Phone Call from a Stranger

A Midwestern lawyer named David Trask (Gary Merrill) leaves his wife. At the airport he buys a ticket for Los Angeles, but the only available flight is delayed. He calls his wife and tells her he can't forgive her and is going away to think. He ignores her pleas to come home and won't say where he is or where he is headed. Because of delays and an unscheduled stop due to weather, David, despite himself, befriends three other travelers: Binky Gay, a failed actress (Shelley Winters); Robert Fortness, an alcoholic doctor (Michael Rennie); and Eddie Hoke, a clownish traveling salesman (Keenan Wynn). Eddie shows off a photo of Marie, his wife, in a swimsuit, which puzzles his companions: They think Marie could do better than Eddie and think it odd that he shows her picture to other men. While talking to his companions individually, David learns from the doctor that he plans to confess to his culpability in a car accident in which he not only killed three people, but lied that his dead friend was driving. The doctor hires David for some legal advice. Binky tells David about her year in New York, trying to succeed on the stage to prove to Sally Carr, her mother-in-law, and something of a show-business legend, that Binky didn't marry Sally's son, Mike, to steal the glory of the Carr name. She dreads returning home, with nothing to show for her year away, and face more of Sally's abuse. Eddie persuades them to exchange names, addresses and phone numbers, and he insists that they all promise to meet again. After the plane crashes, and David is the only survivor of the four of them, he feels obligated to contact the family of each friend to help them deal with the tragedy. His first visit is to Dr. Fortness's family. He finds that he must not only help the wife but the teenage son who has run away from home. David locates the boy and brings him home. He then reveals what really happened the night of the accident, which the parents had kept from the son. The wife had perjured herself by backing up her husband's claim that he was not behind the wheel, but afterward she lost respect for him and their marriage suffered. The son had believed that his mother was being unfair to his father. David further tells them that Dr. Fortness fully intended to make things right by confessing what he had done. David tries to reach Binky's husband, Mike, at the club owned by his mother, Sally, but Sally gets in the way. She assumes that David is there to contest Mike's divorce proceeding against Binky. She won't let David explain that, as far as he knows, Binky never knew about the divorce, and she won't even stop talking long enough for him to tell her that Binky is dead. Sally paints herself as having been very kind and tolerant toward Binky, despite ongoing displays of her lack of either quality toward her underlings at the club. Finally, David tells her a tall tale about how successful her daughter-in-law was in New York and how Binky even told a Broadway producer that Sally would be perfect as Bloody Mary in the hit musical "South Pacific". Meanwhile, Mike has received the news that Binky died. Privately, David discusses the truth with Mike, who seems to agreeable to letting his mother think that Binky was a success a while longer. Finally, David visits Eddie's widow, Marie, whom he finds paralyzed and confined to her bed. He tries to tell her that Eddie was a great guy who was liked by everyone, but Marie will have none of it. She knows that nearly everyone thought Eddie was a bore and a clown, but she tells David that, years ago, she left Eddie for another man, but when she had the accident that left her paralyzed, the other man left her flat, and Eddie took her back. Marie says that Eddie was an exceptional man - "a rock". Despite what others thought of him, Eddie's willingness to forgive and love unconditionally set him above most other men. David is moved to call his wife and tell her that he forgives her and has decided to come home.