Sorry, Wrong Number

Sorry, Wrong Number is a 1948 film starring Barbara Stanwyck as the rich and spoiled invalid wife of Burt Lancaster. Alone at home, she overhears a phone call which seems to be about a murder plot. It’s a classic set-up and I enjoyed the movie, which is dark both in photography and plot.

The ‘overheard conversation’ is a staple of a good many crime stories, one example being Philip Macdonald’s The Nursemaid Who Disappeared, which predates Lucille Fletcher’s very successful radio play on which the film is based. In the movie, the main story is told through a series of flashbacks, but this doesn’t stop the tension mounting, thanks to Stanwyck’s performance, at her highly-strung best.

The story involves a fraudulent scheme featuring a dodgy guy called Morano – played by William Conrad, who later played Frank Cannon, the rather obese TV gumshoe. Lancaster is in moody, and pretty effective, form, but the film belongs to Stanwyck.

Fletcher turned her story into a novel, and she wrote a number of others, none of which I’ve read. As an aspiring radio writer, she met a young composer, who became her first husband. His name was Bernard Herrmann, and he became one of the best composers for crime films of all time. But his great scores for Hitchcock came after the marriage ended.

Versatility

When I reviewed recently, for that splendid site Tangled Web UK, Michael Gilbert’s The Murder of Diana Devon, I reflected – not for the first time – on Gilbert’s remarkable versatility. That volume alone includes short stories, magazine competition puzzles, radio plays and a poem. Gilbert’s novels were many and various, and he also wrote for television, as well as creating four stage plays. He even found time to build a successful legal practice, his clients including Raymond Chandler.

There are some other writers of roughly comparable versatility. Francis Durbridge is a name that springs to mind. He achieved great success with his Paul Temple stories on the radio, and his television serials were hugely popular in their day (I’ve posted previously about my admiration for Bat out of Hell in particular.) He wrote numerous plays which had outings in the West End, and he was a prolific novelist – although oddly, I’d suggest, his novels tended to be less effective than his other work, because dialogue was his forte and characterisation and setting mattered much less to him.

Then there was Nigel Balchin, a fine novelist, who also wrote for stage and television, and had considerable success in the film world. He adapted Philip Macdonald’s The Nursemaid Who Disappeared for the silver screen, and arguably improved upon it. He even wrote, as I discovered recently, what Clive James describes as ‘the ur-text’ for Cleopatra.

But how many writers of today (especially in Britain) demonstrate comparable versatility? I’d love to write for radio, tv, film and stage, but unfortunately, I can’t see it happening in the near future. Producing novels and short stories is challenge enough (though I have bought a book on screenwriting, so who knows?). Has writing become more specialised – or am I simply overlooking the achievements of some great all-rounders of the present day?

Forgotten Book - The Nursemaid who Disappeared

Philip Macdonald is a crime writer whose career spanned from the Golden Age to the post-war era, from 1920s London to Hollywood. He wrote some remarkable, if often slapdash, mysteries, and his gift for plot and suspense can be seen in his work on the brilliant screenplays for Rebecca and Forbidden Planet.

I could choose any one of a dozen Macdonald titles for my latest entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books, but today I’ve opted for The Nursemaid who Disappeared – also known as Warrant for X.

Sheldon Garrett overhears two people in a teashop, apparently planning a serious crime. Scotland Yard are not interested, so he approached Macdonald’s regular amateur sleuth, Anthony Gethryn, who uncovers a dastardly kidnapping plot.

It’s a lively thriller, rather than a conventional whodunit like the early Gethryns. The story was rather well filmed in 1956 (with Van Johnson as a blind protagonist) as 23 Paces to Baker Street. The movie had a much-changed story – and no Gethryn. Oddly, the screenplay was not written by Macdonald but by the even more accomplished Nigel Balchin. Balchin was a writer so fascinating that he deserves a post to himself one day. Maybe more than one.