Separate Tables (1958)

Sad hotel guests become slightly less sad.

Separate Tables is an ensemble film about the goings-on of the long-term residents of the Hotel Beauregard in Bournemouth, England. It’s based on two separate¹ one-act plays that are mushed up into one movie.

• One story follows “Major” Pollock (David Niven), a man lying about most aspects of his personality, and his relationship with the repressed, fearful Sibyl (Deborah Kerr). Their connection motivates Sibyl’s aristocratic mother, Maud Railton-Bell (Gladys Cooper), to get Pollock kicked out of the hotel.

• The other story centers on John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), a drunk who’s engaged to hotel manager Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller). Sparks fly when Malcolm’s ex-wife Ann Shankland (Rita Hayworth) mysteriously arrives at the hotel.

So where’s the action? Well, Maud Railton-Bell discovers that Pollock previously committed sexual indiscretions in a movie theater. Will the residents of the hotel forgive Pollock or will they kick him out??? And what about John Malcolm’s love triangle? Will John get back together with the depressed Ann or stay with the humble Pat??? So it’s about class distinctions, and about furtive desire, and about self-acceptance, or whatever. 

Rating: 7/10, gotta keep ‘em separated!

Cast and Crew

David Niven took home the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Separate Tables and, in the process, set the record for the shortest performance to win Best Actor.² Fun fact: the night he won the Oscar, he was also hosting the Oscars.

This is Niven’s only nomination for Best Actor and his only movie we’ll see in this column. Here are some other films from the posh actor that you should know:

• In William Wyler’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”³ from 1939, Niven played Edgar, the guy who rudely interrupts Heathcliff and Catherine’s love story by marrying Catherine.

• Niven starred in Best Picture winner Around the World in 80 Days (1956), which we discussed a bit in our 1956 Wrap-Up.

• In The Pink Panther (1963), Niven played the jewel thief that Peter Sellers’ bumbling Inspector Clouseau is after.

• Niven took a turn as James Bond in the first film adaptation of “Casino Royale,” though this 1967 fever dream isn’t considered an official Bond film.⁴

• Niven was also on stage at the Oscars in 1974 when he was surprised by a streaker. The video is worth watching for Niven’s lethal bon mot at the end. 

But we have to ask: did the Academy give Niven the Oscar just for his mustache and cravat in Separate Tables? Judge for yourself:

Yeah, probably.

Niven’s Separate Tables scenes with Deborah Kerr crackle as their two flawed characters find compassion, humanity, and acceptance in each other. This is Kerr’s final appearance in this column,⁵ so let’s give the last word on her to the Academy. When she won an Academy Honorary Award in 1994, she was noted as “an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance.” Well said.⁶

The Trivia

Rita Hayworth! This is Rita’s first and only appearance in this column, so let’s talk about her. Born Margarita Cansino, Rita was the child of dancers. The family moved out to Hollywood when she was young so Rita’s father could teach actors like James Cagney how to dance. Rita was soon signed to a contract at Fox as “Rita Cansino” and had roles as exotics, including in this dancey clip.⁷

But before her film career took off, she became famous as a pin-up girl. The 1941 “Life” magazine photo below was one of the most-requested WWII pin-ups, nearly as popular as the one of Betty Grable’s legs.⁸ “Life” was also the magazine that bestowed Hayworth with the nickname “The Love Goddess.” She was such a bombshell, in fact, that they literally put her picture on an atomic bomb that was tested at Bikini Atoll.

Yeah, the past was different. 

Hayworth’s most famous film role was as the femme fatale in the Charles Vidor noir Gilda (1946) alongside Glenn Ford. Click this link if you want to watch her take off a glove, like, really, really slowly.⁹ Hayworth married director Orson Welles in 1943 and he filmed her in noir The Lady from Shanghai (1947), a confusing bomb where Hayworth had [gasp] short, blonde hair. Two of Hayworth’s other well-known films were from 1953: one had her as the lead in Salome¹⁰ while the other was a remake of Sadie Thompson (1928) called Miss Sadie Thompson.

Beyond Orson Welles, Hayworth had four other husbands, including Prince Aly Khan. Wait—prince? Yup, Rita Hayworth blazed the Grace Kelly “become a real-life princess” trail by marrying the son of Aga Khan III, the 48th Imam of the Ismaili sect of Islam.¹¹

Besides being in the full title of the Steven King novella “The Shawshank Redemption,” Rita’s name also makes an appearance in Manuel Puig’s first novel, “Betrayed by Rita Hayworth.” That novel is about a gay boy in Buenos Aires retreating into the artificial world of pop culture, and though it’s not explicitly autobiographical, it’s probably pretty autobiographical. Puig is also known for “Kiss of the Spider Woman”; we’ll eventually watch its film adaptation.

Odds and Ends

Pollock pretends that he was at the Battle of El Alamein; we did a Trivia section on the Africa Campaign in our discussion of Bright Victory…Pollock pretends that he went to Sandhurst; the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst can be considered the British equivalent of West Point…Pollock lies about studying Clausewitz; Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who wrote the treatise “On War”¹²...Pollock quotes an ode by Horace, saying “eheu fugaces labuntur anni,” meaning “alas, the fleeting years slip by.”

You may have noticed that Burt Lancaster co-starred in this film and received almost no discussion in this post. Well, we’re going to see many more top-notch performances from Burt in the coming years, so we’ll save stories about his acting, directing, and production until then. 

1. Yes, lazy pun intended.

2. You can see a list of the shortest nominated Oscar performances at this link. It’s a neat list.

3. Remember, “Wuthering Heights” is by Emily Charlotte Emily Charlotte Emily Anne Emily Charlotte Emily Brontë.

4. Here’s a scene from Casino Royale where Bond discovers his nephew, Jimmy Bond (played by Woody freakin’ Allen) is the head of the evil organization SMERSH.

5. We watched her in Julius Caesar, From Here to Eternity, and The King and I. Three films we didn’t cover that she received Best Actress Oscar nominations for are Edward, My Son (1949), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), and The Sundowners (1960).

6. Or, y’know, you can just show the clip of her rolling around in the sand in From Here to Eternity and you’ll get the gist of it. Either way works.

7. The dancing would come in handy later, as she’s one of only a handful of women to dance with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in studio films. The other five? Judy Garland, Vera-Ellen, Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, and Debbie Reynolds.   

8. We covered Betty in our Trivia section to Stalag 17. Yeah, we’ve now done two full Trivia sections on pin-ups.

9. One of the YouTube comments to that video is “Today we have Cardi B and Beyonce. Where did we go wrong?” That’s a dumb comment.

10. A real role, not like the fake Salome movie that drives the plot of Sunset Boulevard. 

11. Prince Aly Khan was passed over for becoming Aga Khan and instead became Pakistan’s UN Ambassador. He died in a car crash in 1960. His daughter with Hayworth, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, is known for being the president of the Alzheimer’s Disease International (as Rita suffered from Alzheimer’s). 

12. “On War” coined the term “fog of war.” Clausewitz was also known for his aphorisms, such as “War is the continuation of policy with other means.”