Sorry, Wrong Number

The great Barbara Stanwyck gives an Oscar-nominated performance (the fourth and final of her storied career) in this gripping film noir suspense thriller.   Stanwyck stars as rich, bedridden heiress Leona Stevenson, who dials a telephone number one night and, thanks to crossed telephone wires, overhears two men plotting the murder of an unidentified woman. She tries to alert the police, to no avail, and grows increasingly frantic as she gradually realizes she is the intended victim. With time running out, and trapped in her room with no one believing her, Leona pieces evidence together that leads her to suspect it may be her husband (Burt Lancaster, in one of his earliest film roles) who wants her murdered. Or is something else about to happen? Based on the legendary 22-minute radio drama of the same name, and featuring mesmerizing noir direction by Anatole Litvak and a go-for-broke performance by Stanwyck guaranteed to have audiences biting their nails, Sorry, Wrong Number is an extraordinary example of mounting suspense and terror. (Dir. by Anatole Litvak, 1948, USA, 89 mins., Not Rated)