by A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life;Films of Vincente Minnelli
Tea and Sympathy, which opened on Broadway in 1953, is set in a prestigious New England prep school. Tom Lee, a sensitive, artistically inclined “off horse,” is assumed to be gay and shunned by his classmates. While the real men on campus are out playing handball or climbing mountains, Tom thinks nothing of getting gussied up in drag to play Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal. As if the chintz curtains hanging in his dorm room aren’t bad enough, seventeen-year-old Tom has no interest in becoming a businessman like his father but instead intends to ply his trade as a folk singer who performs “long-hair music.”
The vulnerable outcast is also more comfortable in the company of women, especially Laura Reynolds, the motherly wife of the burly headmaster. Tom harbors a crush on Laura and feels connected to her as a kindred spirit. Observing how Tom is ostracized and tormented by the other students (all “regular fellows”), Laura befriends him, believing that he is a nice, sensitive kid who doesn’t even know the meaning of the word “queer.” Just before the curtain falls, in a moment of supreme self-sacrifice, Laura offers herself (body and soul) to Tom with the immortal line, “Years from now … when you talk about this … and you will … be kind.”
It was steamy stuff for 1953. Therefore, it came as no surprise to anyone that MGM, which acquired the rights to the play (for a then impressive $150,000), would not have an easy time convincing Production Code administrators Joseph Breen, Geoffrey Shurlock, and Jack Vizzard that its screen version of Tea and Sympathy would be sufficiently sanitized to receive the censor’s stamp of approval. From the moment Minnelli and producer Pandro Berman were assigned to the picture, there were countless discussions regarding how such verboten themes could be presented in a mainstream film. As Vincente recalled, “[Berman said] that if the play had actually been about homosexuality, the motion picture code wouldn’t have permitted us to do it.”2 Robert Anderson, who was adapting his own work, was prepared to make changes to placate the censors. In a creative trade-off, the author was willing to downplay any elements in the script that smacked of “sexual perversion” as long as Tom and Laura’s adulterous affair remained.
The first compromise involved the elimination of a pivotal character in the play. David Harris, “a good-looking young master,” is forced to resign after his students complain to the dean that the instructor and Tom were discovered together, cavorting “bare-assed” in the dunes. Although the David Harris character appears only once, in the first act, his presence is key. Branded “a fairy” by Laura’s husband, Harris is an all-too-real reminder of what the effeminate, impressionable Tom Lee might eventually morph into. Harris is also the physical embodiment of Tea and Sympathy’s real villain: homosexuality itself. The gay threat is more palpable in Anderson’s play than in Minnelli’s film. As Deborah Kerr, who starred in both versions, noted, “The crucial point of the play, that [Tom] had been swimming with a master everyone assumed to be homosexual, had to be omitted altogether. The boy was so innocent he would not even have known what that meant—he went with the man because he was nice to him—and that was all there was to it.”3 Needless to say, Leo the Lion could never roar before a film containing such blatant homoerotic overtones. In life as in the play, Harris would have to go.
Then there was the matter of Laura’s act of erotic charity. According to the Motion Picture Production Code’s restrictions, the very married den mother could assist the effete protagonist in unleashing his manhood, but she’d have to be punished for it. The Production Code insisted that it be made clear to audiences that although Laura’s mission was a “noble” one, there would be devastating consequences as a result of her philanthropic infidelity. Anderson was forced to tack on a contrived prologue and epilogue. It was now revealed that the headmaster’s wife was banished from her marriage and the school and was last known to be residing “somewhere near Chicago”—a fate worse than death in the eyes of MGM and the Legion of Decency.
