30 pages • 1 hour read
Lucille FletcherSorry, Wrong Number
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1943A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Lucille Fletcher
Lucille Fletcher (1912-2000) was an American writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, whose work spanned the mediums of film, radio, and television. Earlier in her career, she worked at CBS in the publicity department, where she met and later married CBS composer-conductor, Bernard Herrmann. She was also a freelance writer, and began her writing career by writing short stories, several of which were published in The New Yorker. Her short story “My Client Curley” was adapted into a radio play by Norman Corwin and aired in 1940. Four years later, the script inspired a film starring Cary Grant: Once Upon a time.
Fletcher is most well-known for her contributions to the suspense genre, particularly in radio drama. Sorry, Wrong Number is one of her most acclaimed works, earning praise from film legends such as Orson Welles, and later inspiring a feature-length film starring Barbara Stanwyck. The play was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2015 for its cultural and historical significance to American art. Her script for The Hitch-Hiker was also well-received by audiences and critics alike. It was aired in 1941 as a radio drama on The Orson Welles Show, and scored by Herrmann; the script later became the inspiration for one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone television series in 1960.
Fletcher wrote the first half of the libretto to Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights opera, beginning the project in 1943. Fletcher and Herrmann later divorced in 1948 after Herrmann had an affair with Kathy Lucille Anderson, Fletcher’s cousin. Wuthering Heights was finished without Fletcher’s help in 1951, but was never produced during Herrmann’s lifetime.
Fletcher, who had two daughters with Herrmann (Wendy and Dorothy) remarried in 1949 to Douglass Wallop, who was also a writer. On August 31, 2000, Lucille Fletcher died of a stroke at the age of 88.
Cultural Context: Fletcher’s Impact on the Suspense Genre and Modern Mystery Radio
Lucille Fletcher made several stylistic and tonal choices in Sorry, Wrong Number that continue to influence the suspense genre today. The first of these choices is centering a story on a protagonist who is incapable of leaving their home, usually due to a physical disability or injury, mental illness, or some combination of the two. In this play, Mrs. Stevenson is unable to leave her home because of an unspecified health condition, experiences anxiety, and must remain in bed. Fletcher uses Mrs. Stevenson’s health both to emphasize her vulnerability to her husband’s plan, and to motivate her plot, and Mrs. Stevenson pursues safety through the means that are available to her. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window starred Jimmy Stewart as a journalist who broke his leg and must spend weeks at home in a wheelchair to recover. He begins to spy on his neighbors and witnesses what turns out to be a murder. Anna Fox in the 2021 film The Woman in the Window is an agoraphobic character, who likewise is unable to leave her home, and witnesses an act of violence in her neighbor’s house. These are just two examples of this suspense genre character type, but it continues to be a tried-and-true protagonist for suspense writers today. The use of disability to increase suspense and raise dramatic stakes is problematic, though writers have addressed this ableist dynamic both successfully and disastrously throughout the history of the genre. Fletcher’s work exists in the tradition of stories like Charlotte Perkins’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), in which a woman is confined to a room by her husband as she recovers from childbirth; instead of curing her, the forced rest causes a gradual worsening of her psychiatric symptoms. As Perkins sought to challenge patriarchal notions of hysteria, so Fletcher critiques the dismissal of another “hysterical” woman whose paranoia is revealed to be justified.
Another commonality between Sorry, Wrong Number’s Mrs. Stevenson and the numerous suspense protagonists that followed is the embracing of noir thriller genre tropes in suspense. Noir thrillers are categorized by their focus on a character who isn’t necessarily likeable or recognizably moral, and their unhappy endings (both of which are seen in this play). Fletcher’s protagonist is complicated: Readers aren’t sure whether or not to root for the entitled Mrs. Stevenson, but they can’t stop reading, watching, or listening to her as her experiences grow more mysterious and compelling. This kind of character is seen in media tenfold in today’s suspense stories. Often the female protagonist will have a mental illness or trauma that makes her irritable or socially awkward (Anna in The Woman in the Window), or she will experience substance abuse disorders (Rachel in The Girl on the Train (2015), Camille in Sharp Objects (2006). The ambiguous morality and complex personalities of these characters informs how they engage with the crimes they attempt to prevent or solve.
Lucille Fletcher first penned Sorry, Wrong Number as a radio play because she was drawn to the idea of a thriller that relies on sound, not image, to build suspense. In recent years, dramatized podcasts and audiobooks have risen in popularity, with one of the most beloved genres being true crime. These podcasts have circled back to their roots in radio drama, relying primarily on the soundscape they can create, hyper-realism to fully immerse the listeners, and well-written dialogue. Fletcher’s influence on radio drama only continues to grow as the genre has become more and more popular among the next generation of mystery lovers.
