The Slender Thread (1965)

The Slender Thread is a 1965 film starring Anne Bancroft and Sidney Poitier. It was the first feature-length film directed by Academy Award-winning director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack.

Poitier portrays Alan, a college student who is volunteering at Seattle's then-new Crisis Clinic, a crisis call center. Shortly after beginning his night shift, Alan receives a call from a woman named Inga (Bancroft) who says she has just taken a lethal dose of pills and wants to talk to someone before she dies. The story line follows the efforts of Alan, a psychiatrist (Telly Savalas) and a detective (Ed Asner) to locate Inga and her husband (Steven Hill). Various flashback scenes depict the events that led Inga to make the attempt on her life.

The film was inspired by a Life magazine article by Shana Alexander about actual events and partially shot on location in Seattle, Washington.

This movie is noted for the physical tracing of the call to find Inga (Bancroft) before she dies. Throughout the movie, the call is traced by hand through several electro-mechanical telephone central office switches which leads to the hotel where Inga was staying (originally the Hyatt House) near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

Synopsis

Poitier portrays Alan, a Seattle college student who is volunteering at Seattle's then-new Crisis Clinic, a crisis call center. Shortly after beginning his night shift, Alan receives a call from a woman named Inga (Bancroft) -- the wife of a fisherman (Steven Hill) who has put out to sea earlier that day—who says she has just taken a lethal dose of pills and wants to talk to someone before she dies, but refuses to reveal her location. As the circumstances that have led to her suicide attempt are revealed through flashbacks, the story line follows the efforts of Alan, a psychiatrist (Telly Savalas) and a detective (Ed Asner) to locate both the woman and her husband.

Actors