Tea and Sympathy was first a successful 1953 Broadway play (directed by Elia Kazan), significant for indicting homophobia as a force used to impose a rigid version of masculinity. The protagonist is a sensitive young man at boarding school who, suspected of being gay, turns to the neglected wife of the school’s coach for the comforts of the title. If the play pulled its punches by making the student not so much gay as at best a bit confused, Minnelli’s film goes even further by adding a framing device that insists the young man is not gay but simply misunderstood and unfairly stigmatized. Minnelli nevertheless fashions a moving portrayal of the painful adolescence of a misfit, with vibrant color and beautifully realized mise-en-scène conveying wells of emotion beneath the surface of the lonely protagonists, played by Deborah Kerr and John Kerr (no relation), both recreating the roles they played in the original Broadway production.