At the Federal Broadcasting Network in Midtown Manhattan, Bunny Watson is in charge of its reference library, which is responsible for researching facts and answering questions on all manner of topics, great and small. Watson has been involved for seven years with rising network executive Mike Cutler, with no marriage in sight. The network is negotiating a merger with another company, but is keeping it secret. To help the employees cope with the extra work that will result, the network head has ordered two computers, or "electronic brains." Methods Engineer and efficiency expertRichard Sumner, the inventor of EMERAC, is brought in to see how the library functions, to figure out how to ease the transition. Though extremely bright, as he gets to know Bunny Watson, he is surprised to discover that she is every bit his match. When they find out the computers are coming, the employees jump to the conclusion they are being replaced. Their fears seem to be confirmed when everyone on the staff receives a pink slip printed out by the new payroll computer. It turns out to have been a mistake; the machine fired everybody in the company, including the president. Richard Sumner reveals his romantic interest in Bunny Watson, but she believes that EMERAC would always be his first priority. Sumner denies it, but then Watson puts him to the test, setting the machine to self-destruct. Sumner resists the urge to fix it as long as possible, but finally gives in. Watson accepts him anyway.
Cast
Production
In the play, Watson had only brief interactions with Sumner, and somewhat hostile. Screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron built up the role of the efficiency expert and tailored the interactions between him and the researcher to fit Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The exterior shots of the "Federal Broadcasting Network" seen in the film is actually the RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Center in Rockefeller Center, the headquarters of NBC. The character of Bunny Watson was based on Agnes E. Law, a real-life librarian at CBS who retired about a year before the film was released. This film was the eighth screen pairing of Hepburn and Tracy, after a five-year respite since 1952's Pat and Mike, and was a first for Hepburn and Tracy in several ways: the first non-MGM film the two starred in together, their first color film, and their first CinemaScope film. Following Desk Set their last film together would be 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The computer referred to as EMERAC is a metonym for ENIAC, which was developed in the 1940s and was the first electronic general-purpose computer. Parts of the EMERAC computer, particularly the massive display of moving square lights, would later be seen in various 20th Century Fox science fiction productions, including both the motion picture and TV versions of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The researchers furnish incorrect information about the career of baseball playerTy Cobb, who played for both the Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Athletics.
Reception
, film critic of The New York Times, felt the film was "out of dramatic kilter", inasmuch as Hepburn was simply too "formidable" to convincingly play someone "scared by a machine", resulting in "not much tension in this thoroughly lighthearted film". Today the film is seen far more favorably, with the sharpness of the script praised in particular. It has achieved a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 22 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.78/10. The site's consensus reads: "Desk Set reunites one of cinema's most well-loved pairings for a solidly crafted romantic comedy that charmingly encapsulates their timeless appeal". Dennis Schwartz of Osuz' World Movie Reviews called it an "inconsequential sex comedy", but contended "the star performers are better than the material they are given to work with" and that "the comedy was so cheerful and the banter between the two was so refreshingly smart that it was easy to forgive this bauble for not being as rich as many of the legendary duo's other films together."