Yet another serious Production Code violation involved Tom’s misguided effort to prove his manhood by visiting the town whore, Ellie Martin. “The element of the boy’s attempt to sleep with the prostitute is thoroughly unacceptable as written,” proclaimed Joseph Breen. Clearly any filmmaker intent on bringing Tea and Sympathy to the screen had his work cut out for him.ao
“Persistence has paid off for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the case of Tea and Sympathy,” the New York Times reported in September 1955. “The Production Code Administration was prepared to resist its filming. Homosexuality, or rather the suspicion of such that motivates the play, and adultery are proscribed by the Code … but Dore Schary, head of the studio, and Pandro S. Berman believed there was a way to resolve the problem.”4 Although Berman assured the Times that Minnelli’s movie would “retain all the essentials” of the play, it was clear that Tea and Sympathy could push the envelope—but only so far. Episodes and overt dialogue (“All right, so a woman doesn’t notice these things. But a man knows a queer when he sees one …”) that had been acceptable in Elia Kazan’s Broadway production would never pass muster in a feature produced by a major Hollywood studio.
Deborah Kerr had won raves on Broadway as Laura Reynolds and she was enthusiastic about recreating her role on film under Minnelli’s direction. The censors had her worried, however, as she revealed in a letter to Vincente: “Adultery is o.k.—impotence is o.k. but perversion is their bête noir!! … It really is a play about persecution of the individual, and compassion and pity and love of one human being for another in crisis. And as such can stand alone I think—without the added problem of homosexuality. But above all—it needs a sensitive and compassionate person to make it—and that is why I’m so thrilled at the prospect of your doing it.”5
Were the words “sensitive” and “compassionate” Kerr’s way of suggesting that there was more than a touch of Vincente Minnelli in Tom Lee? And what did Minnelli think about directing a story that was so undeniably similar to his own experience that it practically bordered on documentary? The scenes of Tom Lee being bullied and persecuted for his effeminacy must have dredged up some unhappy memories of Delaware and Minnelli’s own years as a playground pariah. Laura giving herself to Tom so that he can prove his manhood and convince himself that he’s unquestionably heterosexual seemed to many Hollywood insiders to be a page right out of the Minnelli-Garland wedding album. What’s more, Tea and Sympathy is all about people performing—not in a theatrical milieu but in everyday life. Tom Lee actually rehearses the role of “regular fellow” to avoid being taunted; Laura’s husband, Bill, is playacting his way through a conventional marriage; and even Tom’s brawny roommate, Al Thompson, admits that despite his locker-room swagger, he’s never been alone with a girl. All the world’s a stage, even in a Minnelli melodrama.
There’s no evidence that Vincente ever resisted the project because he felt that Tom Lee’s story hit too close to home. Instead, the most Minnelli would allow—at least publicly—was that “ostrich-wise, the censors refused to admit the problem of sexual identity was a common one.”6
As production began in March 1956, Minnelli may have felt like an outsider on his home turf. Along with Deborah Kerr, several members of the stage production had been retained for the film. During the Broadway run of Tea and Sympathy, the actors had not only bonded with one another but with Kazan, whom they revered. John Kerr (who had appeared in Minnelli’s The Cobweb) would reprise his role as the hero in touch with his feminine side, and Leif Erickson would again play Bill Reynolds, Tom’s burly housemaster—a character Vincente suggested was “perhaps a latent homosexual himself.”7
Broadway’s Dick York was unavailable to reprise his role in the film as Tom’s roommate. Jack Larson, forever identified as Jimmy Olsen of The Adventures of Superman series, met with Minnelli to discuss the part. “He had eyes like Bette Davis was supposed to have,” Larson recalls. “I found him effeminate. I guess they would have politely called it epicene. He was very courteous to me. He could have been a Noel Coward leading man but he wasn’t handsome at a
ll. There was nothing attractive about him and there was a languor to him. I sat with him in his office, which was very fancy. Everything was in very good taste… . There weren’t any little Greek statues around.”8 Minnelli was impressed with Larson, but at Robert Anderson’s urging the part was ultimately awarded to Darryl Hickman, who years earlier had appeared in Meet Me in St. Louis.
“Minnelli could be so prissy. I mean, he would drive me nuts,” Hickman says. “I remember going in to shoot the ‘walking’ scene with John Kerr, who never talked to me. I remember standing there from nine o’clock in the morning until noon because we went to lunch without ever having rehearsed the scene.” The infamous “walking” scene, in which Al teaches light-in-his-loafers Tom Lee to walk like a man, was one of the most mind-blowing sequences in the film and later a highlight of the 1995 gay-themed documentary The Celluloid Closet.
