Buns of Steel: From Librarian to Woman in Storm Center, Desk Set, Party Girl

Abstract

“Melville Dewey”, declares chief-librarian Judy Lindendorf, Mary’s godmother in Party Girl, “hired women as librarians because he believed the job didn’t require any intelligence. That means it’s underpaid and undervalued!” In Party Girl, a film from 1995, Judy reflects on what was a common assessment of the librarian’s profession for women throughout the 20th century. What are the common traits of this condescending image? What are its social roots? and has the librarian’s offensive image changed or improved over the years or has it remained the same? This article begins to explore the visual images and stereotypes appearing in films produced in the second half of the twentieth century. Of the four-hundred-odd films featuring librarians, I will focus here on three in which the female librarian is the main character, two from the 1950s and one from the mid 1990s: Storm Center (Daniel Taradash, 1956), Desk Set (Walter Lang, 1958) and Party Girl (Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 1995).