Steve Hayes reviews:
An all star cast brings to life Terrance Rattigan's story of lonely people living off-season in a boarding house on the coast of England in Delbert Mann's SEPARATE TABLES (1958).
Taken from the Broadway hit, the film stars Burt Lancaster, who also produced the film, Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven and Wendy Hiller. David Niven and Wendy Hiller both won Oscars. Rounding out the cast are such venerable British character actors as Dame Gladys Cooper as a domineering mother, Cathleen Nesbit as an officer's widow, Felix Aylmer as a lonely ex-professor and wonderful May Hallet from the original cast as a spinster with a practical mind and an eye for "the horses."
Dealing with subjects, which up till then had been taboo for the screen, SEPARATE TABLES, in its quiet way, runs the gamut from smothering motherhood to sexual repression, abuse, sexual perversion, pre-marital sex, and frigidity. The drama emerges from the Rattigan sense of Upper British decorum being shattered when it runs head on into any of these subjects.
SEPARATE TABLES is a first class production, with a pitch-perfect cast providing top-flight entertainment.
SEPARATE TABLES - TRIVIA
- Laurence Oliver & Vivien Leigh were originally to star.
- Margaret Leighton & Eric Portman did it on the stage. She won a Tony.
- Rita Hayworth was married at the time to Lancaster's producing partner Hect.
- Gladys Cooper kept falling asleep during Rita Hayworth's scenes.
- Wendy Hiller's reaction to her Oscar: "Never mind the honor. I hope it means cash!"
- Deborah Kerr was nominated for the Oscar but lost to Susan Hayward for I WANT TO LIVE!
- Vic Damone sang the Oscar Nominated song.
- David Raksin's score was nominated, but he felt he should have had it for THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.
- Gladys Cooper got an Oscar nom playing the part Cathleen Nesbitt played on stage in MY FAIR LADY.
- May Hallett was the only leftover from the original stage version. She played Aya in BLACK NARCISSUS.
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