Man Power: Tom Robinson Lee (John Kerr) asks his roommate Al (Darryl Hickman) to help him perfect his manly stride in 1956’s Tea and Sympathy. “I don’t think he was that secure about himself,” Hickman says of his director. “I think he made up for whatever lack of self-confidence he may have had as a person in his work… . I would say that he had a very important inner world that the films represented.” PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST
According to Hickman, Minnelli obsessed endlessly over the visual details in the scene. Valuable production time was eaten up as Vincente returned to his window-dressing roots with a vengeance. The director arranged various props on the set (including a bust of Beethoven) so that they were just so and maneuvered his actors as though they were Marshall Field mannequins. “It looks artificial to me when I watch myself doing it,” Hickman says of his Minnelli-dictated delivery:
He had me doing things with my arms, my hands, and with objects, and it was so precise. You know, if you’re a real actor’s director, you don’t do that to an actor. It makes you very self-conscious. It makes you feel like a robot. And a really good actor’s director like George Cukor would never do something like that to an actor. I don’t think Minnelli, with all of his success and with all of his wonderful work that he did in films, was ever really an actor’s director. First of all, if you’re a really good actor and you have the stature, you say, “Go fuck yourself … I’m going to do this the way I want to do it.” I mean, he certainly didn’t tell Deborah Kerr what to do.9
Kerr, who would go on to star in The King and I and An Affair to Remember, endeared herself to director, cast, and crew. Although she was the consummate professional, Kerr didn’t take herself as seriously as some of the other grandes dames on the Metro lot. Even the cluster of rising young actors playing Tom Lee’s tormentors were surprised by the leading lady’s approachability. As costar Don Burnett recalls, “Deborah Kerr used to call us ‘H.B.’s,’ which means ‘Horny Bastards.’ She’d say, ‘O.K., all you H.B.’s, come on …’ She would say things like that but she was so regal and wonderful. You wouldn’t dare use bad language in front of her, and then she’d come out with something like that.”10
While Hickman found Deborah Kerr “one of the most charming, sensitive and warm coworkers,” the same could not be said of Tea and Sympathy’s remote director. “I don’t ever remember seeing Vincente Minnelli laugh,” says Hickman:
He wasn’t an easy man to be around on a set. He wasn’t outgoing. You know, it sounds strange to say this but I don’t think he was that secure about himself—personally, not professionally. Maybe it came out in his painstaking perfectionism because he felt that he had to live up to some standard that he set for himself. I think he made up for whatever lack of self-confidence he may have had as a person in his work… . I would say that he had a very important inner world that the films represented. 11
If one is searching for clues in Minnelli’s own films regarding how the director may have grappled with his own conflicted sexuality, one need look no further than Tea and Sympathy. As the only film in Vincente’s canon that openly (at least for 1956) addresses gay oppression, Tea and Sympathy can be “read” as Minnelli’s own confessional: Take a look at what happened to me. I, too, was a flaming creature until Delaware, Ohio, Louis B. Mayer, and the Legion of Decency made me wash off the mascara, get married, and walk like a man.
