The phone line as plotline

A BABY-sitter is doing her homework in the living room of a big house while her two charges are asleep in the upstairs bedroom. The phone rings, breaking the silence like a piece of glass shattering. She picks up the phone and hears heavy breathing. Then an ominous voice asks: “Have you checked the children?” Click. The phone rings again.

Back in 1979, the low-budget thriller “When a Stranger Calls,” starring Carol Kane as the baby-sitter in distress and Charles Durning as a police detective, had audiences screaming with terror. And this Friday, a remake -- with cellphones, natch -- stars Camilla Belle (“The Ballad of Jack and Rose”) as the harassed baby-sitter.

Over the decades, the phone has played a major plot point in movies. There have been historical dramas surrounding the phone, thrillers, horror films, romantic comedies and even a musical number -- “The Telephone Song” in “Bye Bye Birdie.” And a moving, on-screen telephone conversation is even credited with clinching the 1937 best actress Oscar.

Here’s a look at some of the noteworthy phone films.

The historical epic

“The Story of Alexander Graham Bell”: Don Ameche played the inventor of the telephone in this glossy 1939 biopic that also starred Henry Fonda as Mr. Watson and Loretta Young as Bell’s hearing-impaired wife. The film was so popular that after its release the telephone was often called an “Ameche.” Barbara Stanwyck refers to the “Ameche” in the 1941 comedy “Ball of Fire.”

The Oscar winner

“The Great Ziegfeld”: Luise Rainer, the lithe German actress who was brought to Hollywood by MGM, received the first of her back-to-back best actress Oscars for her performance in the 1936 best picture winner about the life of famed showman Florenz Ziegfeld. Rainer played Ziegfeld’s first wife, the European entertainer Anna Held. When their marriage breaks up, Held calls Ziegfeld for a poignant goodbye. Hollywood lore has it that Rainer’s tearful “Hello, Flo” conversation nailed the Oscar.

Women in distress

“Sorry, Wrong Number”: Barbara Stanwyck received an Oscar nomination for her bone-tingling turn in this 1948 thriller about an unpleasant, bedridden invalid, the daughter of a millionaire, whose only connection to the outside world is her phone. One evening, she happens to overhear a crossed phone connection between two men who are plotting the demise of a woman. Eventually, she puts two and two together and realizes she’s the woman who is about to be murdered. But she can’t convince the police. Burt Lancaster plays the weak-willed husband who decides to get rid of his demanding wife.

“Sorry, Wrong Number” originated as a taut, 30-minute radio play by Lucille Fletcher. It premiered in 1943 on the classic anthology series “Suspense,” with Agnes Moorehead giving one of her finest performances as the invalid. The radio show was reprised seven times with Moorehead, the last broadcast being in 1960.

“The Slender Thread”: Sydney Pollack made his directorial debut with this earnest 1965 drama about an affluent Seattle housewife (Anne Bancroft) whose marital problems lead her to take several sleeping pills in an attempted suicide. But she does manage to call a suicide hotline and finds a warm, caring voice on the other end -- a volunteer (Sidney Poitier) who cajoles her into telling him her location.

“I Saw What You Did”: Fright meister William Castle directed this campy 1965 thriller about two teenage girls who decide one night to make prank phone calls to strangers whispering the phrase: “I saw what you did and I know who you are!” The only problem is that one of the people they call is a psychopath (John Ireland) who just murdered his wife. Joan Crawford plays the killer’s neighbor.

“Scream”: Wes Craven’s 1996 send-up of horror films, which spawned two sequels, opens with one of the scariest phone sequences put on film. Drew Barrymore plays Casey, a young woman alone in a house, who gets a phone call from a stranger. At first she thinks the call is a prank, but she begins to realize the caller is out for blood -- her blood. As she tells him to stop calling her, the creepy voice responds in a tone that sends shivers up the spine: “You hang up on me again, I’ll gut you like a fish, understand? Can you handle that

“Cellular”: In this 2004 thriller, Chris Evans plays a carefree young man who receives a call on his cellphone from a frantic woman (Kim Basinger). She tells him she’s been kidnapped and fears the culprits will kill her along with her husband and child. Now if only the battery doesn’t die on her cellphone ...

Man in distress

“Phone Booth”: Colin Farrell plays an obnoxious, self-centered agent who makes the mistake of answering the phone in a downtown New York booth in this 2002 thriller directed by Joel Schumacher. The voice -- Kiefer Sutherland -- on the other end of the line just happens to belong to a sniper who has his rifle aimed at the booth.

Romantic comedy

“Pillow Talk”: This frothy 1959 romantic comedy, which was considered quite adult in its day, casts Doris Day in her only Oscar-nominated performance as a virginal New York interior decorator who is appalled that she must share a party line with a womanizing playboy (Rock Hudson). The playboy decides to have a little fun with Day by romancing her under the guise of a shy Texan named Rex Stetson. The great Thelma Ritter also stars as Day’s tipsy maid. The screenplay won the Oscar that year, beating out such nominees as “Wild Strawberries” and “The 400 Blows.”

“Sleepless in Seattle”: In this 1993 box office smash, the telephone is the catalyst that brings two soul mates together. In the romantic comedy directed by Nora Ephron, a young boy is so eager for his widowed father (Tom Hanks) to find him a new mother, the child calls into a nationwide radio talk show. When his father, Sam, gets on the phone, he ends up showing his warm and fuzzy side as he talks about the loss of his wife. One person who thinks that Sam may be her own true love is Annie (Meg Ryan), a young woman engaged to another man.

One-woman show

“L’Amore”: This classic 1948 Roberto Rossellini Italian film features two stories starring the great Anna Magnani, including “The Human Voice,” Jean Cocteau’s mesmerizing, tour-de-force monologue in which an unhappy woman speaks to her lover on the phone after he has left her to marry another. Ingrid Bergman also performed the piece on ABC in 1967.