OVP: Separate Tables (1958)

Film: Separate Tables (1958)
Stars: Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper, Rod Taylor
Director: Delbert Mann
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actor-David Niven*, Actress-Deborah Kerr, Supporting Actress-Wendy Hiller*, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Rita Hayworth-click here to learn more about Ms. Hayworth (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Rita Hayworth's final years in show business were the stuff of nightmares for her personally.  She continued to act well into her forties, a time period many other actresses known principally for their beauty might have disappeared (it helped that Hayworth always looked younger than she actually was onscreen).  Her marriages during the 1950's were terrible even judging on her own crumby scale, with actor Dick Haymes squandering her money on his own debts, and producer James Hill, her final husband, emotionally abusing her, frequently in front of crowds, until she was to the point of tears (Charlton Heston once claimed that he was "ashamed" of not slugging Hill for how he treated Hayworth in front of him).  During this time, though, she made perhaps the last great film of her career, Separate Tables, that put her front-and-center with acting titans like Burt Lancaster & Deborah Kerr.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is an ensemble piece, the type that occasionally comes back en vogue and is favored by certain modern directors (Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Garry Marshall).  The entire film takes place over a 24-hour period at a hotel, and the film gains its name from the fact that the residents sit at "separate tables" when they eat meals.  There are two driving catalysts in the film.  The first is a beautiful woman Anne (Hayworth) showing up late in the evening looking for a room, with clear links to John Malcolm (Lancaster) (it turns out they used to be married and are still very much in love, though they also haven't forgiven each other for the past), who is having an affair with the hotel's proprietress Ms. Cooper (Hiller).  The second is that the rather bombastic Major Pollock (Niven) has been involved in a scandal, indicating that he lied about his war record, and more damning, had sexual improprieties with women at a local theater.  Mrs. Railton-Bell (Cooper) insists that they drive Major Pollock out, bullying the other residents into agreeing with her, including her daughter Sibyl (Kerr) who has a fondness for Major Pollock.  The film ends with these stories being tied up.  Despite his offenses, the people want to keep a repentant Major Pollock on at the hotel, Sibyl stands up to her mother, and Anne & John tentatively reunite, with Ms. Cooper left to have the hotel and its guests be her insurance against not being lonely as she creeps into old age.

The film in a lot of ways reminds me of Grand Hotel more than the melodramas of the 1950's (think the Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams plays that dominated cultural discussions during the era).  The film lives-or-dies not just on our investment in the drama of the picture, but in the acting onscreen, and both are marvelous.  The film probably would have gained a wee bit from the original stage production, which gave more background to the Sibyl/Major relationship (this was also in the original script, but producer Burt Lancaster wanted more screen-time for his character, a decision that Delbert Mann claimed "cost Deborah Kerr the Oscar"); it also makes more sense if the Major is homosexual, which is what the original stage script insinuated.

However, these are small trifles to have with a movie this good.  The acting is terrific.  The film was nominated for three acting trophies, and at least the winners richly deserved these citations.  Hiller finds a sort of quiet steel in her character.  She never gets a great big scene where she confesses her loneliness & how she's certain that if she does the "right thing" by Anne, she'll likely lose her own happiness, possibly forever, but it's there in her tense posture and pleading eyes.  She wants John to stay with her, but knows that he'll never forgive her if he doesn't make the decision to leave Anne on his own, and so she must watch as he retreats to a woman whose beauty and advantage are things she's never been given.  Matching her is David Niven, giving arguably the shortest film performance ever to win a lead Oscar (different sites argue whether it's him or Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs).  He plays the Major as a man bereft of emotional connection, someone who has struggled to be taken seriously so he has invented reasons to do so.  His scenes with Kerr are odd (again, there needs more grounding here or for him to be gay to properly define their friendship as platonic or romantic), and Kerr occasionally overplays them, but I don't think I've seen Niven be this good before, and with a drama of all things!

As for Hayworth, she's spellbinding per usual.  Kerr won the Best Actress nod, but if they were going to go with someone from this film for that category it should have been Hayworth who gets the more difficult part and the more humiliating scenes.  She has to basically watch as John shoves her 40-year-old face under a lamp, showing the starts of aging on a woman who has demanded (and received) everything due to her looks for years, and the final scenes, where it's clear she's looking at either forgiveness or suicide as her options, are devastating, as is the ambiguity of what happens next for the couple.  While she'd make a few more pictures, including a Golden Globe-nominated turn in Circus World, and work in television shows like Laugh-In and The Carol Burnett Show, this was the last important film of her career, and once again, she went home empty-handed from the Academy.  By the 1970's, her alcoholism and years of emotional abuse were masking what would ultimately kill her: Alzheimer's Disease, of which she would die at the age of 68 in 1987.

Next month we will take a look at a woman who rivaled Hayworth's stardom for almost the entire run of both of their careers, and whose personal life & seismic beauty demanded far more headlines than her films ever did, but who (unlike Hayworth) the Oscars found room for just once...in what would lead to one of the most notorious chapters in the Academy's history.  Stay tuned to find out to whom I'm referring on Friday as we kick off another month of Saturdays with the Stars.