AWARDS AND HONORS

Barbara Stanwyck received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for her role in Sorry, Wrong Number.

Lucille Fletcher's screenplay adaptation of her play was nominated for an Edgar Award and a Writers Guild of America Award.

THE CRITIC'S CORNER

"It gives Barbara Stanwyck her fattest role since Double Indemnity [1944] and she makes the most of the pampered, petulant, terrified leading character." -- Time.

"The most extended emotional jag in recent movie history" - Life.

"For sheer, unadulterated terror there have been few films in recent years to match the quivering fright of Sorry, Wrong Number--and few performances to equal the hysteria-ridden picture of a woman doomed, as portrayed by Barbara Stanwyck." -- Cue Magazine.

"Lancaster is grimly persuasive as the homicidal husband who gets caught in a mesh of telephone calls." – The New York Herald Tribune.

"Burt Lancaster continues his steady advance from musclemen to accomplished actor." -- Look Magazine.

"Litvak's direction builds carefully, constantly heightening the tension to the nerve-wracking finale. It's an ace job of story guidance and player handling...Considerable emphasis is placed on the score by Franz Waxman music being used to heighten and highlight the gradually mounting suspense. Sol Polito uses an extremely mobile camera for the same effect, sharpening the building terror with unusual angles and lighting. Warren Low's capable editing holds the picture to a tight 89 minutes." -- Variety.

"Lucille Fletcher wrote this overextended treatment of her radio play...Barbara Stanwyck is the terrified and, finally, whimpering woman; Burt Lancaster is her morose husband. The director, Anatole Litvak, seems to be defeated by the extravagantly jumbled, shallow script." - Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies.

"Artificial but effective suspenser...." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"The people who made it...have tried to do just one thing - to thrill. This they have triumphantly done." - James Monahan.

"The film is not as tightly constructed as the radio play, but it is a fine example of how the hermetic world of film noir creates a sense of entrapment...Although cast against type, Lancaster as the ineffectual and bespectacled Henry....contrasts with Leona's poorly suppressed hysteria and adds a level of verisimilitude lacking in the original version." - Robert Porfirio & Lee Sanders, Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style.

"Told nearly in real time and almost entirely through telephone calls, the radio-play-based Number derives sleek hysteria from its audaciously constraining narrative strategy." - Ed Park, The Village Voice.

"Sorry, Wrong Number could almost be described as a layman's Rear Window [1954]. Stanwyck is mesmerizing performing entirely from her bed as she uses the phone to prevent her own death. The flashbacks are a little troublesome, what with dated production techniques, they have not held up as well as the same device in other films. Still, they allow the viewer to understand that this is more of a tragedy than a murder mystery....This is one classic movie that may seem sluggish by today's high-paced thriller standards, but patience is certainly rewarded. The finale is a great film-noir mystery denouement. It is such a satisfying ending that it leaves no question unanswered." - Jamie Gilles, Apollo Movie Guide.

"Sorry, Wrong Number was perceived as a scary thriller when it was released. But it's also interesting for the moral universe it describes. Ask yourself who transgresses the moral boundaries and who gets punished. Remember that the film was made in the historical context of post-war adjustment in the United States with men returning to civilian life and women being coerced back into their conventional domestic roles. Sorry, Wrong Number touches on the inevitable anxieties that this convulsion provoked." - Peter Thompson, Showtime.

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume & Jeff Stafford