Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Anatole Litvak

Writers:

Lucille Fletcher (radio play)
Lucille Fletcher (screenplay)

Release Date:

1 September 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Thriller

Tagline:

She overheard the plans for her own destruction!

Plot:

Leona Stevenson is sick and confined to her bed. One night, whilst waiting for he husband to return home...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Apartment | Debt | Embezzlement | Investigation

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 2 nominations

Cast

Barbara Stanwyck	...	Leona Stevenson
Burt Lancaster	...	Henry Stevenson
Ann Richards	...	Sally Hunt Lord
Wendell Corey	...	Dr. Alexander
Harold Vermilyea	...	Waldo Evans
Ed Begley	...	James Cotterell
Leif Erickson	...	Fred Lord
William Conrad	...	Morano
John Bromfield	...	Joe - Detective
Jimmy Hunt	...	Peter Lord
Dorothy Neumann	...	Miss Elizabeth Jennings
Paul Fierro	...	Harpootlian

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Norway:16 (1949) | USA:Approved (PCA #12493) | West Germany:16 (nf) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Company:

Hal Wallis Productions

Trivia:

Film noir adaptation of the famous 1943 radio play.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Whenever camera pans out Leona's window to cityscape with moving cars, city lights, etc., smoke emitting from smokestacks never moves.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Leona Stevenson: Operator! Operator! Operator!
Voice of Operator: Your call please?
Leona Stevenson: Operator, I've been ringing Murray Hill 35097 for the last half hour and the line is always busy. Will you ring it for me, please?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Hill Street Blues: Sorry Wrong Number (#7.16)" (1987)

Soundtrack:

Symphony No. 8 in B Minor (Unfinished)

Gimmicky noir still shocks despite its shortcomings

Chrome-plated hokum, Sorry, Wrong Number works despite itself. And works and works. Starting out as a radio drama by Lucille Fletcher in the 1940s, it boasted umpteen performances plus a 1946 production in the nascent medium of television before Anatole Litvak turned it into film noir. During most of its earlier incarnations, Agnes Moorehead created the role of the hysterical, bedridden heiress, the `cough drop queen,' but the film fell into the lap of the First Lady of Film Noir, Barbara Stanwyck. Moorehead was more than a strong enough actress, but Hollywood required a star.

The Irony is that Sorry, Wrong Number is far from her finest hour on screen. Rarely has one been made so aware of Stanwyck `acting' in the most unabashedly actressy way. And the same can be said of Burt Lancaster who, when a role didn't set well with him, communicated his discomfort blatantly. In The Rose Tattoo, against Anna Magnani, he was ingratiating and unconvincing ; here, he's almost as awkward as the henpecked husband in whom the worm has at long last turned.

But maybe Fletcher's slice of devil's food cake calls for mannered histrionics. Ensconced in her bedchamber one sweltering Manhattan evening, her pill bottles and her telephone at her elbow, Stanwyck eavesdrops on a sinister conversation – a murder is being plotted – thanks to a crossed line. This makes her even more restive, and she starts working the phone, tracking down her tardy husband. Litvak `ventilates' these calls, turning them into a series of flashbacks filling in the background to what will prove a very bad evening for Stanwyck. (The sequences on Staten Island, however, could have sprung from the pen of Franklin W. Dixon, the Hardy Boys' puppeteer.)

Unavoidably talky, owing to its source, Sorry, Wrong Number moves inexorably to its preordained end. Basically, it's a gimmick, and one that Hitchcock might have fine-tuned into a nifty infernal machine. Litvak doesn't do badly, though, and the movie's shock value outlasts its staled conventions. Its most chilling moment comes when Stanwyck frantically dials a number that she thinks will give her solace. But her answer is `BOwery 2-1000 – the City Morgue.'