ABSTRACT
With its old-Hollywood pedigree and timid defiance of Production Code guidelines, Tea and Sympathy was a breakthrough in the stealthiest sense of that word. It induced change through the most conventional of means, indicating new possibilities at the same time that similarly quiet, if braver, battles were gearing up in the so-called real world. Nascent groups of gays and lesbians were preparing, in that same closed-door fashion, to stand up for their identities and their preferences. The quietude of such movements as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis was a studied contrast to other alterations besetting the social and artistic terrain. The civil rights movement was beginning to be anything but quiet, and so was the explosion of rock 'n' roll that was beginning to reconfigure the entertainment industry. America, like it or not, was being compelled to address its diversity, and popular culture would have to be part of that process.
