So how did Sally Field get the part in Sybil?

Seems like she went right from silly stuff to respected films and TV. How did she make the transition?

• Because she actually has multiple personalities herself. On Thursdays, Sally Field IS Mary Todd Lincoln.

• Didn't she say that Burt Reynolds got jealous of her success and dumped her when she won the Oscar for Norma Rae?

• Reynolds must have dumped her before the Oscars....David Steinberg (is that his name?) seems to be her date for the Oscars. (and lord Richard Dreyfuss is coked up!!)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D2bzU77zGDlI

• She had been in several movies of the week(a long ago TV movie format)that were dramatic after her stint as "The Flying Nun," and her later failed sitcom. A couple of them were decent, but nothing groundbreaking like "Sybil."

  Sister%20Sixto

• MAYBE I'LL COME HOME IN THE SPRING: was that not Sally Field? Or am I remembering wrong?

• Yes, it was R5. She had also appeared in a movie with Arnold called, "Stay Hungry" and got great notices from that.

• Tenacity,luck,good connections,neotenic features et al. but most of all TALENT.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dyoa_sMDu4N8%26feature%3Drelmfu

• The story I have heard is that she was unhappy with the way her career was going before Sybil; so, she had some friends shoot a demo reel of her doing some serious work. She sent it to the casting people who were casting Sybil and she got an audition.

• In between The Flying Nun and movies, there was the TV series The Girl with Something Extra. Besides Sybil and Stay Hungry, Field was also in the theatrical movie Heroes (starring Henry Winkler) and the TV-movie thriller Home for the Holidays. I think the movie that really transitioned her from the fluff was the TV movie R5 mentioned.

  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066062/

• She has already received enough awards but she really deserves another one for surviving being The Flying Nun. You can survive being Gidget but being Gidget AND The Flying Nun (the ultimate cute/gagfest role), well, you have to be good to survive that combination. This is one determined woman. (The fact that she has a cute gay son is just icing on the cake.)

• Are her sons actors too?

• Patty Duke was originally offered the role but she and the original director had a fight so she was out a new director was brought in and he brought in Sally Field

• The story went that the "original Sybil" (sadly now debunked) wanted Sally Field in the role and that's how she got it. Fiction or not, it is really impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.

• Wasn't Heroes after Sybil?

• Field got the role over, Jane Alexander, Talia Shire and Adrienne Barbeau. Dawn Wells also screen tested for the role. Woodward was hired after Olivia DeHavilland turned them down.

• Adrienne Barbeau would have been interesting.

• Wow, odd that Woodward wasn't their original choice for Dr. Wilbur. That casting - given her history with "The Three Faces of Eve" - was such a clever choice.

• The producers offered the role of Sybil to Lucy, but Gary Morton talked her out of taking it. The producers wanted her then for the role of Dr. Wilbur, but, well, you know Gary.

• LOL, Gary Morton was a pussy. He never had ONE BIT of influence over Lucy. In fact Lucie Arnaz, (both kids got on well with him) said Lucy used to go out of her way to humiliate him on the set. He was given the role of executive producer and whenever he tried to do his job, Lucy would shake her head and wave Gary off saying "Oh go buy a car and leave the business to those who know what they're doing" Lucy had no business ability. Even when she made a good choice, like "Yours, Mine and Ours," she screwed it up. Lucy said, she thought the movie would flop, but she wanted to do it becaus she liked Henry Fonda, Van Johnson and Tim Matheson so much. Then when the movie became a big hit, she said, she lost almost all her profit to taxes, as she hadn't bothered to avoid taxes, as she though it would flop and she could take it as a tax write off.

• Heroes was after Sybil. The real-life Sybil, not surprisingly, had nothing to do with casting the film.

• Burt said something at the time like, "How can two people so in love be so wrong for each other?".

• Damn, I got here after the Patty Duke troll.

• Even to this day Sally doesn't feel like she's above auditioning and screen testing over and over again if necessary. That's how she's gotten a lot of her stuff. I remember seeing an interview with her and she said on her tombstone she's going to have "Just give me a screen test that's all I'm asking" as her epitaph.

• R22 what would u have written

• r23, that's one of the things I've always loved about her. She's not a snob, and she will work her butt off to get the chance to play a great role. She has done some real dogs of roles on her day, but she never would have had the chance to play Sybil, Norma Rae, and Mary Todd Lincoln had she not been persistent and willing to work hard.

• Nothing inspired r24. Just the usual "Cue the Patty Duke troll in 3, 2, 1..." The Lucy trolls are always entertaining. The Paula Prentiss troll is due.

• I heart R18 and his Lucy casting posts.

• She swallows

• Where did the whole thing about Lucy being offered every single great role for women in the 70s and early 80s start? It makes me laugh every single time, but someone must have first posted some insane claim about her being up for a big part to inspire it.

• Actually, it was Field's role as a woman possessed by a ghost in an episode of 'Night Gallery' that convinced producers that she was the perfect Sybil.

• The Lucy meme began with the truthful, substantiated claim that Frank Sinatra offered her the mother's role first in The Manchurian Candidate. Angela Lansbury never stopped elegantly and backhandedly trashing Lucy's Mame because of that.

• "Field got the role over, Jane Alexander, Talia Shire and Adrienne Barbeau. Dawn Wells also screen tested for the role." Where did you get that information from? I've never heard of any of those actresses being mentioned as in the running for that role and I know quite a bit about that mini-series. By the way, ALL of those actresses you mentioned would have been totally wrong for the role. Natalie Wood really wanted the role, but was not chosen because she was so Hollywood persona was so well-defined that it was believed it would overshadow the role. Plus, she was too glamorous and pretty to play the mouse-like, repressed Sybil. She DID go on to play a mentally disturbed, alcoholic housewife in a tv movie called "The Cracker Factory" was very good in it. Sally Field supposedly got the role after giving a fantastic audition. She turned out to be perfect for "Sybil."

• Lucille started filming "Heathers" but her behavior grew eratic, at one point screaming in a drunken rage, "They gave that cunt Hepburn all the good parts! And what did I get? A cunthound of a husband and a kiddie show!". She bowed out of the production officially for "exhaustion", and was replaced by Winona Ryder. Then she died.

  http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/heathers4.jpg

  Viv

• [quote]By the way, ALL of those actresses you mentioned would have been totally wrong for the role. Talia Shire would have been good. Did you see Rocky? She had the mousey, withdrawn part down. It's a good thing Lucy bailed on HEATHERS. I imagine by the end of the shoot, either she or Doherty would have killed one another.

• "Talia Shire would have been good. Did you see Rocky? She had the mousey, withdrawn part down." She was too ethnic-looking to be a convincing Sybil. Enough with the stupid Lucille Ball crap. It's not funny, just very lame.

• [quote]Enough with the stupid Lucille Ball crap. It's not funny, just very lame. Remove the pole from your ass, Control Freak. Many of us find it funny even if you don't.

• "Remove the pole from your ass, Control Freak. Many of us find it funny even if you don't." Go fuck yourself, retard. The Lucille Ball shit is tiresome. You wouldn't know funny if it hit you on your pimply ass.

• [quote]She swallowed. Most likely explanation.

• Upset with how her career was going, Field left her agents and went to a small boutique agency called Susan Smith and Assoc. -- well known for respresenting serious theater actors from NYC who wanted bi-coastal careers. Ms. Smith marketed her as a serious actress. Not many takers but she did get her an audition for Sybil. Of course immediately after the success of Sybil, Sally Field left Susan Smith and returned to a big agency.