SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (1948)

Paramount Pictures, 88m 44s

An extension of the 1943 radio play written by Lucille Fletcher, producer/director Anatole Litvak’s socially uncompromising SORRY, WRONG NUMBER encompasses many of the themes and motifs central to the American film noir cycle:  women who are something other than what they seem, men who are tempted by the allure of money to commit crimes, a decadent urban setting, flashbacks meant to explicate the present, and above everything else, an irrevocable sense of doom as fate closes in on the major characters. An exercise in sustained tension, from the opening moments time is running out on the bedridden female protagonist. Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck earned her fourth Oscar® nomination) is wholly dependent on her telephone to send and receive information. Due to a crossed wire connection, she becomes aware of a murder plot set to take place that very evening. Leona eventually comes to suspect she is the intended victim. Trapped in her Manhattan residence alone, can the invalid avoid her fate?

Leona is one of film noir’s most unique femme fatales. The pampered daughter of drug mogul James Cotterell (Ed Begley), owner of the J. Cotterell Drug Co., she is known derisively as "the cough drop queen." That she would garner such a label is not surprising given her lamentable character traits:  she is spoiled, self-centered, manipulative and standoffish. An undesirable combination of petulance and fragility, Leona is all but impossible to engage in conversation. But given her obvious social pedigree as the Cotterell heiress, she maintains at least some appeal despite regular intervals of truculent defiance. Interestingly, Leona is the driving force behind her romance with Henry Stevenson (Burt Lancaster, cast against type), a big strapping young fellow who looks good on the dancefloor at the Matthews College for Women. Their social backgrounds are comically antithetical; he works in a drug store, her father owns a large chain of drug stores. Henry does not understand why Leona would have any interest in someone like him. Her clingy father cannot help but agree. James pleads with his daughter not to marry a financially undernourished man of limited education. Of course she acts against her father's admonitions, and so the Cotterell family merges with Henry Stevenson.

Murder by numbers

For better or worse

Safe house?

That noir moment of recognition

A crucial theme baked into the film noir genre, especially during the classic period that stretches from roughly 1944 - 1950, is that the traditional American family is under strain. It is easy enough to note the absence of family values and the many unsuccessful marriages that distinguish DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), THE SUSPECT (1944), SCARLET STREET (1945), MILDRED PIERCE (1945), THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF UNCLE HARRY (1945), THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946), ALL MY SONS (1948), WHIRLPOOL (1949) and GUN CRAZY (1950). The preeminent theme that makes SORRY, WRONG NUMBER so perfectly noir is its bleak rendering of its star-crossed couple. In the course of a marriage unfulfilling for both parties, there is no happiness to be found in Leona’s family, only discontent, deception, disappointment, and death. From the outset, there seems to be no way to align the interests of everyone concerned. This theme can be traced back to the mother who died giving birth to Leona. Given the obvious class distinctions and contrasting personalities that polarize Henry and Leona, the husband and wife seem destined for divergent paths. It is not long after her wedding to Henry that Leona discovers a photo of his old flame Sally Hunt Lord (Ann Richards) in his wallet. That discovery instantly creates doubt in Leona’s mind about her choice for a husband. That finding is both revealing and deceptive; Leona is slow to recognize where the actual trouble lies.

Guns pointed directly at her, the mise en scène
suggests a grim future for Leona Stevenson

Henry demonstrates he has the ideal disposition to push the already nervous Leona into endless hysteria. Most important, he possesses a character trait typical of the film noir protagonist:  he thinks he deserves more than what he has and is willing to break the law to get it. What does separate Henry from most other noir protagonists is that he is not an average person trying to make good. Thanks to his unlikely wedding to a woman of significant means, he is fortunate enough to assume a do-nothing VP position at the largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the country, but finds no satisfaction in his fixed opportunity at his father-in-law's firm. Henry mockingly tags himself "the invoice king," seemingly unaware he signed up for that position alongside "the cough drop queen." Thinking himself a stooge, Henry takes a tragically wrong turn when he goes after what he believes to be his rightful take. In an aggressive act of rebellion, Henry exploits the limited financial success of company chemist Waldo Evans (Harold Vermilyea) to form an underworld partnership. Henry and the milquetoast Waldo become drug traffickers in a raw materials skimming scheme; a plot thread that had to be diluted for Production Code considerations. It was recommended the filmmakers should take special care to avoid any references to an illicit drug trade, yet the drug trafficking angle is hardly an obscure plot thread. Naturally Henry's business model proves unsustainable. When resources are running low, the gangster Morano (William Conrad) recommends Henry goes after his wife's life insurance money!

