Passacaglia (for orchestra) (1948)
(Sorry, Wrong Number)

The Hal B. Wallis/Anatole Litvak production of Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), based on Lucille Fletcher’s radio play, was the first of Franz Waxman’s scores for Paramount Pictures and continued his association with producer Wallis (Come Back, Little Sheba).

Barbara Stanwyck’s outstanding tour de force lost the Best Actress Oscar to Jane Wyman’s role in Johnny Belinda. Other memorable performances included Burt Lancaster, Wendell Cory, Ed Begley, Leif Erickson and William Conrad.

The noted musicologist Christopher Palmer has written in his book “The Composer in Hollywood”:

The finale of Sorry, Wrong Number finds Stanwyck alone, terrified, helpless (she is bedridden) and awaiting her nemesis, the men who are coming to murder her. Waxman’s Passacaglia conveys both a mounting tension and sense approaching horror with a directness and insistence that no other musical form could rival. In the long-prepared climax, the passacaglia theme, riding the full orchestra, synchronizes with the footsteps approaching the door, and everything, including Stanwyck’s demented scream, is lost in the roar of the overhead railway. It is one of the most frightening moments in film music.

In 2014 the music was tracked into the film Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.