1956 Tea and Sympathy Original Release Lobby Cards with Deborah Kerr, Vincente Minelli
Robert Anderson, the author of the play, was also the screenwriter of the film. Due to the Motion Picture Production Code, homosexuality is not
mentioned in the film version. In 1956, Bob Thomas of the Associated Press wrote that "many said [the play] could never be made into a movie." Deborah
Kerr, the leading actress, said that the screenplay "contains all the best elements of the play. After all, the play was about the persecution of a minority,
wasn't it? That still remains the theme of the film." In the film, the story's climax is written as transpiring in a "sylvan glade", while in the original play the
scene takes place in the dormitory room of the student.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_and_Sympathy_(film)
Tea and Sympathy tells the story of Tom Lee, a sensitive young man, suspected by his schoolmates of being a homosexual, because he prefers Bach to
sport, and spends his time in the company of an older woman.
Seventeen-year-old Tom Robinson Lee (John Kerr), a new senior at a boy's prep school, finds himself at odds with the machismo culture of his class in
which the other boys love sports, roughhouse, fantasize about girls, and worship their coach, Bill Reynolds (Leif Erickson). Tom prefers classical music,
reads Candida, goes to the theater, and generally seems to be more at ease in the company of women.
The other boys torment Tom for his "unmanly" qualities and call him "sister boy," and he is treated unfeelingly by his father, Herb Lee (Edward Andrews),
who believes a man should be manly and that his son should fit in with the other boys. Only Al (Darryl Hickman), his roommate, treats Tom with any
decency, perceiving that being different is not the same as being unmasculine. This growing tension is observed by Laura Reynolds (Deborah Kerr), wife of
the coach. The Reynoldses are also Tom's and Al's house master and mistress. Laura tries to build a connection with the young man, often inviting him
alone to tea, and eventually falls in love with him, in part because of his many similarities to her first husband, John, who was killed in World War II.
The situation escalates when Tom is goaded into visiting the local prostitute, Ellie (Norma Crane), to dispel suspicions about his sexuality, but things go
badly. Her mockery and derision at his naïveté causes him to attempt suicide in the woman's kitchen. His father arrives from the city to meet with the
dean about Tom's impending expulsion, having been alerted to Tom's intentions by a classmate. Assuming his son's success, he boasts of his son's sexual
triumph and time-honored leap into manhood until the Reynoldses inform him otherwise. Laura goes in search of Tom and finds him where he often goes
to ruminate, near the golf course's sixth tee. She tries to comfort him, counseling that he will have a wife and family some day, but he's inconsolable. She
starts to leave, then returns and takes his hand, they kiss, and she says, "Years from now, when you talk about this, and you will, be kind."
Ten years into the future the adult Tom, now a successful married writer, returns to his prep school. The final scene shows Tom visiting his old coach and
house master to ask after Laura. Bill tells him that, last he's heard, she is out west somewhere but he has a note from her to him, which she enclosed in her
last letter to her ex-husband. Tom opens it outside and learns that she wrote it after reading his published novel, derived from his time at the school and
their relationship. After their moment of passion, she tells him, she had no choice but to leave her husband, and, as Tom wrote in his book, "the wife
always kept her affection for the boy."