For her fourth and final Oscar nomination for Best Actress, Barbara Stanwyck starred in an expanded version of the Lucille Fletcher radio play Sorry Wrong Number. The original drama was only thirty minutes and it only concentrates on a crippled woman and her terror. We certainly get that in this film and it's when we do that Stanwyck went into Oscar contention.
Besides the moments of present terror, the story is fleshed in a series of flashbacks, sometimes flashbacks within flashbacks, although not approaching Passage to Marseilles which set some kind of record in that department. The people that Fletcher creates aren't the most sympathetic group of people you'd ever want to meet. Stanwyck is the spoiled only child of pharmaceutical millionaire Ed Begley and we her put on a full court campaign to sweep poor kid Burt Lancaster off his feet and away from Ann Richards. We see Lancaster trapped in a velvet cocoon of luxury, but not really being his own man. He's as kept as William Holden was in Sunset Boulevard.
As the story unfolds it actually becomes Lancaster's struggle to claw out of captivity. Stanwyck does not become the most sympathetic figure either as she wields her illness as a weapon as surely as Eleanor Parker did in The Man With The Golden Arm. Imagine Bill Holden's character in Sunset Boulevard married to Parker's from the Otto Preminger classic and you've got a really sick marriage.
The flashback story is a bit much to take, but when it comes to Stanwyck's present terror the film goes into high gear. Think of the extraordinary range of roles that Barbara Stanwyck was nominated for an Oscar. The white trash mother in Stella Dallas, the mob moll in Ball Of Fire, the evil wife in Double Indemnity and finally this psychosomatic clinging cripple in Sorry Wrong Number. All completely different from the others, yet all stamped with Stanwyck's indelible screen persona.
According to the Axel Madsen biography of Stanwyck she was not entertaining hopes of winning in 1948 in what proved to be her last shot at a competitive Oscar. She picked out exactly who was going to win that year and her other competition was Ingrid Bergman in Joan Of Arc, Olivia DeHavilland in The Snake Pit, and Irene Dunne in I Remember Mama. The winner in who Stanwyck said was the Best Performance for an Actress in 1948 was Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda.
When Sorry Wrong Number concentrates on Barbara it's one of the best fright tales around. Would that the rest of the film was as good as her performance.
Besides the moments of present terror, the story is fleshed in a series of flashbacks, sometimes flashbacks within flashbacks, although not approaching Passage to Marseilles which set some kind of record in that department. The people that Fletcher creates aren't the most sympathetic group of people you'd ever want to meet. Stanwyck is the spoiled only child of pharmaceutical millionaire Ed Begley and we her put on a full court campaign to sweep poor kid Burt Lancaster off his feet and away from Ann Richards. We see Lancaster trapped in a velvet cocoon of luxury, but not really being his own man. He's as kept as William Holden was in Sunset Boulevard.
As the story unfolds it actually becomes Lancaster's struggle to claw out of captivity. Stanwyck does not become the most sympathetic figure either as she wields her illness as a weapon as surely as Eleanor Parker did in The Man With The Golden Arm. Imagine Bill Holden's character in Sunset Boulevard married to Parker's from the Otto Preminger classic and you've got a really sick marriage.
The flashback story is a bit much to take, but when it comes to Stanwyck's present terror the film goes into high gear. Think of the extraordinary range of roles that Barbara Stanwyck was nominated for an Oscar. The white trash mother in Stella Dallas, the mob moll in Ball Of Fire, the evil wife in Double Indemnity and finally this psychosomatic clinging cripple in Sorry Wrong Number. All completely different from the others, yet all stamped with Stanwyck's indelible screen persona.
According to the Axel Madsen biography of Stanwyck she was not entertaining hopes of winning in 1948 in what proved to be her last shot at a competitive Oscar. She picked out exactly who was going to win that year and her other competition was Ingrid Bergman in Joan Of Arc, Olivia DeHavilland in The Snake Pit, and Irene Dunne in I Remember Mama. The winner in who Stanwyck said was the Best Performance for an Actress in 1948 was Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda.
When Sorry Wrong Number concentrates on Barbara it's one of the best fright tales around. Would that the rest of the film was as good as her performance.