Sybil 1976 TV Miniseries

It was great! Hold your water!!

I love a good Sybil War miniseries.

The whole story was fake.

Again, but in English please, OP.

That miniseries gave my parents too many ideas...

SIBYL is fantastic! Great casting and acting.

One thing I noticed as an adult from a design perspective is the adult Sybil wears a grey tweet suit throughout much of the film, but each personality adapts it according to her character...belting or unbelting it, switching blouses, turning the sleeves up or down, adding and subtracting different accessories, all so the basic suit takes on different personalities, as well.

And Sybil varies this by wearing a busy, multi colored print rather than the suit in 2 key scenes...when she has a dream about her past trauma (when conceivably all the personalities are remembering it together), and in the last scene when all the personalities are present, and become integrated.

Interesting, careful costume choices.

OP has disparaged our Sally. We must be provided with OP's ip address so OP can they can be hunted down and punished.

It does not even need to be stated that such LIBEL is NOT to be tolerated here!

Our Sally, on the casting process:

HAVE A NICE TRIP, SEE YA NEXT FALL!!!

His hair is crisp... [italic]crisp?[/italic] I never noticed that. All these years I've never noticed that. Lettuce is crisp.

"Dafuq this schlock fest about child abuse? It would never fly in today's safe space environments."

Right wing dog whistle bullshit.

Wtf is "stair pushing"?

Considering the book is largely fairy tales and the TV movie deviated from the book, it is good for entertainment.

The sad part is Sybil (Shirley Ann Mason) was diagnosed with pernicious anemia in the 80s and that largely explains her psychological symptoms were an actual physical illness. Going over her medical records, whenever in the 40s, when her hometown doctor gave her vitamin B-12 treatment, Shirley became well again, the whole story is basically a human life wasted because of misdiagnosis, and a doctor who was overzealous, and a probable lesbian relationship between them.

If the story was a manifestation of the real Sybil's false, misguided beliefs, she nevertheless did end up with a lifelong, devoted friend in Cornelia Wilbur...as well as the stability to end up as an art teacher who lived a long, low key life.

(She must have had a hell of a psychiatrist bill, tho.)

[quote]r16 Wtf is "stair pushing"?

It's when deranged people stand by public elevators and escalators, haranguing strangers for not using the stairs.

Utterly terrifying, when severe.

I saw it as a movie in England.

I saw this when I was a kid. The story is bogus, but it didn't make the miniseries any less disturbing. That old bitch scrubbed out little Sybil's vagina with a crochet hook, strung her up from the kitchen lamp and filled her bladder with ice water, tied her to the piano, and pushed her down the fucking stairs. I haven't seen this in forty years, and it still is upsetting. How did my parents let me watch this?

So even all the abuse was made up?

This was shown on TV in the UK as a film. I'm pretty sure anyone who's seen it has been traumatised by it.

[quote]r22 So even all the abuse was made up?

It cannot be proven, just as it cannot be disproven.

But there are several academics who are convinced the concept of anyone having a "split personality" is a bogus condition, and that one or two things in the few remaining files indicate Sibyl (who was really named Shirley Ardell Mason) did not actually have multiple personalities.

It's unlikely we'll ever know the entire truth.

There were people in Shirley's hometown of Dodge Center, MN who still remembered Mattie Mason. Her nutty behavior in the series was so spot on they knew that Shirley Mason was Sybil.

You can but prints of her artwork, if you like. A ton of canvases were found neatly stored in Mason's basement when she died, and some people recognized a few from the bestselling book.

Only a very few people in her town of Lexington, Kentucky, knew that Mason was the subject of SYBIL.

The work gives me the creeps because of its association with that story...but for the TRUE Sybil aficionado.....

"If you tell, I'll fix it so you won't have nothing to tell with."

Hattie Dorsett's most chilling line, actually heard as Sybil imitating her mother.

I really don't think that Shirley "Sybil" Mason behaved the way Sally Field did in the mini-series, changing from one personality to another like a light switch being flipped. But she WAS very mentally disturbed; anorexic, twitchy, obsessive compulsive. She had fainting spells and other physical maladies. She had a LOT wrong with her, both physically and mentally. But I sure as hell don't believe that her lifelong mental and physical illnesses were simply the result of "pernicious anemia", as Debbie Nathan, the author of "Sybil Exposed" believes. Nathan has an agenda; she thinks a lot of child abuse allegations are false and spends a lot of time in her book attempting to vindicate Mattie Mason, the mother of Shirley Mason. But Mason's mother, despite Nathan's attempts to make her seem like not such a bad sort at all, was very weird. She would toss off nonsense rhymes, liked to peek in the windows of her neighbors, had a bizarre screech of a laugh and completely dominated her meek skinny daughter, holding her hand and walking her to school even when Shirley was a teenager. As for Shirley's father, he's barely mentioned in the book. One reason I read "Sybil Exposed" was to find out more about Mason's parents, but they really don't register as personalities at all. The father is a nonentity and the mother is "a little strange, but nice." She didn't seem too "nice" to me. Anyway, I think Mason was abused as a child, both physically and psychologically, although maybe not as badly as depicted in "Sybil." And I think Debbie Nathan is pretty full of shit.

OP and friends *ran around the neighborhood pretending to be multiple personalities freak shows"?!

Did you all have arguments over who got to be Sybil, Eve or Victoria Lord Riley?

Yes. And we were all possessed by the devil when Exorcist came out. How we managed to see that flick I can't remember.

