Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Hal Wallis Productions/ Paramount Pictures

Director: Anatole Litvak

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster

What would you do if you happened to overhear the conversation of a plot to murder someone? Adapted from the radio play of the same title, Sorry, Wrong Number begins with just that notion. A thrilling noir picture, Sorry, Wrong Number is a film that delivers suspense from a tale originally delivered only in words, fleshing its story out, and packaging it in a form that I think Alfred Hitchcock would be proud of. Included in it is some creatively suspenseful cinematography that was unique for its day and would be copied many times over in the future.

Sorry, Wrong Number is a film noir about woman who accidentally overhears a murderous plot on her phone, and as she pieces together facts discovers the proposed victim. While attempting to call her husband, Henry (Burt Lancaster) late one evening, the spoiled, stubborn, and bedridden Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck) overhears on a crossed phone line a conversation where two men plot the murder of an unnamed woman that evening. After a number of calls furiously attempting to locate Henry, she pieces together the events that led to his supposed disappearance as he attempts to get out from under his controlling father-in-law who had cornered him into working for the family business.

To earn his independence from position at Leona’s family pharmaceutical company Henry schemes to raise money by trafficking some the company’s chemicals with the help from scientist, Waldo Even (Harold Vermilyea). Complications arise as he falls in debt to a mobster, Morano (William Conrad), who threatens Henry over loss of a few missed delivers. Morano decides Leona’s life insurance can cover Henry’s debt, triggering Leona to discover she is the victim of the overheard murder plot. When Henry finally calls Leona it is too late as he hears Morano’s men enter her room to end her and answer “sorry, wrong number,” while at the same moment Henry is tracked down by police for his own crimes as the film closes.

The film struggles from being a bit of a jumbled mess, as well as a series of coincidental or convenient matters that help drive an overly complicated plot. Yet, somehow the story comes together to form a satisfactory conclusion that is tragic where one main character actually dies and the other is arrested. It is a sour ending that feels fulfilling even though the character we are most sympathetic for, Henry, loses everything, because he went about the right things in the wrong ways. It is a crime mystery with a tragic fall. This is style of story that could have come right out of sensationalized pulp style crime stories some would find buried as entertainment in their newspapers of the day.

It is interesting to see a successful radio play being turned into a motion picture. At this time it was very common to see popular films turned into radio dramas, but in this case the script from the “Supsense” radio program was being adapted from the big screen. For what was referred by Orson Welles in his opinion as the greatest radio drama, the Lucille Fletcher penned script had to be fleshed out to meet the needs of a motion picture. Certain ideas had to be polished up to meet cinematic moral codes, like turning the crime of drug trafficking into the less provocative terminology of chemical smuggling. For this the plot device the story was told is a series of flashbacks, not too dissimilar to Citizen Kane, allowing the main character and the audience to piece together the story that comes to a dramatic conclusion.

Director Anatole Litvak use of dark imagery and minimal lighting throughout the picture, but his particular use in Leona’s room creates the mix of dread, suspense and mystery through her evening of discovery. Litvak uses the camera is slow methodical manners to share the feeling of dread, utilizing a unique camera move for he time where the camera slowly obits Leona during one of her conversations to build the suspense that builds in her mind. This type of device would become far more common years later, but such a camera move would have been something new and effective to many viewers of 1948. It is this type of creativity that helps make this movie work so well.

Burt Lancaster’s performance as the leading man of the picture is a bit stiff, but as the tale’s lone sympathetic character he plays it as a dejected man just trying to make his own way in life, instead of being handed a pencil pushing position forced upon him by marriage. His performance is a bit subdued, probably because he, despite being a main character, is not the central focus of the primary pilot. His role is tragic, but he deserves what he gets in the end, making him a character difficult to be fully compassionate for.

His wife Leona is played by Barbara Stanwyck, who portrays well the stubborn, spoil heiress of one of the most successful pharmaceutical companies in the land. However, her overacting in the moments of peril can be cringe-worthy. Her hysterics, despite being directly inspired by the Agnes Moorehead portrayal in the original radio production, does not transfer well for the screen in some opinions. Her shrill voice and frantic mannerisms that build with the understanding of her impending doom feels very forced and far-fetched. But then again her character is built to portray a person with psychosomatic issues that make her believe she is hopeless. In any case, Stanwyck does something that many film actors are absolutely afraid to do, act completely on their own. In these scenes Stanwyck is acting to absolutely nothing on set while she holds the phone to her ear. She has no one to react to other those delivering her lines. She alone has to build this character for the audience as Leona goes nearly mad awaiting doom. This was no easy task for any actor and it was for this that she earned her an Academy Award nomination of Best Actress.

We receive many fine performances throughout the feature. Ed Begley delivered a menacing father-in-law figure, an individual many would not want to be controlled by in his marriage. Aussie born actress Ann Richards makes one of her final appearances on screen before retiring from acting as Sally, a former girlfriend of Henry that reenters his life, temporarily causing some jealousy for Leona as she helps piece together parts of the mystery. Wendell Corey makes an appearance as the doctor that reveals to Henry Leona’s psychosomatic disorder that makes her feel ill, but is all the while perfectly able. William Conrad is featured in a typical mobster role as Morano, a performance similar to the threatening character type he would be best known for in his career.

Sorry, Wrong Number did well for 1948, but never really rose to great prominence. The story would be told and retold many times over, even ironically being adapted back into a radio program in 1950. It would be a remake of the in the form of a made-for-TV movie in 1989 starring Loni Anderson to no merit. Today, Sorry, Wrong Number remains a strong noir, and any cinema fan can spot influences its production has on future filmmakers as its storytelling remains very effective and is worth a watch.