Like the play, the film is very definitely a work of its era. On the one hand, Robert Anderson’s drama seems to be pleading for tolerance and understanding for those who are miserably lonely, misunderstood, or “off the beam.” On the other hand, Tea and Sympathy makes it clear that the same kind of support and compassion should not be extended to an individual if he actually is homosexual. Throughout the film, various characters assure “Sister Boy” Lee that “we can lick this thing,” as though his effeminacy were akin to heroin addiction or smallpox. It’s understood that tea and sympathy can only be offered if one is willing to conform, butch up, and sleep with the headmaster’s wife. If you get naked in the dunes with your swishy instructor and you actually enjoy it, then God help you. As Anderson himself asserted, “The crux of the whole play” was “THE BOY WAS ALL RIGHT AND GOT MARRIED.”ap
After a sneak preview of the film, producer Pandro Berman found himself in a dramatic showdown with the Legion of Decency over proposed prerelease alterations. In order to receive the Legion’s approval and escape the dreaded “C” (for “Condemned”) rating, MGM was being asked to excise some scenes and overdub several lines of dialogue that the Legion found especially offensive. “Am terribly disturbed at news of our capitulation on Tea and Sympathy ,” Berman cabled Arthur Loew in MGM’s New York office. “We are being treated badly and taken advantage of. The last reel of this picture will be ridiculous and in my opinion, should be laughed at by audiences. I think we have made ourselves fair prey for all future contacts with the legion… . It is a sad state of affairs when they not only can tell us what to say but how to say it and can write propaganda in their language for us to disseminate for them.”12
Although he was already immersed in preparations for his next effort, Designing Woman, Vincente applauded Berman’s uncompromising stance. “I want you to know what admiration I have for the courageous stance you have taken on Tea and Sympathy,” Minnelli wrote in a memo to Berman. “I know the pains that were taken to satisfy the representatives of the Code … and to treat this subject in a manner which would not offend their standards, while still not distorting or cheapening a fine and distinguished play.”13
As the film was being readied for general release, studio executives remained nervous that Tea and Sympathy would be too much for audiences in the Eisenhower era. After all, the closest moviegoers got to “sexual perversion” in the ’50s was either a Tennessee Williams adaptation or the finicky Tony Randall character in an innocuous Doris Day-Rock Hudson romp. However, as the reviews rolled in, it looked as though Minnelli had come through for Metro yet again.
“Everybody said it would be impossible to make a movie of Tea and Sympathy ,” wrote William K. Zinsser in the New York Herald Tribune. “But the movie has been made—and made with good taste. It’s emphasis has been changed slightly, but the spirit of the play remains intact… . Vincente Minnelli’s direction is quiet and compassionate and he has caught many subtle shadings of love and pain.”14
While generally praising the film and its performances, other critics took exception to the way Anderson’s play had been tampered with. As Justin Gilbert noted in the Daily Mirror, “A significant line uttered by Deborah Kerr, ‘If this is going to come out, let it come out in the open,’ which was one of the more challenging lines in the play, seems almost insignificant in the movie.” Leo Mishkin of the New York Morning Telegraph concluded that “the changes … are enough, in a sense, to destroy much of the impact of the work.”15
Decades after the film’s release, its creators would acknowledge that the various concessions and compromises they had been forced to make had succeeded in diluting Tea and Sympathy’s central theme. “The picture didn’t come off as we had hoped,” Robert Anderson admitted. “We had
to make too many changes for censorship. We kept fooling ourselves that we were preserving the integrity of the theme, but we lost some of it.” Of the film’s director, Deborah Kerr noted, “He was extremely sensitive to the subject… . The only thing that might have diffused it a little was that his great talent for making movies beautiful pictorially might have softened it and lushed it up a little.”16
Others contend that Vincente’s pictorial effects managed to make evident aspects of the story that the Production Code and the Legion of Decency had attempted to wipe off the screen. “For Minnelli, the mise-en-scène is very significant in terms of how he gets around what can’t be said in the narrative,” says film scholar David Gerstner. “What can’t be said must be shown. This is how a director like Minnelli—working in Hollywood with the Production Code in effect—could still make visible whatever was hidden or had to be hidden.”17 Gerstner points to settings, costumes, and even the use of color as key elements that Minnelli employed to smuggle the story’s taboo themes back into the movie.
In the “walk like a man” sequence, for example, Minnelli places Tom Lee and his roommate Al in their school’s music room, which is something of an aesthetic refuge for Tom. Surrounded by musical instruments and busts of classical composers, Al attempts to show Tom how to act more manly. He even offers a demonstration of his hyper-masculine locker-room swagger. “It is at this moment in the film that masculine anxiety, confronted with its own ridiculous construction, can no longer support itself,” notes Gerstner. “Al, pressed within and against the mise-en-scène of the Minnellian text and finally caught in the vestiges of masculinity, can’t understand why walking a particular way is more manly than any other.”18
