While on the telephone, an invalid woman overhears what she thinks is a murder plot and attempts to prevent it.While on the telephone, an invalid woman overhears what she thinks is a murder plot and attempts to prevent it.While on the telephone, an invalid woman overhears what she thinks is a murder plot and attempts to prevent it.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 3 nominations total
Bill Cartledge
- Page Boy
- (uncredited)
Cliff Clark
- Police Sergeant Duffy
- (uncredited)
Joyce Compton
- Cotterell's Blonde Girlfriend
- (uncredited)
Ashley Cowan
- Clam Digger
- (uncredited)
Yola d'Avril
- French Maid
- (uncredited)
Suzanne Dalbert
- Cigarette Girl
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaAnatole Litvak: Where Henry is having lunch with Sally, he asks his waiter if he knows who the gentleman is in the dark glasses at the table behind him. It is the director.
- GoofsTwice, Leona turns on a radio, and music begins instantly and strongly. Radios of the film's era contained vacuum tubes that needed some time to warm up.
- Quotes
Henry Stevenson: [to Leona] I want you to do something. I want you to get yourself out of the bed, and get over to the window and scream as loud as you can. Otherwise you only have another three minutes to live.
- Crazy creditsPROLOGUE: "In the tangled networks of a great city, the telephone is the unseen link between a million lives...It is the servant of our common needs-the confidante of our inmost secrets...life and happiness wait upon its ring...and horror...and loneliness...and...death!!!"
- ConnectionsEdited into Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)
Featured review
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.'
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.'
helpful•3519
- bmacv
- Jun 9, 2002
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Zalim, pogresan broj
- Filming locations
- Hollywood, California, USA(telephone switchboard at a telephone company office on Gower St.)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $1,838
- Runtime1 hour 29 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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