Phone Call from a Stranger
Encyclopedia
Phone Call from a Stranger is a 1952 American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Jean Negulesco
Jean Negulesco
Jean Negulesco was a Romanian-born American film director and screenwriter....

, who was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

. The screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune...

 and I.A.R. Wylie
Ida Alexa Ross Wylie
Ida Alexa Ross Wylie, also Ida Alena Ross Wylie, born 16 March 1885 in Melbourne, died 4 November 1959 in Princeton, New Jersey, usually known by her pen name I. A. R...

, which received the award for Best Scenario at the same festival, centers on the survivor of a plane crash who contacts the relatives of three of the victims he came to know on board the flight.

Plot

After his wife Jane admits to an extramarital affair, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

 attorney Daniel Trask abandons her and their daughters and heads for Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. His flight is delayed, and while waiting in the airport
Airport
An airport is a location where aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and blimps take off and land. Aircraft may be stored or maintained at an airport...

 restaurant he meets a few of his fellow passengers: troubled, alcoholic Dr. Robert Fortness, haunted by his responsibility for a car accident in which a colleague was killed, is returning home to his wife Claire and teenaged son Jerry, and plans to tell the district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...

 the truth about the incident; aspiring actress Binky Gay, who is hoping to free her husband Mike from the clutches of his domineering mother, former vaudevillian
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 Sallie Carr; and overly loud traveling salesman Eddie Hoke, whose photograph of his young, attractive wife Marie wearing a swimsuit proves to be quite different from reality. When a storm forces the plane to land en route, they continue to share their life stories via flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...

s during the unexpected four-hour layover. They exchange home phone numbers with the idea they may one day have a reunion.

Following a crash that kills his three acquaintances, Trask contacts their families by phone and invites himself to their homes. Despite Claire's objections, Trask tells Jerry the truth about his father's past, but assures him he was a good man determined to right the wrong he had committed. Hoping to change Sallie's opinion of her daughter-in-law, he tells her Binky had been cast as Mary Martin
Mary Martin
Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...

's replacement in South Pacific
South Pacific (musical)
South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...

on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 and had recommended Sallie for a role. Trask's final visit is to Marie, who he discovers is an invalid paralyzed
Paralysis
Paralysis is loss of muscle function for one or more muscles. Paralysis can be accompanied by a loss of feeling in the affected area if there is sensory damage as well as motor. A study conducted by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, suggests that about 1 in 50 people have been diagnosed...

 from the waist down. Marie reveals that early in her marriage she had left Eddie, who she found to be vulgar and tiresome, for another man, who deserted her after she hit her head on a dock while she was swimming. While in the hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

, she was confined to an iron lung
Iron lung
A negative pressure ventilator is a form of medical ventilator that enables a person to breathe when normal muscle control has been lost or the work of breathing exceeds the person's ability....

 and feeling hopeless about her future when Eddie arrived to take her home. Marie tells Trask that despite his often obnoxious behavior, Eddie was the most decent man she had ever known, and had taught her the true meaning of love.

Marie's story teaches Trask a lesson about marital infidelity and forgiveness, and he calls Jane to tell her he's returning home.

Cast

  • Gary Merrill
    Gary Merrill
    Gary Fred Merrill was an American film and television character actor whose credits included more than fifty feature films, a half-dozen mostly short-lived TV series, and dozens of television guest appearances....

     as David Trask
  • Shelley Winters
    Shelley Winters
    Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...

     as Binky Gay
  • Michael Rennie
    Michael Rennie
    Michael Rennie was an English film, television, and stage actor, perhaps best known for his starring role as the space visitor Klaatu in the 1951 classic science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still. However, he appeared in over 50 other films since 1936, many with Jean Simmons and other...

     as Dr. Robert Fortness
  • Keenan Wynn
    Keenan Wynn
    Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his film and TV parts....

     as Eddie Hoke
  • Evelyn Varden
    Evelyn Varden
    Evelyn Varden was an American actress.Evelyn Varden had a long and distinguished career on Broadway despite starring in the ill-fated Return Engagement by Lawrence Riley...

