Topical Guide 418
Mark Dorset
Movies, Films, Cinema
Drama: Radio
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 1:
In the bar there is an old neon-encircled clock, and conspicuously atop the little lighted table where the reservation book is kept sits an old telephone, with no dial …
“Look at that,” Matthew says, “that old phone. We had one like that when I was a kid.”
“A classic,” says Belinda. “That odd matte finish they had. It always seemed worn-looking, as if it had once been shiny, but the polish had worn off. It was almost porous — probably absorbed the sweat from people’s hands. Those phones give me the creeps, really. They always remind me of Dial M for Murder.”
Matthew doesn’t point out that this phone has no dial. Since shortly after Liz left he has been trying to keep himself from correcting people.
“Yeah,” he says. “Or Sorry, Wrong Number. There is something sinister about those phones, isn’t there? …”
Dial M for Murder is a 1954 American crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, and John Williams. Both the screenplay and the successful stage play on which it was based were written by English playwright Frederick Knott. The play premiered in 1952 on BBC Television, before being performed on stage in the same year in London’s West End in June, and then New York’s Broadway in October.
Sorry, Wrong Number is a 1948 American thriller film noir directed by Anatole Litvak, from a screenplay by Lucille Fletcher, based on her 1943 radio play of the same name. The film stars Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster. It follows a bedridden woman, who overhears the plot of murder. While on the telephone, she attempts to help her husband solve the mystery and prevent the crime. Stanwyck was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. …
Lucille Fletcher's play originally aired on the Suspense radio program on May 25, 1943, essentially a one-woman show with Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Stevenson. …
The play was reprised seven times (on August 21, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1948, 1952, 1957 and 1960). The final broadcast was on February 14, 1960. Orson Welles called Sorry, Wrong Number “the greatest single radio script ever written.” In 2015, the broadcast was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.
Foreshadowing
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 1:
“Something very film noir. …”
See also: Literature and Art: Responding to, Engaging with, Interpreting TG 101; Literature, Juvenile: Primers TG 111; Literature: Children’s TG 115; Literature, Drama, Theater: King Lear TG 134; Literature: Bowdlerization of, Simplification of, Trivialization of, Infantilization of TG 136; Literature: Interpretation of TG 137; Literature: Books: Moby-Dick TG 48; Literature: Drama: King Lear TG 139; Lines Consisting of a Single Word Repeated Five Times TG 147; Literature: Responding to: Sharing the Experience TG 367
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