Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1941

The Contenders:

Citizen Kane (winner)
The Devil and Miss Jones
Sergeant York
Tall, Dark and Handsome
Tom, Dick and Harry

Workman's Comp

Films: The Devil and Miss Jones
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

One of the surprise pleasures I’ve had on this blog over the past 18 months was discovering The More the Merrier, a sort of screwball comedy right in the heart of the war years. That movie featured the talents of Charles Coburn and Jean Arthur as well as those of Joel McCrea, and it’s an entertaining little romp that is probably exactly what people needed in the middle of the war. The Devil and Miss Jones comes from a couple of years earlier and is thus an earlier pairing of Coburn and Arthur, and minus Joel McCrea. McCrea is replaced by Robert Cummings, who is pleasant enough, but hardly of the same caliber.

Anyway, this is from 1941, so the winds of war were certainly starting to blow, but hadn’t yet reached American shores. Because of that, The Devil and Miss Jones is not about any sort of war effort, but about the plight of American workers and the problems encountered with the men who run such companies. In truth, it’s a lot closer to a 1940s version of “Undercover Boss” than anything else.