WHEN A WOMANS EMOTIONS SWAY ON A SLENDER THREAD...EXPECT ANYTHING.


Sidney Pollack marked his feature film directing debut with this taut suspense drama, based upon an actual incident reported in Time Magazine. Sidney Poitier stars as Alan Nuell, a student volunteer at a medical clinic in Seattle who answers the phone to find Inge Dyson (Anne Bancroft) on the other end. Inge, depressed about her life, has just taken an overdose of sleeping pills. With Inge slowly dying, Alan tries to keep her talking on the phone while the police try to trace the call and save her life. Inge tells Alan that she has decided to end it all because her husband has discovered that he is not the father of her son

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 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) 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 the woman and her husband (Steven Hill).
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.

Release Date: December 23, 1966


Distrib: Paramount