Tea and Sympathy (1956) on Netflix
Tom Robinson Lee enters his senior year at a boys' prep school, where classmates mock his love of classical music and theater. The coach's wife, Laura Reynolds, invites him to tea.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.3/103,820 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
The boys at Tom Robinson Lee's prep school love sports and roughhousing and worship their coach, Bill Reynolds. Tom prefers classical music, reads, and goes to the theater, and his classmates torment him for qualities they call unmanly. His father, Herb Lee, believes a son should fit in and be manly and treats him unfeelingly. Only Al, Tom's roommate, treats him with decency, seeing that being different need not mean being unmasculine. Laura Reynolds, wife of the coach, watches the tension build, and invites Tom to tea alone, partly because he reminds her of her first husband, John, killed in World War II.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tea and Sympathy (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Legion of Decency threatened to rate Tea and Sympathy "Condemned" unless an epilogue stressing Tom's guilt in the affair was amended, while the MPAA demanded a six-line cut from a love scene that MGM trimmed to four.
- Because the Production Code barred any mention of homosexuality, PCA official Jack Vizzard met with playwright Robert Anderson and director Elia Kazan in October 1953; Anderson refused to change any of the play's "offending" elements.
- After MGM's Dore Schary met the Legion of Decency's pre-release demands, the Legion asked for Laura to die after divorcing her husband as punishment for her affair.
- Dick York was unavailable to reprise his role as Tom's roommate Al, and although Minnelli was impressed by Jack Larson, Robert Anderson's recommendation sent the part to Darryl Hickman.
- To satisfy the Production Code, Robert Anderson stripped references to homosexuality from his play, then restructured the script so the drama unfolded in flashback, adding an epilogue about Laura after Tom left the school.
- Darryl Hickman said Minnelli obsessed over the visual details of one scene, arranging props that included a bust of Beethoven and telling the actors to keep their hand gestures minimal.
