Tea and Sympathy (1956)

Deborah Kerr: Laura Reynolds

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Laura Reynolds : Years from now when you talk about this - and you will - be kind.

• Laura Reynolds : Manliness is not all swagger and mountain climbing. It's also tenderness and gentleness and consideration.

• Tom Lee : I'm always falling in love with the wrong people.

  Laura Reynolds : Who isn't?

  Tom Lee : You too?

  Laura Reynolds : Well, it wouldn't be any fun if we didn't. Of course, nothing ever comes of it, but there are bittersweet memories, and they can be pleasant.

• Bill Reynolds : When I was a kid here in this school, I had my problems too. I used to sit in my room and listen to phonograph records hour after hour. I had a place where I used to go and cry my eyes out.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, Bill.

  Bill Reynolds : But I've got over it, Laura. I learned how to take it. Now when the headmaster's wife gave you that silver teapot, she told you just what she tells all of the other master's wives that you've got to be an interested bystander.

  Laura Reynolds : Yes, yes, I know.

  Bill Reynolds : And just as she says, Laura. All you're supposed to do is once in a while give the boys a little tea...

  Laura Reynolds : Tea and sympathy.

  Bill Reynolds : [laughs]  You remember that?

  Laura Reynolds : Yes, I remember.

• Tom Lee : She was just out of college. Tall, blond, honey-colored hair, and she wore a polo coat and drove a convertible.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, sounds very fetching.

  Tom Lee : Yeah, ever since then, I've been a sucker for girls in polo coats.

  Laura Reynolds : I think I have one.

  Tom Lee : Yes, I know.

• Tom Lee : My dad's going to hit the roof when he hears I'm playing a girl.

  Laura Reynolds : I think you're a good sport not to mind.

  Tom Lee : He's always after me to join up clubs and things and the dramatic club would only take me if I'd play this part.

  Laura Reynolds : Well, it's a good part: Lady Teazle in "The School for Scandal."

• Tom Lee : You must have gotten lots of flowers when you were acting in the theater.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, now and then. Nothing spectacular. Anyway, I was never any great shakes at it.

  Tom Lee : Oh, I can't believe that.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, then you take my word for it.

• Tom Lee : Thanks for the tea.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, you're welcome.

• Laura Reynolds : [to Tom]  Take the skirt up to your room and see if you can move around in it, you know, get used to it.

• Laura Reynolds : I'm inclined to hook.

• Laura Reynolds : Come on, put your arms around me.

  Tom Lee : We'd better put it off. We look kind of silly, both of us in skirts.

  Laura Reynolds : All right then. You take it off.

• Lilly Sears : You know, these boys come here ignorant as all get-out about women, and they spend the next four years exchanging misinformation.

  Laura Reynolds : Oh, Lilly. Honestly.

  Lilly Sears : This is the age Romeo should be played. So intense. Why these kids would die for love or almost anything else.

• Bill Reynolds : He got himself a little nickname: "Sister Boy".

  Laura Reynolds : I hope you set them straight!

  Bill Reynolds : What was there to set them straight about?

• Laura Reynolds : You'll be back for the bonfire pajama fight?

  Bill Reynolds : I wouldn't miss it.

• Herb Lee : Why isn't he a regular fellow, Bill? He's had every chance to be since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Boys camps, boarding schools. I've always seen to it that he was associated with regular guys. Why doesn't some of it rub off?

  Laura Reynolds : Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee, perhaps I'm not the one to say this, but I think he is a regular fellow, whatever that is.

  Herb Lee : You're being very generous to say that, Laura, but - well, it just doesn't jive with the facts.

• Bill Reynolds : This boy would rather sit around here with you and listen to music and read poetry and strum his guitar than go out with the fellows.

  Laura Reynolds : But, Bill, he's never had a home. This is the closest thing he's ever had to a home. And he sees in this house and in me...

  Bill Reynolds : What?

• Laura Reynolds : Tom, I'm asking her over so that we can lick this thing.

• Laura Reynolds : It's a heartbreaking time. They're no longer a boy and not yet a man, wondering what's going to be expected of them as men, how they'll measure up.

• Al : All the time alone, wandering off up to the golf course, taking off on his bike, listening to phonograph records alone over in the choir room.

  Laura Reynolds : Al, there are certain times in your life when you would rather be alone than with crowds of people.

• Laura Reynolds : You're big and brawny and an athlete and what they call a top guy and a hard hitter.

• Al : Why doesn't he talk about the same things the other guys talk about? Long-hair music! All the time!

  Laura Reynolds : All right, he wants to be a singer, so he talks about it.

• Laura Reynolds : Can't I persuade you to stay? We were getting on so well.

  Tom Lee : Thanks.

  Laura Reynolds : In another moment I'd have told you all the deep, dark secrets of my life.

• Laura Reynolds : He was kind and gentle and lonely. We knew it wouldn't last. We sensed it. But he always said, "Why must the test of everything be it's durability?"

  Tom Lee : I'm sorry he was killed.

  Laura Reynolds : I'm sorry he was killed the *way* he was killed. In trying to prove he was a man, he died a boy.

• Laura Reynolds : Oh, Bill. We so rarely - touch anymore. I keep feeling I'm losing contact with you. Don't you feel that?

• Laura Reynolds : Oh, Bill, why should my interest in this boy make you angry?

• Laura Reynolds : Won't you even let me teach you how to dance?

• Laura Reynolds : I knew what he was going to do and why he was going to do it. He had to prove to you bullies that he was a man.

• Laura Reynolds : You are old enough now to know that when you drop a pebble in the water, there are ever-widening circles of ripples. There are *always* consequences.

• Tom Lee : You've heard everything, I suppose.

  Laura Reynolds : Yes.

  Tom Lee : Everything?

  Laura Reynolds : Everything.