'Separate Tables' is a classic drama film made in 1958, directed by Delbert Mann and with an all star cast including David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster. The movie was adapted by Sir Terence Rattigan, John Gay and John Michael Hays from two short stage plays by Rattigan which opened in London in 1954. The movie was produced by Burt Lancaster's company, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster.

The film was a box-office success on both sides of the Atlantic and was critically approved as well with seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. It won two Oscars: Best Actor for David Niven (with his only Oscar nomination) and Best Supporting Actress for Wendy Hiller.

Plot

The setting is unusual for a transatlantic Oscar-winning movie - a small, run-down hotel in the English seaside resort of Bournemouth. The Hotel Beauregarde is owned by Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller) and has a variety of guests, whose lives interweave and whose personalities are exposed and explored as the plot develops. The lonely major, played by David Niven, is worshipped by the withdrawn Sybil (Deborah Kerr) who is dominated by her mother Maud, played by Gladys Cooper. Pat is loved by the alcoholic American guest, John Malcolm, played by Burt Lancaster, whose past catches up with him in the form of his glamorous ex-girlfriend, Ann, played by Rita Hayworth. Add to this disparate group a pair of young lovers played by a young Rod Taylor and Audrey Dalton, and stir into the mix a sordid sexual groping of a strange woman by the major and there are all the ingredients of a soap opera under one roof.