Separate Tables

Early evening at the Hotel Beauregard, guests (Felix Aylmer, May Hallatt, Cathleen Nesbitt, Gladys Cooper) are not expecting Rita Hayworth, as Ann Shankland, greeted by proprietor Pat (Wendy Hiller), and seeking a guest we’ve not yet met, in Separate Tables, 1958.

Opening scene, Delbert Mann directing, from Terence Rattigan’s screenplay based on his international hit play, we meet David Niven in his Academy Award-winning role as Major Pollock, Deborah Kerr as Sibyl, Gladys Cooper her mother, in Separate Tables, 1958.

Sybil, her mother and Lady Matheson (Debora Herr, Gladys Cooper, Cathleen Nesbitt) react to the first appearance of Burt Lancaster as rogue-ish John Malcolm, whom we quickly learn has important relations with the hotel owner Pat (Wendy Hiller), in Separate Tables, 1958.

We’ve just met Burt Lancaster as maybe-disreputable American writer John, and know only that he’s a guest involved with the proprietor of the English coastal hotel, when he discovers Rita Hayworth, as Ann Shankland, whom we learn is his ex-wife, in Separate Tables, 1958.

At their hotel on the southern coast of England, David Niven as Major Pollock, flaws in his persona beginning to show, with Rod Taylor as student Charles, Wendy Hiller as hotelier Pat, Felix Aylmer as Fowler, in Separate Tables, 1958, from Terence Rattigan's play and screenplay, directed by Delbert Mann.

Producer (and co-star) Burt Lancaster himself pitches Separate Tables, 1958, featuring Academy Award winners David Niven and Wendy Hiller.