Separate Tables 1958

 

The most lasting impression that I have and carried for years in my back pocket of the movie “Separate Tables” had nothing to do with my seeing the film. Instead It goes back to a cold night in December of 1958 when I was 10 years old and me, my mom and my cousin Daniel's fiance Gloria were rushing back to Brooklyn in our spanking bright red 1957 Pontiac after spending time in the diamond district where my mom was helping Gloria pick out an engagement ring.

Driving fast through Times Sq. my mom stopped the car at a red light and it was there that I looked out the back seat window to view the huge Astor Theater billboard advertising the movie “Separate Tables.” I like to think that my love of movies and art came together at this moment as I looked at the billboard with spellbound jaw dropping attention at this dramatic and to my 10 year old eyes amazing creation. The images of the stars of the film loomed over me and everyone else bustling through the Sq and I probably did not register the fact that these portraits were indeed paintings, hand touched and unique.

I wonder if Jim Rosenquist worked on them during his billboard painting career. Early pop meets British somber. Set against a bright orange background this was what remained of the movie for me for years and years. I probably did see the film sometime in my youth but It remained a shadow an impression a memory until the other night when I watched the film on Tubi.

The film is based on 2 short plays by Terence Rattigan who had a good run of attention and success in the british theatre of the 1950's with such plays as “The Winslow Boy”, “The Browning Version” “The Deep Blue Sea” and his most famous work “Separate Tables” that takes place in a shabby run down seaside hotel in Bournemouth called the Hotel Beauregard and the group of people who are staying there.

The two plays had a good run and reputation both in London and on Broadway where it was produced by Hecht and Lancaster who would later turn into a movie. Not an easy task as they had to combine the two plays into one screenplay which they successfully did when Rattigan with John Gay and an uncredited John Michael Hayes did the job.

The story was not exactly Hollywood hot time, and to boost the chances of the movie going anywhere they cast the four major roles with big movie star names including Burt Lancaster along with Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth and David Niven. In the play the two main characters were played by One actor and actress playing the leads in both short plays but of course this couldn't work in a Hollywood movie.
In the good supporting role and to me the best performance in the film was the great Wendy Hiller as the hotel owner and manager who won the supporting actress Oscar. Her remarks on winning the Oscar deserves a note here: “Never mind the honor, though I'm sure its very nice of them. I hope this award means cash, hard cash.”

The two main stories focus on Deborah Kerr as a sad young spinster and her awful pushy mother played by Gladys Cooper in another one of her awful mother roles that she had being doing for years most famously in “Now Voyager.” Here she berates her timid daughter from the start and doesn't let up until Kerr turns on her in the climax of the film. It's a forced turn of the spinster, and it doesn't ring altogether true. How Kerr comes to her senses has to do with her realization that her beloved Major David Angus Pollock another resident of the hotel is a fake Major and a molester of women who he harasses in dark movie theatres. Rattigan a somewhat out gay man (in theatre circles anyway) originally had the Major picking up sailors but of course that would never do in the conservative 50's and it was changed to the more acceptable sexual harassment of women. In later revivals it would be changed back to the original situation involving the homosexuality of the Major.

Played by David Niven in a best actor Oscar winning performance that was more of a supporting role and not to my liking I have to say. He was usually cast as a suave debonair lay about who never got the girl in many light weight romantic comedies of the 40's sort of a second class Tyrone Power or Cary Grant. In Tables he was cast against type and plays a sad pathetic man who gets arrested for his transgressions against women and then is arrested and exposed in the daily newspaper that Gladys Cooper uses against him to rid him of his remaining dignity and his residence at the hotel where he holds sway over her wilting daughter.

The second stringy story involves Burt Lancaster who is a writer and an alcoholic who is having an affair with Wendy Hiller, until his former wife played by a nervous Rita Hayworth comes to the hotel to try to reignite their failed marriage. Both actors are uncomfortable in their roles especially the fragile Hayworth who plays a woman terrified of aging and being alone.

Directed by Delbert Mann who had a fling with fame when he won a directing Oscar for “Marty” and was known mainly for his 50's television work that he brings to play in the filming of “Tables” which has a Playhouse 90 look to it. No doubt this has to do with the choice to film it on a sound stage in Hollywood which gives the black and white film a black and white t.v. look especially in the fake looking landscape that surrounds the fake looking hotel. Tacked on the opening credits is a title song warbled by Vic Demone that so upset Mann who was not told about this that he swore he would never work for Hecht again. In 1983 John Schlesinger did a filmed version of the play that starred Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Claire Bloom and Irene Worth, now that is one that I would want to see.