Henry's immersion into a corrupt atmosphere of nefarious activity stems from frustration with his family, both personally and professionally. Just as Henry is dissatisfied with his work at the family business, he finds no sense of purpose flanked by his domineering wife. He does not harbor any desire to live under the same roof as his wife's father, either (cannot blame Henry for that conviction). Henry's determination to find his path somewhere beyond the clutches of the Cotterells leads to his wife's progressive panic attacks. As her unhappiness heightens, so her body weakens. Leona is confined to her bed much of the time, gradually working herself into a neurotic frenzy. In another familiar film noir theme that adds further complexity to this problematic noir marriage, Dr. Alexander (Wendell Corey) is unable to uncover anything physically wrong with Leona's heart, which implies her issue is purely psychological. Expressed somewhat differently, Leona and Henry are about as wrong for each other as one could imagine. Each makes the other feel worthless. Tellingly, all narrative paths converge in the bedroom, the supposed sanctuary of the married couple. Leona is a prisoner in the bedroom of her own home, trapped on the third floor awaiting her own murder, which was contracted by the husband she handpicked. Ironically, there is nothing about her physicality that should prevent her escape. Her state of paralysis is a product of her fractured psyche, nothing more. Psychological issues inflict anguish on major characters in a vast number of noir films, i.e. CAT PEOPLE (1942), SCARLET STREET (1945), NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947), POSSESSED (1947), SO EVIL MY LOVE (1948), WHIRLPOOL (1949), WHITE HEAT (1949), THE SNIPER (1952) and WITHOUT WARNING! (1952). Moreover, Leona's limited mobility reflects the noir genre's obsession with broken individuals. Witness the less-than-able-bodied characters that populate DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT (1944), THE BIG SLEEP (1946), GILDA (1946), THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947), ABANDONED (1949), ACT OF VIOLENCE (1949), KEY LARGO (1948), THE HITCH-HIKER (1953), STORM FEAR (1955) and TOUCH OF EVIL (1958). Leona is something of a special case in that her psychological frailty gives rise to her bedridden state of meaninglessness.

Leona not at her best

Chiaroscuro lighting typical of the classic noir era

The individual minimized by his environment

A prescient composition

Beyond its major themes that emanate from a distinctly noir worldview, SORRY, WRONG NUMBER maintains a wide aperture for the genre's many other recurring signposts. What fills most of the 88-minute runtime is a series of flashbacks, even a flashback within a flashback, that combine to form a nightmarish evocation of a relationship that never stood a chance. The standard randomness of the noir environment is in full effect as well. Due to a remarkably random technical glitch (better understood as a condemned individual's fate), Leona overhears a telephone conversation that describes a murder arranged for that night. The operator cannot help her, nor can the police provide any assistance. Leona is ordained to die, but not before the irony of that certainty is brought into focus. After the archcriminal Morano is arrested, there is no reason to pay any debt owed to him, but Henry is unaware of that development while the contract to eliminate his wife remains in effect. She dies at the narrative's conclusion for no reason other than fatalism. Beforehand Leona even expounds her comprehension of the situation to her husband. The film's concern with family matters in fact reaches beyond the relationship between Leona and Henry. For instance, the marriage between Sally and Fred Lord (Leif Erickson) appears to have its challenges. After Fred keeps quiet about the sting designed to imprison her ex Henry, she resorts to spying on her husband to satisfy her natural curiosity. Then there is Henry's childhood recollection of his mother, who he remembers only as a hopelessly overworked domestic figure. In terms of setting, the sin-ridden noir city is an impersonal place in which a normally useful object like the telephone contributes to an alienated individual's sense of helplessness and fear. The noir city even serves as a necessary accomplice to the murder of Leona via one of the natural sounds of the urban milieu (a bypassing train). Visual signals of noir include shadows cast by venetian blinds, a serpentine staircase, and idealized photos that do not even begin to reflect reality. An audio hallmark is the narration that helps cover historical milestones of the connection between Leona and Henry. Despite a structure heavily reliant upon flashbacks, the narrative unspools in inevitable real time. Such structure works to consume the condemned lead protagonists in a painfully slow manner.

