There is something grotesque about the way cultural institutions are preemptively leaning further right-wing in anticipation of the second Trump administration. Trump’s second term has not started yet, but companies like Disney & Meta are already self-censoring in anticipation of a hard-right shift towards moral censorship, which likely makes business sense given Trump’s public alignment with “anti-woke” shitposter Elon Musk. Usually, being designated The Richest Man in the World encourages billionaires to hide from the public in shame while executing their political influence in private, but Musk has instead elected to purchase himself a prominent role in Executive Branch politics, demanding to be liked in addition to being feared. He’s openly rigging the system to be more favorable to his regressive worldview, which is something the wealthy are supposed to do behind closed doors. There’s nothing new to the cultural strong-arming through obscene wealth that Trump & Musk are indulging in right now, except in the extent of their shamelessness to do so in full public view. If nothing else, you can already see their personality & tactics viciously satirized as far back as the 1940s comedy The Devil and Miss Jones, which itself preemptively apologizes & kowtows to “The Richest Men in the World” . . .  before mocking them mercilessly.

As early as its opening credits, The Devil and Miss Jones is clear about the moral stance it’s going to take in the eternal Class War. Charles Coburn is introduced as The Richest Man in the World by a title card that dresses him in a devil costume, with the flames of Hell roaring behind him. His comedic foil—Jean Arthur as a humble department store clerk—is then introduced dressed as a heavenly angel, complete with wings & halo. Then, a written letter from the producers apologize to The Richest Men in the World for that satirization, begging to not be sued for defamation since it’s not meant to target any one Wealthy Ghoul in particular (a tactical move that Orson Welles would have been wise to borrow for his satirization of William Randolph Hearst in Citizen Kane that same year). Part of the reason they can get away with the transgression is that the ultra wealthy of the time mostly had the good sense to hide from the public. Or, that’s at least Coburn’s approach as a millionaire businessman who’s so obscenely rich he’s no longer sure what actual businesses he owns. In the opening scene, he’s horrified to discover that an effigy of his likeness was hung & burned outside a department store by its unhappy workers, which made the front page of the daily papers. Only, those workers have no idea what he actually looks like; they just know (and curse) his name.

Coburn weaponizes his anonymity by posing as a regular worker at the department store, so that he can single out the dissidents on his payroll for mass firing. His attempts to unionbust from the inside quickly go awry when he discovers that the ground-level workers are wonderful people, and that middle-management are the true social pariahs. Jean Arthur is especially adorable as the titular Miss Jones, who adopts the Undercover Boss out of pity because he is absolutely abysmal as a salesman. Coburn is dragged to an underground union-organizing meeting after his very first day, so that he can be paraded as an example of how pathetic elderly workers can become in old age once they outlive their usefulness to their corporate employers. Without all of his wealth strong-arming his Yes Men into doing his bidding, Coburn proves to be a low-skill, low-intelligence loser, which is a characterization the movie doesn’t back down from even as his fellow department store workers help him stay on his feet so he can make a living. When his true identity as the company’s owner is revealed to those kind souls, he’s met with the same reaction that greets Monstro Elisasue at the end of The Substance; they recoil in horror at his monstrosity, disgusted with themselves from socializing with someone as grotesquely inhuman as the 1%.

Directed by Marx Brothers collaborator Sam Wood, The Devil and Miss Jones is a hilarious class-differences comedy about how labor unions are pure good, the wealthy are pure evil, and everyone loves a day at the beach. It may indulge in a little “We’re not so different after all” apologia in depicting its cross-class culture clash, but its politics remain sharply observed throughout. Even Miss Jones’s romantic infatuation with the department store’s most ardent labor-union rabble-rouser has its nuances, as the movie criticizes the unchecked machismo of Leftist men by having him blab pigheaded phrases like, “A woman’s place in the world is to tend to the male” while she scoffs. The main target of its political satire is, of course, Coburn’s obliviousness as a wealthy ghoul, repeatedly humbling his sense of superiority among the unwashed “idiots” and “morons” in his employ. It feels especially pointed that even when those workers attempt to sweeten the fine wine he brings along to their Coney Island beach day with a splash of Coca-Cola, it’s not quite enough to overpower the bitterness. Its class & labor commentary has aged incredibly well, so it’s somewhat a shame that its cultural reputation as mostly persisted as a footnote to the porn-parody title The Devil in Miss Jones, directed decades later by Gerard Damiano.

-Brandon Ledet