The New Pictures

The Devil and Miss Jones (RKO Radio). It is a jolt for any old-style tycoon with a jumpy stomach and a cracker-&-milk diet to pick up the morning paper and see that he has been hanged in effigy outside a big department store he can't recall owning. It is particularly hard for old John P. Merrick (Charles Coburn), a bachelor so rich and powerful that his picture hasn't appeared in the newspapers for 20 years.

Moved to investigate his new-found property and ferret out the union leaders who hanged him, dyspeptic J. P. disguises himself as a clerk in his shoe department. He finds out a lot he never knew about people who have to work for a living. A pompous section manager (Edmund Gwenn) rules him with acidulous tyranny. A comely young clerk, Mary Jones (Jean Arthur), tries to teach him the tricks of the trade, lends him 50-c- when she interprets his remark about never eating lunch to mean that he is broke.

At a union meeting where his employes are secretly organizing against him, J. P. suffers the indignity of being hauled to the speakers' platform by Mary, held up to his employes as an example of the insecure old age they face. Won over to their cause, he incites them to strike against him.

Half the fun of The Devil and Miss Jones is in sharing Charles Coburn's secret while unknowing shoe clerks push him around. The other half comes from the lightsome little comedy itself, which bubbles along without a hitch under the knowing hand of Director Sam Wood (Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Our Town; Kitty Foyle). Comedienne Arthur plays second fiddle to the enameled professional finish of oldtime Actor Coburn.

Good shots: Robert Cummings spiking Coburn's precious Romanee-Conti 1903 (only twelve bottles vintaged, six of them for the King of England) with soda pop to make it potable.

The Great Lie (Warner Bros.). For three years and three pictures Bette Davis and George Brent have tried to get together. In Jezebel Brent died dueling. In Dark Victory a brain tumor dispatched Miss Davis. Then it was Brent's turn again: he failed to live through The Old Maid. In The Great Lie they finally make it. The end leaves them in each other's arms, lark-happy.

The Brothers Warner have made other concessions: Miss Davis' perpetual, migrainy suffering has been cut to a minimum. This was a bold move, for Hollywood's bug-eyed Bernhardt has won two Oscars and numerous legs on the cup for the U.S. cinema's ablest actress by her portrayals of suffering women. In The Great Lie she is cast as a lively, homespun, slacks-wearing American girl free from her favorite neuroses. Although the picture has her living on a Maryland plantation, it is far enough north to let her waive the absurdities of a Southern accent.

Another surprise of The Great Lie is Mary Astor, in another comeback. This time, in a tight shingle bob, she is back with a bang as Sandra Kovac, a temperamental concert pianist* with a touch of siren. The overtones of her villainous role begin to sound, sometimes a little nasally, from the time she snatches Maggie's (Bette Davis) rollicking, playboy sweetheart, Pete (George Brent), and marries him in an alcoholic spree. When it is discovered that they have to do it again because Sandra got her divorce decree dates mixed, Maggie snatches Pete back, this time salting him legally away.

Best sequence occurs in an isolated Arizona ranch house. There Maggie has taken Sandra to have Pete's baby after he is believed dead in an airplane crash in Brazil. The women have made a deal: Maggie to get Sandra's baby, Sandra to get a trust fund. It takes all Maggie's bullying, pampering, coercion to get the spoiled pianist to produce the baby. When the baby is finally born, Maggie subsides on the moonlit porch outside the house with all the apparent relief of an anguished father.

In her unaccustomed wifely role, Miss Davis is believable and moving. Slick, wide-eyed George Brent seems handicapped by his part -- little more than a foil for the two women. Men may think that The Great Lie drags somewhat in spots, may get more than enough of Hattie McDaniel's (Maggie's mammy) sunstruck volubility, but female cinemagoers should be able to settle back and view Miss Davis' wifely triumph with thoroughgoing satisfaction.

Pot o' Gold (United Artists). When Sam Goldwyn hired the President's oldest son two years ago, Hollywood sat back with a small smile and twiddled its thumbs. Next thing Hollywood knew, Jimmy was on his own. With a franchise to distribute pictures through United Artists, he had formed his own company, Globe Productions, Inc. Jimmy's first regular film release was Pastor Hall, an English-made film of the trials of a Nazi-baited German cleric. His second was to be his own product, Pot o' Gold. Three weeks ago Captain James Roosevelt drew a brief furlough from his duties with th Marine Corps at San Diego, Calif., flew East for the Pot o' Gold opening.

A musicomedy right down the Hollywood groove, Pot o' Gold teams up America's favorite doughboy, James Stewart with prancing Paulette Goddard, Comic Charles Winninger, adds Horace Heidt's muscular orchestra for a bracer, bind them together with the radio program Pot o' Gold ($1,000 to the lucky person who answers the telephone when Bandmaster Heidt calls from the studio).

But the sum of this whole is less than its parts. Jimmy Stewart tries to keep busy by playing the harmonica Flashing Paulette Goddard, who has seldom looked prettier, sings and dances in old-style nightclub fashion. White-haired Charles Winninger booms through his routine with astounding energy for a 56-year-old. As the last of six tuneful but undistinguished tunes fades away, many a moviegoer might be excused for murmuring: "Jimmy hasn't got it." The Lady From Cheyenne (Universal) is Producer Frank Lloyd's conception of how women got the vote in Wyoming in 1869. According to this version, all but one of the women who did it were no ladies.

The one who was a lady is prim, pretty Annie Morgan (Loretta Young), Quaker schoolma'am, who manages to ogle a choice lot out of Steve Lewis (Robert Preston), a lazy lawyer auctioning off land for Jim Cork (Edward Arnold), local tyrant, political boss, saloon keeper in the frontier town of Laraville.

Annie takes up the torch of Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst after Cork burns down her schoolhouse. Eager to bring Cork to trial, she discovers that women can't serve on the jury because they haven't the right to vote. Annie heads for Cheyenne and the legislature to change all that. Her fervor kindles the latent womanhood of a jaded cabaret queen, Elsie (Gladys George). It is no trick for Elsie and her chorus of fancy dollies, who are on kissing-cousin terms with the legislature, to get Annie's bill for woman suffrage introduced. Annie does the rest--with the aid of some sage political advice from a statehouse porter and a spangled hip-tight dress, borrowed from Elsie. An all-woman jury sends Cork to jail and Annie out of political life into the arms of Steve, now a reformed legislator.

If Producer Lloyd had been able to make up his mind whether he had satire or drama on his hands, The Lady From Cheyenne might have come off quite well.

As it is, the picture adds up to a series of uninspiring maneuvers by an expensive, experienced cast--or lollypopeyed Loretta Young in a Western.

* Music-minded quibblers may note that Miss Astor does not possess the heavy-duty frame customarily required of successful female classical pianists.

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