The movie was set in Hartford, Connecticut in 1958. I was in early high school then, did not yet know the conflicts that would challenge my generation. It was the story of the Whittakers, a successful young family with two children, a social life, a strong reputation, what looked like a perfect life until one day Frank Whittaker is inadvertently caught by his wife. He is apparently gay, ashamed of it, but gay anyway. She is shocked, hurt, but tries to convince him to see a psychiatrist who might recommend a solution. They want to save their marriage.
When they get to the psychiatrist’s office, only he is asked in. She has to wait outside. He recommends treatment. Frank Whittaker consents, tells his wife about it, but he doesn’t go. Obviously, in the dimness of the production, something is troubling the marriage, something deep and disturbing. But it is 1958. What did people know then? They just kept up the façade.
One day, she hosted a cocktail party where Frank drank too much. They had a quarrel and he, accidentally it seemed, hit her and bruised her forehead. Her best friend noticed and offered herself as confidante, but she declined. Instead, after her best friend left, she went behind some bushes in her garden and sobbed over being beaten, over having a gay husband, all those things that no one prepared her for.
Now, this wealthy Mrs. Whittaker had a new black gardener, tall, dark and handsome, the son of her old black gardener who had just died. He felt sorry for her. So he invited her to come with him for a long drive in the country. He had to pick up some bushes somewhere. First she said no, then she changed her mind. They drove out and had a great time. On their way back, he invited her to dinner at a restaurant for blacks. Only she was the white woman there and so he made her feel what he often felt in the company of whites. A white lady of her class saw them about to enter the restaurant and called everyone. When she got home, her gay husband was there, lamenting over what people would say about them, not even mentioning the fact that he was gay.
Anyway, the movie proceeds that way, the truth is swept quickly beneath the carpet. She doesn’t want to look it in the face, but she obviously likes her black gardener and he very obviously likes her. But they are of different colors and there is that resistance, reluctance, but a very powerful draw, which they fight. Her husband is gay, but he won’t say. The whole situation is a mess, but because it is the late ’50s, everything is avoided.
I wonder what young people who watch this movie today think? Will they even understand what life used to be for us? Nineteen fifty-eight is 47 years ago. Do you understand the anguish we went through then? The husband is gay. We could not talk about it. The possible lover is black, we do not talk about it. We pretend it is not happening.
Then the ’60s came around and we began to talk about everything. We walked out of all institutions – schools, marriages, homes. Everything that we could debunk, we debunked. If the husband was gay, we said so. If he was black, we were proud of him. We threw away all the biases. For what? I sometimes wonder. Wasn’t life much more romantic then?
This movie ends with her getting a divorce from Frank Whittaker, who has fallen in love with a man and feels they must live together. The black gardener’s daughter is stoned by her classmates because her dad is having an affair with a white woman. They are not yet having one, but his daughter is hurt and he decides to sell everything, take the train to Baltimore, a more liberal city. She drives to the train station with her two little children whom she leaves in the car. She sees him board the train with his daughter, does not even approach. She merely catches his eye and waves to him discreetly. He waves discreetly back and they look longingly at each other. The End.
What a beautiful movie it was! I recommend it to all women my age or thereabouts. It reminds us of a time gone by. It makes us wonder: Is it more wonderful to live today when you can be so open about your behavior? Was there not much more romance then in the days when things were unsaid? I will say that I enjoy life today more because you can choose to be up front or not, but I must admit that I saw the romance of that era, remembered it, and found myself missing it. Try to catch this movie. It gave me a romantic day, a sweet poignant way of slipping out of my miserable present into a beautiful past even if just for two hours.