I watched "Tea and Sympathy" within a day or two of also watching "The Band Wagon," and the two films together went a long way toward increasing my admiration of Vincente Minelli, a filmmaker who I haven't generally cared much for in the past.Was any actress more elegantly luminous than Deborah Kerr? In this, she plays a faculty wife at a preppy college who feels pity for a young man (John Kerr) who is ostracized by the other boys for his sissy tendencies. The film is an overt exploration of masculine insecurity at a time when gender roles weren't allowed to be fluid at all. Deborah is simply marvelous, as she always was, while John Kerr is a little less successful, his acting a bit more obvious and heavy handed. But the film overall is wonderful, and should be seen by anyone who's interested in films that explore the ugly side of the middle class American dream that was so heavily trumpeted in the 1950s, a dream that was really a prison for so many.Grade: A

Imagine that there was a time where homosexuality was actually referred to as sister's boy. That's what we find in this interesting 1956 film.John Kerr, who passed away this month at 81, was always at his best in his rather brief career, when he was vulnerable and subject to the taunts of other. We would see this again the following year when Kerr starred in Rogers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific."Unable to fit in with the school he is attending, he finds solace in the hands of the schoolmaster's wife, so ably played by Deborah Kerr, at her usual whining best.Look for Norma Crane here as the chain-smoking prostitute. Crane, born Anna-Bella Zuckerman, in real life was quite a versatile actress. 15 years after this film, she would play Golda, Tevye's wife in that magnificent 1971 film-"Fiddler on the Roof."As for "Tea and Sympathy," it's still another example of how homosexuality was viewed by a society.

I read the play when I was Tom Lee's age and deeply closetted, and it had a devastating effect: "At last someone understands: just because I'm not like the others doesn't mean I'm - heaven forbid - gay." I thought the play was great - liberating, even.I saw the film (on TV, with distractions) some 25 years after it was made, myself on the brink of coming out, and noted that it was much less clear that it was about homosexuality than the play had been. Tom's sexual orientation had been blurred down to the question of whether he was "a regular guy" or not. Key speeches like Laura's challenge to Bill's sexuality were missing. And Laura's letter at the end seemed just moralistic, and an obvious sop to the censors.To see the film today, out and proud, and with the benefit of nearly 50 years of hindsight, I find myself agreeing with many of the comments above, both positive and negative. The film is hard to watch because it is so overwrought. That is easier to understand when you know that all three leads are reprising their stage roles. Even so, there is a desperate tension running right through it. With the possible exception of the faculty wives, not a single person in it is comfortable with their sexuality. The guys are, without exception, over-anxious to prove something, and Laura is frustrated. (Ellie Martin at least knows what she wants - a radio that works - and what she wants to pay to get it.) Overlaid on this, nothing can be explicit, everyone talks all the time in circumlocutions. Of course, that was the rule in films of those days, and possibly real life as well. Therein lies a contradiction that can only be resolved from outside the film and in its future, now. The film was trying to liberate people like me (and heterosexual non-conformists) while staying within the confines of a deeply closetted and homophobic film industry.Should you see this film? As a piece of gay history, perhaps. As a commentary on a homophobic time, it is instructive, both for what it says and doesn't say. As a worthwhile drama that will involve you in its issues, no. Has it anything worthwhile to say, as someone says above, about the importance of love? If you concentrate on Deborah Kerr's performance and her predicament, perhaps, but it's like watching a beautiful butterfly struggling in a pitcher-plant.

There should be a genre for films like Tea and Sympathy, Suddenly Last Summer, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It could be called "Back When It Was a Disease" or "Homosexuality According to the 1950s." This is a film about a sensitive schoolboy (Tom) who just can't jive with the manly jocks he is expected to befriend. In fact, he prefers to discuss poetry with a middle aged, Technicolor-coordinated, Deborah Kerr (Laura). Based on a play, the film is watered down considerably to avoid addressing the issue of his homosexuality outright. For instance, a scene in which the boy is caught skinny-dipping with a flamboyant professor is totally removed. It is very mildly laughable (or maybe half-heartedly chuckle- able) to see Tom learning to walk like a man, so angst-ridden about his status as a "sissy," especially when even he thinks he just needs someone to quell the confusion.The film is about hate and discrimination and, I think, we are meant to sympathize with Tom, but only because he is branded a "queer" by his peers without the sympathy that the Kerr character is able to dish out, and thus "cure" him. In the 1950s, homosexuality was considered a disease by the psychiatric powers-that-be. And as many diseases can be cured, so could this one in the perverse imagination of the Hollywood censors. The Kerr character martyrs herself, sacrificing her virtue to shag the boy (who really is a boy of only 17), which effectively rids him of his "illness." Yes, his confusion vanishes instantly as Laura unbuttons her cardigan with a disturbingly sober expression that was obviously meant to say "I am not doing this out of lust, but out of my older, wiser, nurturing feminine duty to rescue you from this unholy perversion." And then he grows up into a self-assured, suit-wearing, happily married, home-owning go-getter. Thank God, for martyrs like Laura. What's most jacked up about Tea and Sympathy is that it seems to want to function as a shout-out to all the idiosyncratic so called sissies that are so unfortunately stigmatized for being different. Which would be fine, except that the film is telling its audience that it is okay to be different because, hooray, there's a cure. In other words, it's not okay to be different. The cruel peers who ostracize "sissies" like Tom are not okay either. But only because Tom could still grow up to epitomize het-masculine normalcy. Tea and Sympathy reprimands its homophobes for punishing innocent soon-to-be ex-gays as if to say, "please do be careful when punishing the gays because they might not always be that way. And when they're good and cured, boy, will there be some red faces all around." But my biggest problem is this: for a movie that's so sooo soooooo backwards, it is not nearly funny enough. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was funny. Suddenly Last Summer was even funnier yet. Okay, Kerr's seduction scene, though nightmarish, was funny. I'll give it 5/10 stars just for that, but otherwise, and I know it has its fans, Tea and Sympathy just kind of sits there for me. Sure, it's interesting to talk about from a historical perspective. But standing alone, it's like an antiquated high school textbook.