Desk Set (1957)

Desk Set starred Katharine Hepburn as Bunny Watson, the head of the library of the Federal Broadcasting Network.

The television station is bringing in an efficiency-boosting mega-computer called EMERAC (Electromagnetic Memory and Research Arithmetical Calculator) – referred to as Miss Emmy – and invites its inventor Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) to help ease the process of its installation.

It’s a room-filling behemoth, with all the requisite bleeps and flashing lights, but only exacerbates the employees’ fears of redundancy when a computing error causes pink slips to be sent out to everyone in the company.

Set at Christmastime, this cheerfully antiquated farce came from the pen of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, whose daughter Nora would – a generation later – write and direct the quintessential rom-com about the email era: You’ve Got Mail (1998).

Richard Sumner
Spencer Tracy
Bunny Watson
Katharine Hepburn
Mike Cutler
Gig Young
Peg Costello
Joan Blondell
Sylvia
Dina Merrill
Ruthie
Sue Randall
Miss Warringer
Neva Patterson
Smithers
Harry Ellerbee
Azae
Nicholas Joy
Alice
Diane Jergens

Director
Walter Lang

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