Stanwyck's Final Oscar Nom was for "Sorry, Wrong Number" 1948

The set up for "Sorry, Wrong Number"...

Ann Mah-gwit, you were superb in Who Will Love My Children.

I like Agnes Morrehead in the radio version (although she did several, and they're not all equal). Stanwyck is a favorite of mine but she's kind of hard to take in this one, for me.

Hardcore Stanwyck fans: she had a smaller role in Executive Suite 1954 and played hysterical scorned woman-good and she looked good.

She never gave a bad performance. Immensely watchable in diverse roles.

She was even enjoyable on "Big Valley". We had five TV channels and Sunday morning we never missed the syndicated repeats.

Yes-I even loved her as Victoria Barkley.

OP, you thought Morehead was too shrill but you'd loved to have seen Geraldine Page in the role?

Moorehead could be a bit too shrill-Magnificent Ambersons-OMG!

I remember this film has a flashback within a flashback!

But I am grateful to have learned about the hag line at a dance.

I'd suck Burt's big cock and rim his ass, then let him ENTER me, right in front of that malingering old harpy of a wife!

Dan Callahan in his book on Stanwyck called The Miracle Woman is particularly critical of her performance in the film.

It becomes instantly clear just how wrong it is to see Leona in this first scene when we should really only be hearing her on the phone, on the radio, in the dark; Stanwyck has to make impossible physical transitions as a real woman in a real bed. What to do? She falls back on invalid cliches (panting, obsequious looks), and decisive body movements, but there's no emotional throughline to what she's doing. Litvak keeps moving the camera away from Stanwyck to look around the apartment so that she can just be a voice like Moorehead was, but he always has to come back to her, and nothing can hide the sketchiness of this character and this situation as visualized.

Yeah, that "robbed" Moorehead vs. movie star Stanwyck bit I wrote about. After about 10 minutes of Moorehead querulously berating various telephone operators, you're hoping the hitman comes early!

I loved this movie and the Murder, She Wrote homage "Crossed Up"!

Here's the first of many times Agnes Moorehead performed this radio play in 1943. I found it difficult to stick it out for the entire 30 minutes!

Then there's Loni Anderson in the '89 remake, "Sorry, Wrong Actress!"

No wonder that whore Leona was so determined to keep him!

I love how we’re supposed to believe that a 41 year old Barbara is a college coed. Still love her though.

One of my favorite pet peeves of classic movies is the mature star playing their young selves. It still happened later in "Rich and Famous" and "Beaches." At least Missy doesn't wear a pinafore like Ginger Rogers!

Shelley Winters appeared in a '50s TV version of "Sorry, Wrong Number." Who could have matched Shell's yowling cadences as her fed-up husband? Ernest Borgnine? Broderick Crawford? Ethel Merman in drag?

She had to have been the kvetchiest Leona *ever*, r20.

Shelley Winters made a career out of punching above her weight with hot guys

Agreed r22. Vittorio Gassman was super fine.

Every time I think about this movie I think it could never happen with a cellphone, and it becomes dated although I love love love Stanwyck. I could watch her make soap. Just a major fan. But this is a mystery for women and Stanwyck deserved a better role.

Regardless, her best performance was in "Double Indemnity."

didn't Caroll Baker do a TV version?

Stanwyck should have played the role of Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond (instead of that over rated clam digger, Kate).

She’d.have slapped the SHIT out of Jane and won her Oscar.

Many of her best roles were playing unsympathetic characters. And she refused to sign a long term contract with a major studio. It cost her a competitive Oscar.

Other actresses won Oscars without signing with mjor studios (Vivien Leigh, twice).

*major

I remember hearing Agnes Moorehead do Sorry, Wrong Number on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the '70s, when I was in high school. It was on at around 11pm and I used to listen to it in bed. (The show was hosted by E. G. Marshall, who always ended the broadcast with, "Pleasant....dreams?"

...yes, he did.)

my Grandad called him Eggfart Marshall

I never understood the love for this.

My first cat was a rescue cat. Her name was Bootsie Stanwyck.