Superb Cast Makes Tea and Sympathy' at State Fine, Heartbreak Drama

By W. WARD MARSH "Tea and Sympathy"

Loew's State

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**TEA AND SYMPATHY," drama In CinemaScope and MetroColor, directed by Vincente Minnelli. Screen play by Robert Anderson from the stage play by the same author. Music, Adolph Deutsch. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer pleture produced by Pandro S. Berman and played by the following cast: Laura Reynolds__.........................Deborah Kerr Tom Robinson Lee .........John Kerr Bill Reynolds, .. ....Leif Erickson Herb Lee ................................Edward Andrews ΑΙ .................Darryl Hickman Ellle Martin .....................................Norma Crane Oille ..Dean Jones Lilly Sears .......................Jacqueline De Wit Ralph ......................................Tom Laughlin

Steve

Phil

Ted

.Ralph Votrian ..Steven Terrell ...Kip King Henry ............................................... -Jinimy Hayes Roger ..................................................Richard Tyler Vic ..Don Burnett

from the memory of the play than anything which now occurs on the screen.

Only the most perspicacious fan can grasp the real and valid reason for their drifting apart although it must still be there in the moments of her pleading with him to tell her why they are no longer as they were in the earlier days of their marriage.

The Story

TEA AND SYMPATHY" presents a bitter side of prep school life, for it is almost entirely seen through the eyes of the young student who would "HENEVER the screen rather listen to good music than takes on a too frank be one of the boys on the socplay or an off-color cer field-who prefers good book, the resulting picture is poetry to horse-play and offinfinitely better than the original work.

W

I want to state that at the outset because I feel that the author of his. own play. "Tea) and Sympathy,' seems to have created a finer story for the

1)

screen then he'

had on the stage.

color bull sessions.

And the story he tells, the picture he creates is simply heartbreak from beginning to end, and this in spite of the fact that the story now has a prologue and epilogue-the boy returning to the school a decade later, now a successful author and all because his emotional life had been saved by a young wife who sacrificed her fading marriage in order to

Far from all the credit is prove to this then-boy that he due him because two others

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was not, as was taunted as have collaborated to bring being, a "sister-boy." what is now one of film's most heartbreaking dramas to the

screen.

They are the sensitive and artistic producer, Vincente Minnelli, and the able and acting producer, Pandro S. Ber-

man.

This intensely moving and gripping study of a late adolescent in a battle for his life is certainly a most disturbing and poignant drama.

The Cast

It is highlighted by lightning ex-flashes when he attempts to prove his masculinity by taking the town's tramp to her room This trio has taken the story only to finish on the verge of of an alleged homosexual In a suicide, her raucous taunting, boys' prep school-when he is and scornful laughter driving thing of the sort and has him on. created a tremendously moving and gripping story of his "salSome of the players from vation" via the love and sacrithe stage drama have recreated fice of an intensely sympathetic their parts here . . . and the three leads are outstanding: Gone now is the open stain Deborah Kerr as the young on her husband, and the faint wife, John Kerr as the student suggestion which remains of and Leif Erickson as her hushis growing deviation is more band. Their performances are

woman.

truly excellent.

Miss Kerr's study of this wife is so accurate and so sympathetic that, although her character violates the rules, she is convincingly right in all she does.

John Kerr (no relative) finds every truth in his sensitive and

brilliant student and he pre-

sents it with power and hearthis son "to go right out there break.

and show the boys he's just one Erickson is exactly right as of them"-and who would be the big outdoors man and just happy if he had proved himself one of the "regular fellas." a "real man" with the loose Norma Crane is properly young woman; Edward Anhorsy, uncouth and unfeeling as drews misses nothing.

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the tramp and her scene with The "student body" is very the young student is a horrify-well cast with all the boys aping one and so accurate that it pearing as quite "regular felbecomes unforgettable. las," and with Darryl Hickman, As an ordinary, misunder-playing the hero's roommate standing, blundering and somedoing a particularly fine and what typical father, who wants exacting characterization.