The iconic Bette Davis was married to Gary Merrill, the star of Phone Call from a Stranger, at the time the film was made. She decided to forgo top billing and take a much minor part in this film because she felt the part was worthwhile.
Merrill plays an attorney from Iowa David Trask who has just separated from his wife after learning she had an extramarital affair. He's in an airport restaurant before flying to Los Angeles where three strangers end up seated at his table and have coffee together.
The offbeat plot develops as we're introduced to the strangers: an aspiring actress Binky Gay (Shelley Winters), Robert Fortness (Michael Rennie), an alcoholic physician and the loudmouth traveling salesman Eddie Hoke (Keenan Wynn).
Binky is seated next to David who tries to calm her down as this is her first flight and there's a great deal of turbulence. Binky reveals she had a failed audition in New York City for a part in South Pacific.
Due to a storm, the plane lands in Vega, Texas where the four agree to exchange phone numbers and addresses. One wonders at this juncture what is the point of all this exposition about the characters-nothing much has happened.
During the layover however, David gets to know the doctor much better who confesses (in a flashback) the reason for his habitual drinking. Shockingly, he was involved in a DWI in which he was speeding and responsible for the death of his doctor pal and two others who he slammed into.
To make matters worse, he lied to the DA handling the accident that it was his friend who was behind the wheel with his wife providing a deceitful alibi. Wracked with guilt for years, he now plans to turn himself in and confess that he was responsible for the accident.
The next turn of events is far more shattering. The plane crashes and David's three companions are all killed-he is the lone survivor among the group.
So, for 1952 I found this plot reversal to be shocking-it's not the usual happenstance to introduce characters and then kill them off midway through the film.
As I was watching I was wondering where does the narrative go from here? Since David has the names and addresses of his three deceased companions, he decides to pay his condolences to the families-perhaps to give them comfort as he was the last person to interact with them while they were alive.
The film becomes a series of three vignettes as David calls on each family. The first one involves the wife of Dr. Fortness, Claire (Beatrice Straight) and his teenage son Jerry (Ted Donaldson).
David ends up as sort of a great mediator here, patching up a deep conflict between Claire and Jerry. The son has run off after learning of the death of his father and it's David who finds the troubled teenager and returns him to his mother.
It appears the reason for the estrangement is that Jerry blames his mother for the father's troubles and deciding to go on the fateful plane trip. But after David tells Jerry about his father's role in the fatal accident and subsequent coverup he learns an important lesson about not making assumptions about people without understanding their true motivations.
The second vignette occurs when David calls upon Binky's mother-in-law Sally Carr (Evelyn Vardon), an aging former vaudevillian who also makes unwarranted assumptions-this time garnering the wrong impression that Binky was some kind of gold digger, determined to claim the inheritance of her small nightclub and wrest control of it away from husband Mike (Craig Stevens) after her death.
Sally's maudlin recap of Binky's behavior is presented comically coupled with David's, whose own tale (also told as a flashback) presents Binky successfully auditioning for Rodgers and Hammerstein and (laughably) requesting that the Broadway writers should consider Sally for a part.
David tells this false narrative as a way of sticking up for Binky because he knows the mother-in-law will never give up any of her false assumptions about her daughter-in-law. All David can do is comfort Mike with the fact that she was returning to reconcile with her husband before her tragic death.
The third vignette turns out to be the most surprising of all. Eddie, who had showed that early "cheesecake" photo of wife Marie (Bette Davis) to David and the other now deceased "Musketeers" at the airport, discovers she's an invalid when he visits her.
Now it's David's turn to learn an important "life lesson" from Marie of all people who had left Eddie to engage in an extramarital affair years ago (just like David's wife had done).
After Marie's accident in which she sustained a brain injury, the new boyfriend left her, but it was Eddie-the annoying guy on the plane who everyone thought was an obnoxious loudmouth-returned to care for Marie and forgave her for her indiscretion.
In perhaps the most predictable moment in the film, David calls his wife and informs her that he is returning to her and his two daughters.
There are a few morals to be learned in this unusual tale: "never judge a book by its cover" and "to err is human to forgive is divine."
