Repeat Performance

Radio networks usually operate on the worthy theory that practically nothing on the air is worth hearing twice. But last week, CBS for the fourth time in two years scheduled a tense 30-minute drama, Sorry, Wrong Number, starring Agnes Moorehead (CBS, Thurs., Sept. 6, 8-8:30 p.m., E.W.T.). CBS says it has had thousands of requests for this repeat. Repeat or no, it is radio's best half hour of thrills & chills.

The story:

A nervous, high-strung, bedridden woman (Agnes Moorehead), alone in her Manhattan apartment, keeps phoning her husband at his office, gets nothing but a busy signal. She finally persuades the operator to dial the number for her, is cut in on a conversation between two men making plans for murder. Cut off, she calls the police, who listen to her frantic tale with half an ear and hang up. After a good deal of hysterical hocuspocus, she decides that the two men had been hired by her husband to kill her.

She tries to get the police again, hears the killers in the house. Listeners suddenly hear a shrill, terrifying scream. Then a second of complete silence--so intense that it can almost be heard. Finally, the police get through on the phone, and a killer, having done his job, answers: "Sorry, wrong number."

One of Hollywood's best movie bitches (Since You Went Away), a veteran of Orson Welles's Mercury Theater and radio's MARCH OF TIME, chic, redhaired, fortyish Miss Moorehead has perfect timing, can control her voice as expertly as a radio engineer can control sound. Before going on the air with Sorry, she never takes a peek at the script, feels it would unnerve her. She acts the part without an audience; during the half hour (which is almost a monologue) wears herself to a frazzle.

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