but she has more to do that usual, and her character isn't just about cooking tuna popovers. In a way her role (and Arthur's) is to remother Coburn's "richest man in the world" on how to play nice with the other children, and it works out.

Jean Arthur is the lead (though her screen time seems to be eclipsed by Coburn) and she plays Mary more or less the way she played so many other characters in 1930s comedies: street-wise, slightly eccentric, and essentially fearless. She and Coburn are a great match and they carry the film as a bizarre father-daughter team straight on through to the finish (they teamed up again in The More the Merrier in 1943).

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