Based on Lucille Fletcher’s highly popular radio play, “Sorry, Wrong Number” was brought to the screen in 1948 by producer Hal B. Wallis and Paramount. The film was directed by Anatole Litvak and stars Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster. The original radio show featured Agnes Moorehead and was primarily a tense one woman dialogue for the complete twenty-two minute show. The program was so popular, Moorehead reprised her role several times over the years, but when Wallis and Paramount purchased the property, they decided Moorehead was not a big enough star for the lead role in the film. So here came Stanwyck who had just signed a contract with Wallis making this her first film under the new agreement.
To expand the original short radio script into a feature film, Lucille Fletcher “opened” up her original story which she accomplished by adding a series of flashbacks and even some flashbacks within flashbacks, expanding the role of the husband, played by Lancaster. Fletcher would also turn the screenplay into a novel the same year the movie was released.
Stanwyck is Leona Stevenson, the bed ridden wealthy invalid, neurotic to the core, with more pills on her end table than Pfizer Inc. produces in a month of Sundays. She is confined to her lavish bedroom apartment, overlooking the New York City skyline. One evening Leona, attempting to call her boy toy husband Henry, accidently due to crossed telephone lines, overhears two men discussing a murder plot. She calls the police, then her father and finally her doctor, but no one believes her. Continue reading
Hellinger, working with Richard Brooks, developed the story line beyond Hemingway’s original piece. Brooks came up with the ideal of centering the story on a determined insurance investigator checking into The Swede’s death. According to Lee Server in his biography “Ava Gardner Love is Nothing“ Brooks tracked down Hemingway and asked what happened afterward, Hemingway responded, “how the hell do I know.” The screenplay was written by John Huston and Anthony Veiller, though Veiller received, sole credit due to Huston’s being under contract with Warner Brothers. Reading the short story is like reading the first ten to fifteen minutes of the script except for a few minor changes. Wisely, the screenwriters kept most of Hemingway’s hard-boiled, wise-ass dialogue in tact. 
Burton Lancaster made his Broadway debut (it was his first and last Broadway appearance) as Sgt. Joe Mooney in a little known play called “A Sound of Hunting” which closed after only 23 performances. Also in the cast was Sam Levene who would play Lt. Sam Lubinsky in “The Killers.” Hollywood agents, always checking out plays for new talent, were in the audience and the buzz was a new star was in the making. Enter agent Harold Hecht who was in the audience one night and came back again and again. It was the beginning of a relationship that would last for years (Lancaster and Hecht along with James Hill would later on form one of the earliest independent producing teams responsible for works that include “Apache”, “Vera Cruz”, “Marty” and “Sweet Smell of Success.”).
At this point in her career, Ava Gardner had mostly small and uncredited roles in her résumé. She recently completed a lead role in a low budget potboiler called “Whistle Stop” with George Raft when MGM loaned her out to Universal for the role of the treacherous Kitty Collins. Gardner was not just gorgeous but managed to project a wicked lethal dose of seductive ruthlessness. The first time we see her, she is dressed in a slinky black gown standing by a piano singing. When The Swede enters the nightclub and spots her, as we do, for the first time he is captivated. Everyone else in the room, including the girl (Virginia Christine) he came with, is obliterated from his vision. It is an audience seducing moment. A weak man, falling under the spell of a duplicitous woman, and with Ava Gardner as the woman, you believed it. The role of Kitty Collins is not very large though it is central to the entire tale being told, and Lancaster and Gardner sizzle in their scenes together. When Ava Gardner went back to MGM, she went back a star. 
Edmond O’Brien who would become a staple in crime movies, appearing in “711 Ocean Drive”, “Brute Force”, “The Hitchhiker” and “D.O.A.,” played the determined insurance investigator, a character reminiscent, and mentioned by many others, of Barton Keyes, Edward G. Robinson’s character in Billy Wilder’s exemplary “Double Indemnity.” It is O’Brien’s character that links the multiple flashback sequences together, yet it is Lancaster’s Swede and Gardner’s Kitty Collins that are the guts of the film.
In 1964, Universal updated and remade “The Killers.” Directed by B-film action director, Don Siegel, who was once considered to direct the original. The remake is not nearly on the same level as the original though it is still a decent film. There are a couple of reasons that
At Choy’s bar, a drunken Maggio gets into another mix with Fatso, who pulls out a switchblade. Walden, who is watching, breaks a beer bottle in half and steps in between the two. He tells Fatso, if he wants a fight, fight with him. Fatso backs down, promising Maggio that someday he will get him, saying his type always end up in the stockade eventually. Prewitt and Lorene continue to see each other. She tells Prewitt her real name is 
Prewitt is forced into a fight with one of the Sergeants from the boxing team. A group of soldiers gathers to watch, including Captain Holmes, who does nothing to stop the fight until the Sergeant starts losing. Senior officers have been watching from afar wondering why Holmes is not stopping the fight. A few nights later, Walden and Prewitt are sitting on the side of a road drunk when Maggio, badly beaten up, appears. He escaped from the stockade not being able to take Fatso’s brutal beatings anymore. Maggio dies in Prews arms. The following night, Prewitt looks for Fatso and finds him coming of out the New Congress Club. Switchblades are drawn and Prewitt knifes Fatso to death however, Prewitt has been stabbed badly too. Wounded he makes his way to Lorene’s apartment where he remains as he recuperates. Walden covers up for Prewitt’s AWOL for the next few days. Meanwhile, Karen asks Walden if he submitted his application for officer training and he tells her he did not. On the eve of December 7th, they split up realizing their dreams of a life together could only be a fantasy.
