Trivia / Tea and Sympathy

• Creator Backlash: Even though he wrote the screenplay, Robert Anderson wasn't happy with some of the censor-mandated changes to his play, and felt Vincente Minnelli's direction was overly lavish, comparing his staging of the final scene with Tom and Laura to "the Second Coming of Christ."
• Dawson Casting: John Kerr was twenty-five playing Tom at seventeen. Granted he also plays him in the ten years later portions, but mostly at seventeen years.
• Executive Meddling: The letter scene in the film was ordered by the censors. That Laura had to go out of her way to state how wrong what they did was.
• Reality Subtext: John Kerr had a massive crush on Deborah Kerr when he was a child, paralleling Tom's infatuation with Laura.