Phone Call from a Stranger is a 1952 American film noir drama film directed by Jean Negulesco from a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the 1950 novelette of the same name by I. A. R. Wylie. The film centers on the survivor of an aircraft crash who contacts the relatives of three of the victims he came to know on board of the flight. The story employs flashbacks to relive the three characters' pasts.

Plot

After his wife Jane (Helen Westcott) admits to an extramarital affair, Iowa attorney David Trask (Gary Merrill) abandons her and their daughters and heads for Los Angeles. His flight is delayed, and while waiting in the airport restaurant he meets a few of his fellow passengers. Troubled alcoholic Dr. Robert Fortness (Michael Rennie), haunted by his responsibility for a car accident in which a colleague, Dr. Tim Brooks (Hugh Beaumont) was killed, is returning home to his wife Claire (Beatrice Straight) and teenage son Jerry (Ted Donaldson), and plans to tell the district attorney the truth about the accident.