Desk Set (1957)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Fresh and Exciting

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Another entertaining Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy pairing, the one is about an efficiency expert (Tracy) assigned to "secretly" investigate implementing an electronic brain (e.g. a computer system) in the reference department of a television network. The head of the department (Hepburn) and her employees (Joan Blondell, Sue Randall, and Dina Merrill, in her first film), who currently "look everything up" manually, naturally feel threatened.Gig Young plays Hepburn's long time love interest, an up-and-coming employee at the network whose job interferes with their relationship. Harry Ellerbe appears as a company lawyer who also serves as its "grapevine". Nicholas Joy is the executive in charge that's hired Tracy, Neva Patterson plays a computer operator.The film's funniest scenes are the ones between its two stars: one is a rooftop luncheon in which Tracy learns of Hepburn's extraordinary mind and retention; the other occurs in her character's apartment.Serves as a commercial of sorts for IBM though, having spent more than 15 years in the business, it always amuses me how Hollywood displays computer hardware, with excessive blinking lights and constantly spinning tape drives.This above average comedy was directed by Walter Lang, based on the William Marchant play, and adapted (screenplay) by Phoebe and Henry Ephron, parents of Nora, Delia, and Amy.

"Desk Set" is a middle-of-the-road romantic comedy, a love story that finds its fifty plus-year-old actors fascinated by feelings they had given up on pursuing years ago. The romance in "Desk Set" is I had given up on marriage until now love, I love you but I like you more love, you saved me from a mid-life crisis love, not cheapened studio fare obsessed with the courtship of a fresh-faced blonde bombshell and a Robert Cummings lookalike. It's impossible not to admire the screen repartee perfected by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Bogie and Bacall could cause an audience member to spontaneously combust with a cigarette lit make-out session; Garbo and Gilbert could start a house fire just by glancing at each other. Not Hepburn and Tracy. Though real-life lovers, their nine films together were never defined by sexual chemistry; never an issue was a will-they-or- won't they hot and heavy love scene. If anything romantic occurs between the two, they first must size each other up, figure out the other's IQ. Maybe they will find the time to peck the other on the cheek in spite of repressed affection, but partaking in particularly witty conversation is much more fruitful than tiresome romance."Desk Set" is their most underrated hour; most favor 1949's wonderful "Adam's Rib" or 1942's "Woman of the Year" (whose popularity I am still perplexed by). Released in 1957, there is more studio flavor than usual, lavish CinemaScope photography having something to do with it —but a dexterity akin to "Designing Woman" is becoming for the two aged stars. The loud colors of the atmosphere, along with energy abundant dialogue, only reflect the pair's million-miles-a-minute personalities. We find comfort in seeing them together, relishing each other's company at the hands of a budget happy studio.Hepburn plays Bunny Watson, the head honcho of a TV network's research department. Knowledge hungry individuals call on an hourly basis, loaded with statistically minded questions. Bunny and her female associates, hardly breaking a nail, are almost human computers, able to recite obscure factual evidence as if it were a golden memory from their childhood.Problems arise when Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) arrives on the scene. An efficiency expert hoping to increase productivity in the research department, Richard hopes to eventually replace Bunny and her associates with a supercomputer. He doesn't make this quite clear right away, though; he instead inserts himself in the area, analyzing every moment, only slightly hinting at his ulterior motive. It doesn't take much time for a relationship to develop between Richard and Bunny, two lonelyhearts who never had the time, or the drive, to distract themselves with marriage. If only Bunny's longtime boyfriend (Gig Young), who hardly has plans for the future, would stop getting in the way!"Desk Set"'s premise is among the most dated (just take a look at that computer!) of the 1950s, but its charm has hardly faltered — in some ways, it has gotten better with age, as though its best characteristics were thrown into the air, its confetti exploding over our cynical hearts. Not much imagination is put into the direction or the set design — most of the film is locked in one setting — but Hepburn and Tracy kill (as does their always welcome co-star Joan Blondell), and the screenplay, written by husband and wife team Henry and Phoebe Ephron, positively glides with its seamless wit. It's all very lightweight and it's all very busy, but "Desk Set" is a shining fixture in the Hepburn/Tracy canon.

As I have always been a fan of Spencer Tracy, I thought it would be good to sit through one of his old works....big mistake! This movie has not met the test of time (as many have!), and if it were not for good old Joan Blondell, I may not have watched it all the way through. Unfortunately, as great an actress Katharine Hepburn was, this clearly was not her brightest hour. She seemed to be anxious to look after Spencer rather than act, and some of her prolonged rantings were too much. There were some good individual scenes, but they were far apart. Gig Young played his usual role of the other man competently, while it was good to see Dina Merrill in a fun mood. Not worth commenting on the story which has been done before and better.

There was Eniac, UNIVAC, the 486, the 386, the 286, and 8086 computer architecture in general. Before them were teletypes, the kind of which I used to play with in the 70s. "Desk Set" looks at a romantic theme revolving around the introduction of the electronic "mind" into the work place, and the ramifications thereof of a machine attempting to replace the human spirit.At least that's the unspoken rhetoric of the film. How are the personal lives of folks altered when a device is introduced that replaces a labor means once provided by human beings. At the FBC, four ladies of traditional American backgrounds dawning from the button down 1950s man and run the information center for a company that broadcasts some form of entertainment. They peruse books, scrounge through documents, answer and make phone calls of all sorts, trying to sort and file through mounds of information for the various segments of the company interested in trivia for a variety of applications.Enter "EMERAC", Hollywood's take on the Univac and other early computers whose size and scope filled entire floors of offices, if not warehouses worth of space. Emerac, by comparison is a "personal computer", so to speak. Huge reels of magnetic storage tape, lots of flashing lights, all attached to a Royal typewriter keyboard. Emerac is the data storage and regurgitation device "of the future", but will it's abilities put Katherine Hepburn and her cadre of femme-researchers out of a job? Enter Spencer Tracy, efficiency expert, who evaluates the office before introducing the much vaunted machine of tomorrow. As can be expected from a Tracy-Hepburn rom-com, fireworks fly, but not always the good kind. Hearts and mind are challenged as we see the early pitfalls of computer operations in the office environment of yesteryear. The early question of "what is intelligence" are introduced and examined in this fairly basic piece of Golden Era commecial film making.As can be expected there's more to this romantic triangle than a man, woman and computer. Another rival or two are introduced, as well as various support character to add to the usual milieu and spice up "the office".Will romance flourish? Will Emerac put the girls and company out of a job? Can early algorithms of post WW2 and early Cold War electronic minds show us the future? Is Emerac the all in one do-all computer cum search engine of a pre PC America? There actually is a hard answer to all those questions, but you need to watch the film to find out.Technical Corner; this is basic classic Golden Era 1950s commercial film making. There aren't a lot of dramatic shots, everything is well lit, and the humor is kept toned down for the social sensibilities of the time. Colors are vibrant but also basic, and in essence we're getting a set stage piece of 1952 as it was and might have been. The art direction is spot on, and as with all speculative fiction, the impressionism of what a "computer of tomorrow" might look like, sound like, and how big it might be, should bring a knowing smile.All in all it's a decent film. The mothers and grandmothers might grin at it, younger ladies might dismiss it. Males, particularly us computer tech types, might smile on it with fondness; remembering an old friend, so to speak from years gone by.Give it a chance.