Did you know that Katherine Hepburn and Spenser Tracey were in a Librarian movie together? Did you even know there were librarian movies? It’s called Desk Set, and we’re about halfway through watching it.
Desk Set somewhat unintentionally gives an interesting window into professional life for women in the late 1950’s. Apparently it involved lots of sexual harassment, patronization, and powerlessness. Oh, and trivia questions. Which is pretty cool.
We spend about ten minutes listening to Katherine Hepburn show off her black belt in historical and literary fact before her boyfriend (also her boss) lovingly tells her how stupid she is. In spite of the anachronisms, Hepburn’s character exudes competence, and it’s wonderful to watch a woman on film being unabashedly smart.
Like most pre-1980’s movies, it’s long and kind of slow. We got a bit bored, and will probably finish it later tonight. I’m looking forward to seeing the IBM “electronic brain” that is supposed to replace the reference department. I suspect it will involve lots of reel-to-reel tapes, blinking lights, and miraculous natural language processors.
Stay tuned.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
How can you only now be discovering “Desk Set”? It’s a great movie! And it actually got the role of computers in libraries right.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
I love Desk Set! Of course, I love almost every Katharine Hepburn movie.
November 13th, 2006 at 9:43 am
… ditto my respect for the movie and KH. Think of the internet rather than ‘electronic brain’, and it’s a tale of our time (sans the sexism, of course) …
November 13th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Love, love, love it! And [...spoiler for the ending...] she ends up with the guy that’s impressed with her brains and skill.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:16 am
For even more librarian movies, check out Martin Raish’s Annotated Filmography.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:22 am
David: I KNOW! I’ve been living under a rock. We just hadn’t gotten around to it until recently. Darn Netflix and it’s compelling recommendations.
Philip: Indeed. I plan on addressing this later. Google is closer to the movie depiction of the “brain”, but still isn’t there…yet!
Sheryl: We finished watching it late last night. You are SO RIGHT. I’m glad Mr. Smugpants got the boot in favor of a guy who got her coy literary references.
I also LOVED the female computer technician!! She’s all tetchy and tough until something goes wrong, then she bursts into tears and buries her head in the chest of her male colleague. Because that’s what we girls do. Why, just last week I had three Subversion conflicts and I had to go shopping and eat a pound of chocolate just to function again.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:54 am
“Long and kind of slow”–suddenly I’m feeling very old, and happy with that. Desk Set tells a story at a reasonably natural pace; it doesn’t have a jumpcut every five seconds; and there are very few car chases and explosions (not zero, in the latter case).
Have to admit, I’ve never heard Desk Set (which I think is a fine movie) described in a way that makes it sound like a sexist snoozefest. Live and learn (or “to each their own,” I suppose).
November 13th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
While doing my MLIS, our prof showed a clip from Desk Set. I finally borrowed it from the library last year to watch it, but fell asleep doing so and never bothered to replay to see what I missed.
November 13th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Bored?! Ack! I LOVE that movie. At least once every holiday season I get liquored up and watch it. Last year, I linked to an article about the inspiration for Bunny Watson. http://rochellejustrochelle.typepad.com/copilot/2005/11/ladies_of_the_d.html
November 13th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
We watch it in library school! :) It’s an interesting movie.
November 13th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
We watched it in library school! :) It’s an interesting movie.
November 14th, 2006 at 10:16 am
One of my all time favorite movies!! Partially because it’s Hepburn (damn that woman made pants look good!) and partially because in the end, it’s revealed that the computer is just supposed to HELP the librarians, as it should, rather than replace them. :) I do love the scene where she frets about her philodendron. :) And the one where the computer gives everyone a pink slip rather than a paycheck!
November 14th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Has anyone ever noticed that none of the books in the library in this movie have spine labels? Maybe that’s why they need four staff members.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:51 am
“Curfew shall not ring tonight!”
(One of my all-time favorite movies.)
November 15th, 2006 at 4:28 am
I didn’t think it was slow or boring at all! In fact, I loved every minute of it. Ended up getting the DVD for Christmas last year and I’ve watched it again several times since then.
November 15th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Ab mentions a good site but it is missing a lot of movies and doesn’t give much detail such as Marion the Librarian from music man or the librarian in Shoes in which the camera is always at foot level (the director had a fetish). A good source of information is the movie database on the Dialog online system, i forget the database #, but it gives the dates, actors, director and plot synopsis etc. Well worth searching.
November 25th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Even better, there are academic articles about librarian movies…
Cheryl Knott Malone, “Imagining Information Retrieval in the Library: Desk Set in Historical Context,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 14-22, Jul-Sept, 2002.
http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MAHC.2002.1024759
December 9th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Long and kind of slow? How old are you? You must be kidding. I love the Christmas celebrations. Love the movie.
December 14th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
i know, its amazing. i JUST watched it for the first time last night, and here you all are talking about it!
i think that even though the sexism in it is screwed up, they couldnt have left it out you know?