OVP: Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Film: Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey

Director: Anatole Litvak

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Barbara Stanwyck)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Barbara Stanwyck is arguably the greatest actress of Classical Hollywood to never win a competitive Academy Award.  Stanwyck would win an Honorary Oscar in 1982, giving a memorable speech paying tribute to William Holden (if you want to ever feel really angry about why we should have the Governor's Awards on with the primetime broadcast, go watch her speech and try not to cry).  But the actress never won a competitive award, despite repeated attempts.  Arguably the closest she got was 1944's Double Indemnity, where she would've won under normal circumstances but Ingrid Bergman's turn in Gaslight a year after she lost a close race to Jennifer Jones was too hard to best.  Today we're going to take a look at the last of Stanwyck's four Oscar nominations, arguably for the film least-remembered of those for which she was cited, the late 40's noir Sorry, Wrong Number.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film principally takes place through flashback (at one point there's literally a flashback within flashback!), and is about Leona Stevenson (Stanwyck), a spoiled, bitter socialite who is prone to bouts of sickness, especially whenever her husband Henry (Lancaster) is trying to do something she doesn't want him to do.  We find out through the flashbacks that Leona married Henry against her father's wishes, and in trying to prove himself more than a trophy boy, Henry has gotten involved in an illegal drug trafficking business, and the only way to pay down his debt is essentially to trade on his wife's life insurance policy.  A hit is put out on Leona, but before it's executed, the man Henry owes the money to is arrested, seemingly ending the debt.  However, Henry cannot get to Leona in time...the final moments of the movie are of her, her hypochondria so crippling she can't call out for help, being murdered while Henry desperately tries to stop the murder on the phone.  The film's last line is the killer proclaiming "sorry, wrong number" as Henry realizes he's too late, and his wife is dead.

The ending is really what makes Sorry, Wrong Number.  The rest of the movie is too much-the flashbacks are overwhelming, the Hays Code makes the storyline about Henry's involvement with drug traffickers confusing (which I'm honestly surprised got included at all given the sensitivities at the time), and Stanwyck is bedridden for much of the performance, acting against herself to mixed returns.  But the ending works really well.  You don't expect it-even though both Lancaster & Stanwyck are terrible people, they're also two of the biggest stars of the era-it's rare that you witness a movie where one of them dies onscreen.  The finale honestly gets me the thumbs up-it wasn't headed that direction otherwise, so I'l go with 3-stars.

In terms of if Stanwyck deserved to win the Oscar, I'll let you know in a performance or two.  This is the least of Stanwyck's Oscar-nominated roles, both in terms of films & performance, but she is good in it.  It's lacking some of the killer verve you expect from Stanwyck, who generally played an actress totally in control of her surroundings.  That said, 1948 is both a brilliant year for movies (possibly my favorite year of the 1940's, give or take 1944) and one where Oscar largely botched its lineup.  I still haven't seen Irene Dunne or Olivia de Havilland from that lineup (the latter generally considered by my friends-in-the-know to be the best of these five performances), but against Wyman & Bergman...yeah, Stanwyck's currently in the lead.