This film was NO breakthrough.
The play Tea and Sympathy premiered on Broadway in 1953. It has never been seen by me, but the story must have some resemblance to the film. Robert Anderson adapted his play to the screen. At the time of the Broadway run, the McCarthy era was raging. A deep fear of Communists, homegrown and abroad, had swept over the land. In that same year, Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, attacked the witchhunting mentality of the era. As those suspected of being Communists or leftwingers were being brought before Congressional committees, the other despised group, homosexuals, were being purged from the government. The widespread perception of them was that they were security risks, vulnerable to blackmail by foreign agents.
They were also considered the enemy because, when the Cold War was at one it's hottest periods, homosexuality was thought to be a threat to the nation's virility. Of course, gay men could be manly. But the media perpetuated image of them hid the truth. Not until 1956 did the movie Tea and Sympathy open. Senator McCarthy had been censured and largely silenced by then. But the intense fear of a world wide revolution led by Moscow remained. When Laura points out to Tom
Lee's roommate that the way he is standing could leave him open to suspicion, her advice could bring to mind the innocent victims of the McCarthy era who, although loyal Americans, were ostracized because of their political views or just by mistake.
That is why the movie Tea and Sympathy only indirectly deals with homosexuality. It is about a boy who fears being labeled as different. But the film doesn't question the fear of homosexuals. The basic idea of the story supports homophobia.
As for the other boys at the boarding school Tom Lee attends, they are, as Laura says, at that difficult age. She says as they enter their manhood these boys wonder how they'll stack up. We can understand that as they are insecure about their masculinity they take out their anxieties on the one person who reminds them of their fears, the only one to whom they can feel superior.
We could take this same view of Tom's supermacho housemaster, Mr. Reynolds.
While seeing the film I thought if anyone in 1956 wondered about him. Here was a man who surrounded himself on the beach with athletic boys, armwrestled and did mountain climbing with them, and greeted his ex-classmate, Mr. Lee, by putting his hands on his shoulders. But, except for one brief exception, he couldn't show affection to his wife.
When Tom meets him at the time of the reunion, Reynolds is shown listening to classical music. This scene is the first indication that the older man has any interest in it. Are we supposed to believe that after Laura left him he rethinks his values, sees that maybe he made a mistake with Tom? But why would classical music necessarily show that Reynolds has softened, become more open minded? The student Tom was the only character whom we had seen playing what is called a "highbrow" record. Being this elitist was alright if Tom had been vindicated as supposedly normal.