Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1958

The Contenders:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Gigi (winner)
The Horse’s Mouth
I Want to Live!
Separate Tables

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1958

The Contenders:

Auntie Mame
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Defiant Ones
Gigi (winner)
Separate Tables

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1958

The Contenders:

Rosalind Russell: Auntie Mame
Elizabeth Taylor: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Susan Hayward: I Want to Live! (winner)
Deborah Kerr: Separate Tables
Shirley MacLaine: Some Came Running

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1958

The Contenders:

Paul Newman: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Tony Curtis: The Defiant Ones
Sidney Poitier: The Defiant Ones
Spencer Tracy: The Old Man and the Sea
David Niven: Separate Tables (winner)

Meals for One

Film: Separate Tables
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

I said recently that I’ve been getting a lot of films that are converted from stage dramas lately, and yesterday I got a film written by a stage author that could have easily been a stage play. That trend is continuing tonight with Separate Tables, a film nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, a play of the same name by Terrence Rattigan. This is an interesting film if only for its content; it’s surprisingly sexually charged for 1958, and most of this sexual charge is not of a positive nature.

The story is more or less a story of relationships and how those relationships interconnect at a hotel in Bournemouth. One of the features of this hotel is dining at separate tables, meaning that each of the guests dines alone or with a companion with whom he or she shares a room. At meal time at least, everyone is in his or her own little world. The entire story takes place in the hotel, which is really the main evidence that this comes from a stage play. The most we ever change scenes is room to room, or now and then to an outside porch.