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This delightful 1941 romantic comedy got banned from TV for a time in the ’70s because of its title, which is practically identical to a notorious porn movie of the era. The earlier “Miss Jones” is an expert splicing of two popular Golden Age sub-genres, the department store movie (everything from “Sweepings” to “The Big Store”) and numerous films where callous capitalists learn the error of their ways after rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi (the most extreme example is “You Can’t Take It with You,” also with Jean Arthur). In the case of Sam Wood’s “The Devil and Miss Jones,” the rubbing is being done by relusive millionaire Charles Coburn, who goes to work incognito in one of his department stores, where he encounters disgruntled employee Jean (he won an Oscar supporting her in “The More the Merrier” the following year) and union organizer Bob Cummings, who was directed by Wood again the following year as a psychiatrist in the very dark romantic melodrama “King’s Row” (where Coburn acted him off the screen as a sadistic surgeon). “The Devil and Miss Jones” is one of the few films where the busy character actress Spring Byington — midway between the forgotten “Jones Family” B-movie series and “December Bride” — gets a romantic subplot. She was also wooed by the estimable Mr. Coburn in 1950’s “Louisa,” where his rival was another delightful scene stealer, Edmund Gwenn. As it happens, Mr. Gwenn pops up in “The Devil and Miss Jones” as a malevolent supervisor and of course won his own Oscar for playing Kris Kringle in perhaps the most famous department store movie of them all, “Miracle on 34th Street.”

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