Tea and Sympathy
Directed by Vicente Minnelli
Written by Robert Anderson based on the play by Robert Anderson
1956/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/YouTube
Tom Lee: I’m always falling in love with the wrong people.
Laura Reynolds: Who isn’t?
This holds up remarkably well for a film that has dated in so many ways.
Bill Reynolds (Leif Erikson) and his wife Karen (Deborah Kerr) are the house parents of a boarding house at an upscale boys school. Bill is also a coach and spends most of his time outdoors participating in various activities with the boys. Tom Lee is a sensitive eighteen year old who lives in the house. He spends his time apart from the others, listening to music and thinking. He also has agreed to play a female part in the school play. The final straw comes when, instead of going to a racous beach party, with his fellows he is caught on another part of the beach chatting with the faculty wives and demonstrating the proper technique for sewing on a button. Thereafter he becomes known as “Sister Boy” and is mercilessly hazed by the other boys.
Despite his prowess at tennis, Tom is a grievous disappointment to his father and Coach Reynolds. He is forced to drop out from the play and his roommate, at the insistence of his father, announces he is moving in with another boy the next year. Laura feels a lot of sympathy for Tom, who reminds her of her late first husband. She tries to stand up for him but is shouted down by her uncommunicative husband. Things take a turn for the worse when Tom decides to try to prove himself with the local “bad girl.”
Now we can have movies about the love that dare not speak it’s name but in the 50’s the whole thing had to be approached very gingerly. It is enough that Tom is “different”. The filmmakers also found it necessary to tack on a moralistic coda emphasizing the “wrongness” of the resolution of the problem. Nevertheless, the movie remains quite moving and watchable, thanks to the sensitive performances of all concerned. Recommended.