The noir protagonist faced with no better alternative

No way out

The killer's timely arrival

The noir marriage knocked over

Lucille Fletcher's 22-minute radio play SORRY, WRONG NUMBER originally aired on SUSPENSE (CBS) May 25th, 1943 with Agnes Moorehead as Leona. It was wildly popular, re-broadcast every year for a ten-year period. In 1947, Hal Wallis hired Fletcher to adapt her radio play for the big screen. Fletcher published a novelization of her radio play in 1948 along with the screenplay adaptation, co-authored by Allan Ullman. The Paramount production was in wide release in the US on September 24th, 1948 and became a financial success that no doubt helped ingrain Fletcher’s original material into the public consciousness. Stanwyck and Lancaster returned to their roles for a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast on January 9th, 1950. Shelley Winters starred as Leona in a CBS television production of the play for the TV show CLIMAX! on November 4th, 1954. Agnes Moorehead reprised her lead role when she recorded her interpretation in 1952 and converted the play into a one-woman act during the 1950s. Loni Anderson starred in the lead role in a TV movie version that aired in 1989.

The Shout! Factory dual-layered Blu-ray edition of SORRY, WRONG NUMBER released earlier this year offers heavy grain level and good contrast, all the better to appreciate the authenticity of atmosphere achieved by cinematographer Sol Polito. Some rather prominent scratches disturb the viewing experience from time to time, but overall the transfer looks strong framed at 1.37:1. Unique to this Shout! Factory project is a fresh audio commentary track by podcasters Sam Hurley and Emily Higgins. Unfortunately, their critique of the film is notable for long patches of silence and sometimes veers into riff territory. Not my cup of tea, at least not for a film I admire.

The other supplements are common to the Blu-ray edition released by Imprint in 2020. The audio commentary by film historian Alan K. Rode is loaded with his usual well-rounded research. Ukrainian-born filmmaker Anatole Litvak purchased the screen rights to SORRY, WRONG NUMBER from Lucille Fletcher in 1946. Litvak sold the film rights to producer Hal B. Wallis, which is how the co-production between the two was conceived. The box office take was $2.85M on a budget just under $1.5M. Barbara Stanwyck earned a healthy $125K for her role, which accounted for the largest production expense. She was the highest paid actress in the business at the time. Wallis should be remembered as one of the top producers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, as well as a skilled contract negotiator. Rode contends Burt Lancaster went after roles that would test his talents, and the emerging star always insisted on having the final say with producer Wallis. Rode points out that the killer getting away with murder scot-free in the radio play was unheard of at the time.

In his introduction (2m 30s) of SORRY, WRONG NUMBER, film noir expert Eddie Muller mentions the source material was the most famous original radio drama ever other than the 1938 radio broadcast of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, narrated and directed by Orson Welles. The featurette "Hold the Phone:  The Making of SORRY, WRONG NUMBER" (2009, 31m 25s) covers the story's transition from radio broadcast to feature film. Dorothy Herrmann, daughter of Lucille Fletcher and composer Bernard Herrmann, notes that her mother's parents were unenthused about Lucille's relationship with Bernard. Next up is the Lux Radio Theatre radio play (1950, 59m 41s) that returned Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster to their roles from the 1948 film. Also among the supplements is a filmed performance of the radio play (28m 37s) with Sandy York giving it her all in the featured role of Mrs. Leona Stevenson. The difference in duration between the radio play and its movie adaptation accounts for some distinctions in the portrayal of Leona, who is even more unlikable and unreasonable in the radio play. In the course of an almost 90-minute movie, Barbara Stanwyck's interpretation is at least somewhat sympathetic, if for no other reason than the Leona character is not required to be grating every second. Another difference is the telephone in the radio play becomes a major character in its own right. A theatrical trailer (2m 38s) champions the source material's transition from radio play to vinyl record to novelization to feature film, and a photo gallery (2m 53s) completes the robust collection of bonus material.