Leona Stevenson is confined to bed and uses her telephone to keep in contact with the outside world. One day she overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is desperate to find out who is the intended victim.
Acting
Stanwyck's hysteria builds like a pressure cooker.
Direction
Split screens that turn a bedroom into a trap.
Sound
That rotary dial becomes the most menacing prop.
Director
Anatole Litvak
Barbara Stanwyck
Leona Cotterell Stevenson
Burt Lancaster
Henry Stevenson
Ann Richards
Sally Hunt Lord
Wendell Corey
Dr. Philip Alexander
Harold Vermilyea
Waldo Evans
Ed Begley
James 'J.B.' Cotterell
Leif Erickson
Fred Lord
William Conrad
Morano
John Bromfield
Joe (Detective)
Jimmy Hunt
Peter Lord
Dorothy Neumann
Elizabeth Jennings
Paul Fierro
Harpootlian
Joyce Compton
Cotterell's Blonde Girlfriend (uncredited)
Yola d'Avril
Leona's Maid (uncredited)
Holmes Herbert
Wilkins (uncredited)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Barbara Stanwyck performed this live on radio six times before filming; the movie's single-set bedroom scenes were shot in 14 days.
This rarity — a noir centered on a disabled woman — weaponized 1940s anxieties about telephone party lines and female isolation.
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