Despite the lugubrious exposition and some occasional sentimentality, Phone Call from a Stranger certainly is worth a look. The performers all do a fine job in this tale of important life lessons.
Merrill plays an attorney from Iowa David Trask who has just separated from his wife after learning she had an extramarital affair. He's in an airport restaurant before flying to Los Angeles where three strangers end up seated at his table and have coffee together.
The offbeat plot develops as we're introduced to the strangers: an aspiring actress Binky Gay (Shelley Winters), Robert Fortness (Michael Rennie), an alcoholic physician and the loudmouth traveling salesman Eddie Hoke (Keenan Wynn).
Binky is seated next to David who tries to calm her down as this is her first flight and there's a great deal of turbulence. Binky reveals she had a failed audition in New York City for a part in South Pacific.
Due to a storm, the plane lands in Vega, Texas where the four agree to exchange phone numbers and addresses. One wonders at this juncture what is the point of all this exposition about the characters-nothing much has happened.
During the layover however, David gets to know the doctor much better who confesses (in a flashback) the reason for his habitual drinking. Shockingly, he was involved in a DWI in which he was speeding and responsible for the death of his doctor pal and two others who he slammed into.
To make matters worse, he lied to the DA handling the accident that it was his friend who was behind the wheel with his wife providing a deceitful alibi. Wracked with guilt for years, he now plans to turn himself in and confess that he was responsible for the accident.
The next turn of events is far more shattering. The plane crashes and David's three companions are all killed-he is the lone survivor among the group.
So, for 1952 I found this plot reversal to be shocking-it's not the usual happenstance to introduce characters and then kill them off midway through the film.
As I was watching I was wondering where does the narrative go from here? Since David has the names and addresses of his three deceased companions, he decides to pay his condolences to the families-perhaps to give them comfort as he was the last person to interact with them while they were alive.
The film becomes a series of three vignettes as David calls on each family. The first one involves the wife of Dr. Fortness, Claire (Beatrice Straight) and his teenage son Jerry (Ted Donaldson).
David ends up as sort of a great mediator here, patching up a deep conflict between Claire and Jerry. The son has run off after learning of the death of his father and it's David who finds the troubled teenager and returns him to his mother.
It appears the reason for the estrangement is that Jerry blames his mother for the father's troubles and deciding to go on the fateful plane trip. But after David tells Jerry about his father's role in the fatal accident and subsequent coverup he learns an important lesson about not making assumptions about people without understanding their true motivations.
The second vignette occurs when David calls upon Binky's mother-in-law Sally Carr (Evelyn Vardon), an aging former vaudevillian who also makes unwarranted assumptions-this time garnering the wrong impression that Binky was some kind of gold digger, determined to claim the inheritance of her small nightclub and wrest control of it away from husband Mike (Craig Stevens) after her death.
Sally's maudlin recap of Binky's behavior is presented comically coupled with David's, whose own tale (also told as a flashback) presents Binky successfully auditioning for Rodgers and Hammerstein and (laughably) requesting that the Broadway writers should consider Sally for a part.
David tells this false narrative as a way of sticking up for Binky because he knows the mother-in-law will never give up any of her false assumptions about her daughter-in-law. All David can do is comfort Mike with the fact that she was returning to reconcile with her husband before her tragic death.
The third vignette turns out to be the most surprising of all. Eddie, who had showed that early "cheesecake" photo of wife Marie (Bette Davis) to David and the other now deceased "Musketeers" at the airport, discovers she's an invalid when he visits her.
Now it's David's turn to learn an important "life lesson" from Marie of all people who had left Eddie to engage in an extramarital affair years ago (just like David's wife had done).
After Marie's accident in which she sustained a brain injury, the new boyfriend left her, but it was Eddie-the annoying guy on the plane who everyone thought was an obnoxious loudmouth-returned to care for Marie and forgave her for her indiscretion.
In perhaps the most predictable moment in the film, David calls his wife and informs her that he is returning to her and his two daughters.
There are a few morals to be learned in this unusual tale: "never judge a book by its cover" and "to err is human to forgive is divine."
Despite the lugubrious exposition and some occasional sentimentality, Phone Call from a Stranger certainly is worth a look. The performers all do a fine job in this tale of important life lessons.