Vincente Minnelli's 1958 melodrama Tea and Sympathy gave the patrician British actress Deborah Kerr (The King and I) the pivotal role as provider of both the warmth and compassion referred to in the title of Robert Anderson's celebrated play.
Kerr was cast as the wife of a prep school coach (Leif Erickson, later of High Chapparal), who encourages the torment of a boy named Tom (John Kerr, no relation to Deborah), who is not one for sports, preferring the classics and the company of women.
Though Tom gets some support and "guidance" from his roommate Al (Darryl Hickman), he is pushed to the brink of self-destruction by the bullying. In one scene, she lays the responsibility squarely at the coach's feet, with the coach being the avatar for toxic masculinity, to use modern parlance.
Though 70 years old, the film still resonates, and offers safe consideration of the breadth of male identity, if not sexuality. Rendering young Tom as a sensitive, cis-gender man, who returns to the prep school years later, married and with children, no doubt rested easily with Eisenhower-era audiences. ("Thank God he's not really ... you know!")
Would the story's message be irreparably damaged if Tom grew up to be gay or bisexual or aromantic? Hard to say, but my gut tells me his coming into his own sexual identity would in no way invalidate the love he had found for the woman who offered him a safe cuppa.
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