Arrgggh...I was watching this and was not able to see the last 30 min or so of the film (power outage due to storms). I lost "transmission" when he was about to dance with the girl at the cafe, to save his manly reputation. Would someone tell me the ending? I was intrigued as to what happened. I know he and Deborah Kerr's character end up having an affair but I was curious to know what else happened since the movies opens with him at his 10 year reunion.
SPOILERS: ( obviously!!! )
He goes to see the woman at the diner.....but he is disgusted by her. She eventually realizes he is "sister boy" and starts to ridicule him. He grabs a knife, determined to kill himself, but she calls for help before he can.
The boy's father is called to the deans office, and is so ashamed of his son he won't even go see him on his 18th birthday. Concerned, Deborah Kerrs character searches his room, and sees where he has started letters to his family. She finds him in the woods. He says it must be true, what they say, because of he wasn't attracted to the girl. She tells him that's because he wasn't in love with her........they end up having a tryst in the woods.......the very end of the film is done by voice over, with him hearing her read a letter she wrote to him. She never went back to her husband, and she says she had to choose between saving Tom and saving her marriage, and she chose the easier of the two. We also hear that Tom is now happily married.
A better synopsis can be found on TCM website, if you do a search by title. They sum up entire movies in 2 paragraphs.
Thank you!! I will certainly check out that website.
shareWow Tom was pretty lucky to "do it" with Deborah Kerr (ok her character) for the first time! She is one hot older women and redhead!
shareWow Tom was pretty lucky to "do it" with Deborah Kerr (ok her character) for the first time! She is one hot older women and redhead!
I wish this movie ended with Kerr and the boy together. I know it may be wrong of me, but I was rooting for them; they just had so much attractive sensual, sexual tension between them!
Please excuse typos/funny wording; I use speech-recognition that doesn't always recognize!
Movie girl: ME too~ I knew her husband seemed indifferent and there was real
love between her and the boy. Sexual tension too as you were saying. He would never have stepped out of line with her, but she came forward to help him.
Laura later found that her motive was partly for her husband who had committed suicide because he did not fit in. In helping her friend she found that she actually had developed real love for him. Her second marriage was arid.
THe fact that this had happened was unnecessary, as the fact that he did not go with girls at 17 did not really make him effeminate to be sister boy, as they put it. It was the others that were! He was just shy and adjusting to life as a teenage boy. IT must happen more than we know. In his gratitude for her kindness he must have found feelings for her too.
I guess we can conclude that Laura left her indifferent second husband and stepped aside for the boy to find true love and happiness in future. Unless we can dream that they met up again and married one day, we pretty much knew it would end that way.
Movie girl: ME too~ I knew her husband seemed indifferent and there was real
love between her and the boy. Sexual tension too as you were saying. He would never have stepped out of line with her, but she came forward to help him.
I guess we can conclude that Laura left her indifferent second husband and stepped aside for the boy to find true love and happiness in future. Unless we can dream that they met up again and married one day, we pretty much knew it would end that way.
The original ending actually did finish off with Laura and Tom! But, the damn Hayes' Code insisted that a frame narrative be added to satisfy the mores of the motion picture dinosaurs. >.> If you stick to the play, you'll have that original ending.
Laura later found that her motive was partly for her husband who had committed suicide because he did not fit in. In helping her friend she found that she actually had developed real love for him. Her second marriage was arid.
THe fact that this had happened was unnecessary, as the fact that he did not go with girls at 17 did not really make him effeminate to be sister boy, as they put it. It was the others that were! He was just shy and adjusting to life as a teenage boy. IT must happen more than we know. In his gratitude for her kindness he must have found feelings for her too.
It is odd that Tom was as isolated as he was. He seemed like a normal boy to me- just more on the artistic, sensitive side. He didn't seem anymore unusual than the boys I've seen in say "Leave it to Beaver."
In fact, the only characters that I can think of that exhibited the kind of boorish behaviour shown by Bill, Tom's father, and the other boys were Eddie Haskell and Lumpy Rutherford and they were the ones often in the wrong!
I guess just like today, you have different behaviors and schools of thoughts flourishing in and out throughout the country...
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she made a "man out of him" so to speak. I think if it was done today it would be the husband who he was having an affair with the guy and the wife who would be callous lol. Because it was the 'sexually closeted 1950's it is safe to say it would not have been accepted. Rebel with out a cause would have been made differently too.
shareThe play actually implies that the husband is closeted.
