DESK SET (1957): A Happy Hepburn Christmas

Walter Lang's DESK SET (1957) is one of Katharine Hepburn's few "Christmas movies." You could possibly count LITTLE WOMEN (Cukor, 1933) or Anthony Harvey's THE LION IN WINTER (1968), but DESK SET stands out as a film that really captures the Christmas spirit, at least for the first half of the film. Below is a selection from an academic paper I wrote about "communities of women" in Hepburn's films. I compared and contrasted two Hepburn films centred on a group of professional women: STAGE DOOR (1937) and DESK SET (1957). This post is written in a more formal, analytical tone, but I hope it will inspire deeper thinking about the films we all enjoy. Warning: this post contains spoilers, highlighted in yellow.

DESK SET is about the internal workings of the research department of a television network. The department consists of four women, headed by Bunny Watson (Katharine Hepburn). The group start to worry about losing their jobs when engineer Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) begins taking measurements for the instalment of a new computer, which threatens to replace them all. Bunny has her own troubles with seven-year beau Mike Cutler (Gig Young) who finally proposes when he gets a promotion. But she cannot decide whether marriage is worth sacrificing her career and leaving her group of co-workers. Sumner makes matters right when he proposes, giving Bunny an alternative: marriage to a man who respects her intelligence and would support, rather than interfere with, her career.