{"id":26,"date":"2012-11-10T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T10:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/?p=26"},"modified":"2012-12-13T10:10:13","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T10:10:13","slug":"30th-october-2012-glt2-5-30pm-acting-and-behaving-like-a-man-rock-hudsons-performance-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/2012\/11\/10\/30th-october-2012-glt2-5-30pm-acting-and-behaving-like-a-man-rock-hudsons-performance-style\/","title":{"rendered":"20th November 2012, GLT3 5.30pm: Revisiting Tea and Sympathy (1956): Minnelli, Hollywood, Homosexuality"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Above: A poster advertising Vincent Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956)<\/em><\/p>\n

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A still from Vincent Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956)<\/em><\/p>\n

20th November 2012, GLT3 5.30pm<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Gary Needham, Nottingham Trent University<\/strong><\/p>\n

Revisiting Tea and Sympathy (1956): Minnelli, Hollywood, Homosexuality<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite never once mentioning the word homosexuality, Tea and Sympathy<\/em> nonetheless seems to say a lot about homosexuality in the 1950s. An effete young man, nicknamed \u2018Sister Boy\u2019 by his Fraternity, struggles with his unmanly ways only to be rescued by an older woman, the housemaster\u2019s wife played by Deborah Kerr, who commits a sacrificial act of adultery in order to \u2018cure\u2019 his masculinity of its feminine ills. She tells him in the play\/film\u2019s most famous line: \u2018Years from now when you talk about this, and you will, be kind\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A minor, often forgotten work of Vincent Minnelli and 1950s Hollywood, Tea and Sympathy<\/em> is known as a risible film that is often flagged up as key example of Hollywood\u2019s disservice to homosexuality: it features heavily in The Celluloid Closet<\/em>. Based on a successful Broadway play and released at the height of the \u2018Lavender Scare\u2019, Tea and Sympathy<\/em> has been used in many an argument to illustrate a range of problematic assumptions, representations, and ideas around homosexuality and the regulatory and apparently regressive nature of Hollywood. Tea and Sympathy<\/em> does confirm and conform to a number of these arguments, it caused trouble at MGM and is unquestionably problematic yet, as I will explore in this paper, there seems to something more complex and subtle going on in Tea and Sympathy<\/em>: the simple misery it narrates is often contradicted by the mise en scene<\/em>. Minnelli makes reference through film style to other closeted artists working in a mire of contradictions, for example, J. C. Leyendecker, central to the production of representations of American masculinity. Furthermore, a number of key scenes (\u2018beefcake on the beach\u2019 and \u2018fraternity pyjama fight\u2019 mainly) tell us a good deal about the relationship between homosociality, homoeroticism, and Hollywood and the contradictions inherent in ideas that 1950s homosexuality was only visible and knowable as gender inversion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Above: A poster advertising Vincent Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956) A still from Vincent Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956) 20th November 2012, GLT3 5.30pm Dr Gary Needham, Nottingham Trent University Revisiting Tea and Sympathy (1956): Minnelli, Hollywood, Homosexuality Despite never … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}