SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (1948), directed by Anatole Litvak, stars the unforgettable Barbara Stanwyck as Leona Stevenson, the bed-ridden daughter whose father owns the largest drug company in the country, and Burt Lancaster who plays her husband Henry Stevenson, a handsome guy from the wrong side of the tracks with whom Leona falls madly in love at first sight.

Henry has a girlfriend, sally Lord (played by Australian actress Ann Richards) but the brazen Leona who never took a “no” from anyone in her life, manages to maneuver Henry to an eventual marriage by her force of sheer will and the millions she dangles in front of Henry’s eyes.

Henry, who automatically becomes a VP in her father’s company, leads a comfortable existence until the indignity of his servitude starts getting to him. To correct the situation and declare his own independence, Henry gets involved in a plot to siphon off his father-in-law’s riches with the aid of underworld characters and the company’s chief chemist.

However, when the bad guys are convinced that Henry is cheating them as well, they demand a payment of $200,000 (which probably translated to tens of millions of dollars back in 1948) to settle the score. The only way to get that kind of money seems to get his wife’s inheritance. But for that, the wife must die. And since the bad guys want the money within 90 days, that seals the crippled wife’s fate.

In the fantastic opening scene the crippled Leona, who is alone in bed at her palatial home in New York City, inadvertently eavesdrops to two men talking about murdering a woman at 11:15 p.m. as the train passes from the nearby tracks. She tries to alert the police and tries to get a nurse from the hospital, to no avail. At the end, despite the fact that the leader of the bad guys, Morano (played by a very youthful William Conrad) is caught, the juggernaut is on. A frantic and repentant Henry calls Leona on the road to Boston and confesses her everything but it’s too late.

After the scary final act worthy of any Hitchcock flick, Henry calls home again only to be answered by the hired killer himself who responds with the title of the movie: “Sorry, wrong number.”

An excellent film noir crime story with good acting and believable character motivations, told in too many flashbacks to count. A must see for all fans of crime movies and thrillers.

A 9 out of 10.
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