Note that the movie code required that Mrs. Reynolds (Deborah Kerr's character) not "get away with" the tryst - so her marriage had to end because of it. According to the code, perceived sinful behaviour (extra-marital tryst) had to be punished in some way. The same rationale probably explains why Tom eventually got married. There's no way the code would have allowed for Tom to be anything else but straight. The hope back then was that it was just a phase you grow out of...
Also, note that the tryst occurred when the boy was 18 - so another tricky area was avoided.
The film also clearly indicated that the husband is closeted. He always wants to be with boys.
I think Minnelli succeeded in acheiving a fine, very ambiguously happy end, giving some kind of backwheel to Hayes: He marries, and it is already established that marriage in itself is no way out of a personal trauma. So perhaps he married the wrong person like she did. And, would it really be a punishment for her to lose that husband? .... I guess that can be argued. So, in a way she liberates herself from men, also from Tom.
"You couldn't be much further from the truth" - several
As I remember the movie the closing line...which I have often used....was:
"Years from now when you speak of this, and you will; be kind."
That is the closing line from the stage play, not the movie.
In addition, the play does not have the opening and ending scenes from ten years in the future. The outcome of Tom and Laura's encounter is left to the imagination.
In addition, the play does not have the opening and ending scenes from ten years in the future. The outcome of Tom and Laura's encounter is left to the imagination.
Did anyone think it was kinda funny the way Laura kept trying to stall Tom when he had his date with another older woman, the waitress Ellie. It was like she was tempted to seduce him instead of him being seduced by someone trashy like Ellie.
shareIt was like she was tempted to seduce him instead of him being seduced by someone trashy like Ellie.
That is what is was. She told her husband that much. She said she felt bad because she did not go through with it.
I had the chance to work with Michael Jackson who was as brilliant as they come.
Tommy Mottola
Psychiatry then went along with the idea that if you push someone into a hetero marriage it will lead to a cure. I had an uncle who was told that. He was so upset the day the lady in question thought he was working up to a proposal that he drove too fast and rolled the car on a gravel road, killing him and injuring her. This is of course the simpler, more innocent past that many people watching movies and tv from this period think existed. Of course it's a total lie. It was a horrible era and people were vicious to each other for all sorts of complex reasons.
shareI take it you weren't around back then, and that you learned about mid-20th Century history and society from Hollywood ("Pleasantville" and similar garbage.)
People are so incredibly nasty now, and the crap we "tolerate" just so we can say we are "tolerant" has made life pretty dangerous. We never had to lock our doors back then; people were much more honest and had better manners.
Spot on !!! ... BIGTIME .
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I'd like a chance t' shoot at an educated man once in my life .
We never had to lock our doors back then; people were much more honest and had better manners.
This much is true. We never locked our doors house/car and we did not live in the best neighborhood. In the summertime, kids would go out to play in the morning...maybe come home for lunch or eat at a friend's house and come home right before dark. Neighbors looked out for each others children. It never occurred to anyone that a child would be kidnapped or raped. If a parent did that now; they would be considered negligent. Parents would not let that happen now....they would be scared to. I told a niece that I would come home from school...find a note from my grandmother to meet her downtown to see a movie and I would catch the trolley to meet her. It is a great memory for me but she gave me a stricken look because I rode the trolley by myself...how horrible and neglected I was. She felt so sorry for me but I feel sorry for her because her world is such a dangerous place and she has little independence.
Of course, there were problems then too but life did not seem so dangerous.
I had the chance to work with Michael Jackson who was as brilliant as they come.
Tommy Mottola
The worst era .. what a joke ... I wouldn't trade growing up in that era for any amount of money .. It was a time when everyone had respect for one another .. not like it is today , where anything goes .. Vicious you say , you don't even have a clue .
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I'd like a chance t' shoot at an educated man once in my life .
Yes, it likely would be done differently now. It would be spoken of more openly then and if the young man Tom Lee was gay it likely would treated totally differently not as the worst thing that could be the case. Did he get actually get expelled or receive treatment for the suicide attempt before graduation and he wrote the book? Mrs. Reynolds relationship with Tom not to mention with her possibly gay husband would be treated differently.
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