     as Sallie Carr
  • Warren Stevens
    Warren Stevens
    Warren Stevens is an American stage, screen, and television actor.Born in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, Stevens began his acting career after serving in the U.S. Army Air Force as a pilot during World War II. He trained at The Actor's Studio in New York, received notice on Broadway, and thereafter...

     as Marty Nelson
  • Beatrice Straight
    Beatrice Straight
    Beatrice Whitney Straight was an American theatre, film, and television actress. Hers remains the shortest acting performance in a film to win an Oscar. In her winning role in the 1976 film Network, she was on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, the shortest time ever for the winner of the...

     as Claire Fortness
  • Ted Donaldson
    Ted Donaldson
    Ted Donaldson is an American former child actor.-Career:He appeared in twenty films, starting with a starring role as Arthur "Pinky" Thompson in Once Upon a Time , opposite Cary Grant and Janet Blair, and as Barry in Mr. Winkle Goes to War with Edward G...

     as Jerry Fortness
  • Craig Stevens
    Craig Stevens (actor)
    Craig Stevens was an American motion picture and television actor.-Early and personal life:Born Gail Shikles, Jr., in Liberty, Missouri, his father was a high school teacher....

     as Mike Carr
  • Bette Davis
    Bette Davis
    Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

     as Marie Hoke
  • Helen Westcott
    Helen Westcott
    Helen Westcott was an American stage and screen actor and former child actor....

     as Jane Trask

Production

When Gary Merrill's wife Bette Davis read the script, she suggested he ask director Negulesco if she could play the relatively small role of Marie Hoke, feeling "it would be a change of pace for me. I believed in the part more than its length. I have never understood why stars should object to playing smaller parts if they were good ones. Marie Hoke was such a part."

The film was the third on-screen pairing of Merrill and Davis, following All About Eve
All About Eve
All About Eve is a 1950 American drama film written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, based on the 1946 short story "The Wisdom of Eve", by Mary Orr.The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star...

(1950) and Another Man's Poison
Another Man's Poison
Another Man's Poison is a 1951 British drama film directed by Irving Rapper. The screenplay by Val Guest is based on the play Intent to Murder by Leslie Sands.-Plot:...

(1951).

Producer-screenwriter Johnson originally wanted to cast Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...

 as Binky Gay, but she was unavailable.

Broadway actress Beatrice Straight
Beatrice Straight
Beatrice Whitney Straight was an American theatre, film, and television actress. Hers remains the shortest acting performance in a film to win an Oscar. In her winning role in the 1976 film Network, she was on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, the shortest time ever for the winner of the...

 made her screen debut in this film.

Merrill and Winters reprised their roles for a Lux Radio Theatre presentation of the story on January 5, 1953. Footage from the film featuring Merrill and Davis was integrated with new material performed by Merrill and Jesse White
Jesse White
Jesse White may refer to:*Jesse White , film and television actor*Jesse White , Illinois politician*Jesse J. White, member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives*Jesco White, the West Virginia "Dancing Outlaw"...

 as Eddie Hoke in Crack Up, an hour-long television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 adaptation broadcast on the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 anthology series The 20th Century Fox Hour
The 20th Century Fox Hour
The 20th Century Fox Hour is an American drama anthology series televised in the United States on CBS from 1955 to 1957. Some of the shows in this series were restored, remastered and shown on the Fox Movie Channel in 2002 under the title Hour of Stars...

in February 1956.

Critical reception

In his New York Times review, Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 said, "So slick, indeed, is the whole thing — so smooth and efficiently contrived to fit and run with the precision of a beautifully made machine — that it very soon gives the impression of being wholly mechanical, picked up from a story-teller's blueprints rather than from the scroll of life . . . that is the nature of the picture — mechanically intriguing but unreal."

Time Out London calls it "a decent, but hardly outstanding dramatic compendium."
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