My Romance with Movies: From the 1950s: Tea and Sympathy

1956 Drama

From MGM

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Starring

Deborah Kerr

John Kerr

Leif Erickson

Edward Andrews

Darryl Hickman

Norma Crane

Dean Jones

Tom Laughlin

I was too young when I first saw this film and it confused the hell out of me, especially considering that I was in the throes of learning whointhehell I was and who I aspired to be. I thought then and for some time afterward that this work was about discovering one's sexuality while the truth is it's about discovering the human condition.

Like Tom Lee, the boy at the center of all the fuss, I was shy and sensitive. The only sport we were even somewhat good at was tennis which was apparently considered a girly sport. Like Tom, my father made fun of me and made no attempt to hide or curtail his shame. Like Tom, fellow students bullied me, goaded me into fights and called me names. Tom is called Sister Boy. We were both hassled because of how we walked and talked. I was made fun of because of how I carried my schoolbooks. We were both laughed at because we didn't have a girlfriend and were found contemptible because we preferred the company of women to men.

Women never scared me but straight men did although I would not have been able to articulate that at the time or any better than Tom could. He and I knew we never wanted to be the type of man our fathers and their cronies or friends' fathers were. It was unthinkable that I would treat a woman with the disrespect that my father did. He didn't know how to love but he thought he was the town stud. We couldn't have been more opposite. Tom would have understood.

My father and school kids knocked me down and my mother and especially grandmother built me back up. Tom hadn't had a mother after the age of five and although he still had his Cro-Magnon father, Tom lived in a series of all-male boarding schools. What he had to help him navigate through his tortured life was the love and understanding of Laura Reynolds, the wife of his school's dormitory headmaster/coach.

The film opens with Tom attending a 10-year reunion. We know he has written a book about his experiences at the school and his times with Laura, her husband, his father and the other boys. When he visits his old dorm room, he slips into the reverie of years past.

When we first meet Laura she's having Tom try on a dress she's making. Aha, you say. Well, Tom is in the school play in the role of a woman and Laura is making the costume. When Tom's father finds out about it, he embarrassingly insists that Tom call the drama teacher and cancel his participation at the last minute... to the horror of Laura and the teacher. The father then insists that Tom go to the barber and get a crew cut like the other boys.

The screenplay wants us to know that Tom is polite, helpful, likes gardening, likes being alone, doesn't have much to do with other students, wants to be a folksinger, plays his guitar a lot, listens to classical music and likes to hang out with Laura and read poetry. Tom gets into hot water when he's spotted on the beach with Laura and some faculty wives and he's sewing. (He's showing one wife how to be more effective in her sewing and explains that the family maid taught him how to sew.)

It's all quite the mess for the kid and he begrudgingly knows it but Laura makes him feel good about himself.

She has her own agenda. Her special affinity for Tom comes out of the fact that her first husband, a fragile soul always working on his machismo, was killed in the war while still being down on himself. At the same time, married to Bill now for a year hasn't been the bed of roses she was hoping for. She feels unloved, unwanted, unappreciated and undervalued. She bristles over his detachment to their marriage.

Bill is in a haze of rough-housing, male camaraderie with his boys and he is not fond of Tom or his wife's attentions toward him. We sense their marriage is on its last legs when she castigates Bill for his bullying of Tom, for humiliating him in front of the school and for judging him through a veneer of prejudice. She faults him for his lack of understanding because Tom doesn't conform to Bill's ideas. Bill, of course, thinks he knows what's best and given his job, thinks he knows how to make a man of the timid kid.

Laura does believe that finding the right girl may be what Tom needs most of all. She's not pleased that he's gone to the town tramp for his initiation and when that doesn't work out that he intends to commit suicide. Adding it all up, Laura decides to take their instructive relationship a step further. She'll become the homework assignment.

She finds him bereft on a mound in the woods. We don't see their meeting unfold in any glaring way but as she comes to kiss him, she utters the film's famous phrase...years from now, when you talk about this-- and you will-- be kind. In 1956 audiences were lucky to hear that expression much less hear or see anything more.

Now we return to the present and Tom walks into the dorm apartment that Laura and Bill shared. Bill is sitting alone, looking despondent and perhaps questioning the mess he made of his life. He (improbably, I thought) gives Tom a sealed letter from Laura from years earlier. Among other things she tells Tom she appreciates the loving novel he wrote about their relationship. She wishes Tom a full and understanding life and assures him the wife always kept her affection for the boy.

The screenplay was written by Robert Anderson (The Nun's Story, I Never Sang for My Father, The Sand Pebbles) and was his most personal work being based on his teenage experiences of being in love with an older woman. He also wrote the play upon which the film is based. It ran for 712 performances from 1953-55.

The play also starred the three leads in the film... Kerr, Kerr and Erickson. (For your file-it-and-forget-it stack, Deborah's last name is pronounced Car while John's is pronounced Cur.) The trio was so practiced there is no doubt why they give the sterling performances they do. By the way, when Car and Cur left the play to make the film, their roles were taken over by Joan Fontaine and Anthony Perkins.

The play was directed by Elia Kazan who had no intentions of making it look like a beautiful, pastel Disney production. It was said this was the play that could not be made into a film. But perhaps no one had reckoned with Dore Schary, MGM's successor to the pious L. B. Mayer, who wanted to make more serious films, even controversial ones. He was bright enough to know to hand it off to the oft-married, gay director, Vincente Minnelli, who had the sensitivity and gravitas to pull this off.

Minnelli, however, wasn't one to challenge the heavyweight censors of the day. The script had to be watered down some (a big complaint of the film's naysayers), there was to be no mention of homosexuality and the woman must be punished. After all, she is an adulterer. It still turned out to be one of the Minnelli's favorite and most personal films. He was saddened that it didn't do better.

Who better to play Laura than the woman who brought her to life on Broadway? Who better to play an angel of a character, someone kind and loving and nurturing, than Deborah Kerr? Few actresses have had as many successes as she has. Just consider the six films she made in a row surrounding this one... The Proud and Profane (my favorite Kerr role), The King and I, then Tea and Sympathy, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, An Affair to Remember, Bonjour Tristesse (a treat) and Separate Tables.

John Kerr made his screen debut in The Cobweb a year earlier and also directed by Minnelli. So he had that factor and being in the play to bolster his screen performance. I always liked him but found him quirky in his movements and halting in his speech, always displaying some type of discomfort in his acting (smiling never came easily for him either).

Leif Erickson, too, was perfection in the part. I always saw this character as a latent homosexual. The brutish straight guy who has a need to be around men or boys all the time and who makes fun of people not like him has always been highly suspect to me. Don't get me started on the towel-snapping and ass-patting. Erickson always handled brutishness well. I have no doubt why they thought of the actor for the role.

The stars with writer Robert Anderson

Edward Andrews, always so smarmy and vicious, is also perfect as Tom's ignorant father. Fewer Toms would lead this kind of life if there were fewer fathers like this... totally lacking in empathy, too my-way-or-the-highway, criminally unloving.

Norma Crane shines as the waitress for whom the horny school boys save their allowances. Longtime child actor Darryl Hickman is particularly good as Tom's roommate in a role that has some depth to it. Tom Laughlin and Dean Jones, early in their careers, are the guys we love to hate.

After I escaped from my confusion as to what this story was about, I concluded that while homosexuality circles the entire thing, it is really about persecution, compassion, pity and love. It concerns itself with caring about the human condition especially when conditions don't coincide with one's own. We must understand and respect the differences in people.

Robert Anderson saw it as a love story. I see it as a lovely story that deserves to be seen.

Here's a look: