Lucille Fletcher

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Lucille Fletcher (March 28, 1912 — 31 August 2000) was a film and television screenwriter. Her full name was Violet Lucille Fletcher. Her credits include the story "The Hitchhiker", which was later turned into a radio drama by Orson Welles and a memorable Twilight Zone episode called "The Hitch-Hiker". Fletcher also wrote the screenplay for the film noir suspense thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, which was an expanded version of her 30-minute radio drama script.

Fletcher was born in Brooklyn in 1912 to parents Matthew and Violet Fletcher. She attended Vassar College, where she earned a degree in 1933. After graduation, she got a clerical job at CBS, where she met her future husband, composer Bernard Herrmann. The couple dated for five years, but delayed marriage due to her parents' objections, owing to Herrmann's abrasive personality and the fact that he was a Jew. They finally married on October 2nd, 1939. Fletcher and Herrmann collaborated on several projects. He wrote the score for the Campbell Playhouse adaptation of her famous story "The Hitch-Hiker," and she helped write the libretto for his operatic adaptation of "Wuthering Heights." The couple divorced in 1948. She later married Douglass Wallop, and they remained married until his death in 1985.

As Lucille once explained in an interview, Sorry, Wrong Number was partially inspired by an incident from someone else's life. While Herrmann was sick at home, Lucille went down to the corner drug store for medicine. Innocently striking up a conversation with her pharmacist, a longtime friend, she raised the ire of an elderly woman who had apparently been waiting first. The woman interrupted and approached the druggist, complaining about poor service and demanding to "know who this interloper is?!", referring to Fletcher. Ms. Fletcher, finding the woman's shrill voice and demeanor particularly irritating, went home with the intention of writing a script based around a character with those traits who becomes embroiled in a precarious situation.

The radio drama premiered in 1943 and became one of the most legendary radio plays of all time. Agnes Moorehead created the role in the first performance and again in several later radio productions. Barbara Stanwyck starred in the 1948 film version and, in 1952, performed the original radio play over the airwaves. A 1959 version produced for the CBS radio series Suspense received a 1960 Edgar Award for Best Radio Drama.