Phone Call from a Stranger (1952) is Back! Catch It before the KK Catch It Again! Gary Merrill. Shelley Winters. Nunnally Johnson. Jean Negulesco.

By N.S.

@InBoccaChiusa

“Phone Call from a Stranger is a 1952 American film noir drama film directed by Jean Negulesco from a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the 1950 novelette of the same name by I.A.R. Wylie. The film centers on the survivor of an aircraft crash who contacts the relatives of three of the victims he came to know on board the flight.

“The story employs flashbacks to relive the three characters’ pasts.

“At the 13th Venice International Film Festival, the film earned Negulesco a nomination for the Golden Lion, while Johnson was nominated for the Golden Osella for Best Original Screenplay.

“Merrill and Winters reprised their roles for a Lux Radio Theatre presentation of the story on January 5, 1953.

[Edited by N.S.]: At the time, Bette Davis was married to Gary Merrill. When 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.”

“Bette Davis was a great actress and a true star."

N.S.: She was the greatest movie actress of them all.

Note, too, that this picture was scripted by Nunnally Johnson, one of the greatest screenwriters (The Grapes of Wrath (1940); The Woman in the Window (1944); The Gunfighter (1950); The Desert Fox (1951); How to Marry a Millionaire (1953); The Three Faces of Eve (1957); The Dirty Dozen (1967); etc.) of them all.

Just take a gander at the man’s credits—they’re breathtaking!

In a business of scriptwriting teams, Johnson typically flew solo. But what do I know? And Nunnally Johnson’s place on the Top 100 screenwriters list of the new york magazine kultural kommissars? Nowhere. According to the commissars, Johnson was a nothing, in contrast to geniuses like Spike Lee (#15).