The Slender Thread (1965) on Netflix
Psychology student Alan Newell is alone on the night shift at Seattle's crisis clinic when a woman calls to say she has taken barbiturates. He asks the phone company to trace it.
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- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.0/102,724 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
On a solo night shift at Seattle's Crisis Clinic, psychology student Alan Newell takes a call from a woman who says she has swallowed a large dose of barbiturates and wants to talk before she dies. Pretending he is getting coffee, Alan uses a second line to ask the telephone company to trace the call and to have Dr. Joe Coburn brought back to the clinic. Detective Judd Ridley and other officers join the hunt while Alan keeps the woman talking. Her flashbacks recall her marriage to Mark, a commercial fisherman, and the truth about their twelve-year-old son, Chris, that she had never told him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Slender Thread (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Elizabeth Ashley was initially cast as Inga in The Slender Thread but was replaced by Anne Bancroft without formal notice. Ashley had allegedly turned down a $100,000 opportunity because of the role and sued the studio; the dispute was settled out of court in November 1965.
- The Slender Thread was the first feature-length film directed by Sydney Pollack, who went on to become an Oscar-winning director, producer and actor.
- The screenplay was drawn from "Decision to Die," a Life magazine article published on May 29, 1964, which chronicled the real-life story of a woman in Seattle, Washington, who attempted suicide.
- Sidney Poitier filmed his scenes on a sound stage while Anne Bancroft, who played Inga, read her lines offstage or through a receiver in her dressing room wired with a live telephone connection.