[quote] Did you all have arguments over who got to be Sybil, Eve or Victoria Lord Riley?

There was never an argument.

I was ALWAYS Jean Randolph.

Wow r26, I really like her paintings.

And learning that Sally Field was chronically sexually abused by her C-list actor stepfather, Jock Mahoney adds new depth and insight into her portrayal. No wonder she was so fucking brilliant in the role.

i Watched this as a child (unsupervised by my parents) and to this day i wish i hadnt

Some people find the scenes in "Sybil" where she's being abused by her mother FUNNY. The mother's behavior is so over the top and lunatic that some consider it amusing. That's pretty sick because there are schizophrenics who DO behave that way. And imagine being a child and having to live with someone like THAT. I thought the abuse scenes were horrifying.

I was in high school in 1976 in Anaheim, CA when Sybil premiered and was a mini series event. In art class, this SUPER-cute (long brown hair parted down the middle as was the style, and the start of a mustache) sexy voiced stoner classmate who sat at the popular table popped his head up out of nowhere and said "Sally Field, best actress Emmy award."

tbh I think it set my gaydar off. And he was right.

We all read this as preteens in the 70s, and were surprisingly credulous. I think Nathan makes creates a fairly plausible argument against the literal truth of the book. I would not be surprised, though, if Shirley had a traumatic childhood living with her mentally ill mother.

I don’t know why my parents let me watch it either. I had nightmares for ages afterwards. I thought it was real but I was 9 years old. My sister didn’t believe it for a minute. I was a gullible kid, I believed the Amityville Horror was real too!

Obviously the multiple personalities were fake but the crazy mother was real. All of us with crazy mothers recognize that bitch.

Multiple personalitie disorder = Dissociative identity disorder

Debbie Nathan strongly implied in her book that Dr. Wilbur and Shirley Mason had lesbian love for each other. Nathan never implicitly states that they actually had sex but she makes it clear they were very attracted to each other. Were they really? Since Nathan has an obvious agenda and hates Cornelia Wilbur, Shirley Mason and Flora Rheta Schreiber with a passion I think her depiction of Wilbur and Mason as lesbians in love is highly suspect.

Children need structure, not saying that Sybil deserved to be abused, but she really need to learn that willful misdeeds have consequences.

[bold]: o

r41, jesus christ, is that you Hattie? ...speaking from the grave?

My ex was raised by a very mentally ill mother. She would come home from school to find every toy she played with the previous day smashed to pieces, or her room torn apart with holes kicked in the wall, or her cat dead. She would only tell me those things when she felt safe with me and stopped telling me anything new when I brought them up. She slammed the door shut to new revelations. But I saw enough behaviors out of the old bitch to believe anything.

Anyway, I always thought my ex had something SIMILAR to multiple personality disorder..... she literally made herself believe someone other than her mother was responsible when she was a child for breaking the toys, kicking holes in her walls and dumping her drawers, or killing her cat. But, sometimes she came very close to verbalizing it was her mother. When the mother would be telling me things and the ex was within earshot, the mother told a detail about the cat that accidently burnt to death that contradicted the story up to that point, and basically showed me SHE was responsible. My ex, who was doing something in another part of the room, stood bolt upright, eyes popped open wide and unblinking and lurched to the bedroom and closed and locked the door. She fell into a deep sleep and did not wake up for more than 24 hours after I got rid of the mother, I got the door unlocked and she was out cold. I kept checking to see if she was still breathing over the next 24 hours because it was more like a coma than sleep.. I saw that happen several times over the years. When confronted with the truth she would go into a deep sleep for 24-36 hours, not even moving in the bed.

Honestly, the child is always assumed to be innocent. What's up with THAT?

Truly, Hattie has my sympathy. You just don't know what it's like to have a pint-sized harlot running around the house - and an ill-mannered one, at that.

Of all the DL trolls, I must say "Mrs. Patsy Ramsey, formerly of Boulder, CO" is my FAVE

I'm thinking about buying a print. Should I get 'Street Corner' or 'Central Park in Spring'?

How interesting. CENTRAL PARK IN SPRING is actually the one I've always liked best.

It's the least ominous.

To think that this was people's entertainment . . .

The 70s produced some of the weirdest fucking shit, didn't it?

Didn't Jessica Lange star in a re-make of this. I'd be curious to see it but it appears to have fallen off the face of the earth.

Anyway, loved Sally in Sybil.

Sybil has disassociated into a baby! I can’t get her back.

Yes, r50. I think Tammy Blanchard was Sybil. It completely sank without a trace.

I have read the Nathan book.

Clearly, Shirley Mason had something very wrong with her -- my guess is a Cluster B disorder. And Cornelia Wilbur FULLY exploited it. Wilbur crossed pretty much every single professional boundary in her "treatment" of Mason. The relationship was very odd, right up until the end.

1 042 287 people have watched Lange's 2007 Sybeil in Polish on Youtube.

R54 That's a lot of people.

If it's false, those two women made up a great story anyway. The story would've be fascinating even if presented as fiction. Very original in their depiction of child abuse and invention of Hattie the monster, if she really wasn't one.

After Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring, Sally used this as the final nail in the coffins of Gidget and Bertrille.

"Didn't Jessica Lange star in a re-make of this. I'd be curious to see it but it appears to have fallen off the face of the earth."

As stated before, it's on YouTube. It's interesting. Not nearly as flamboyant or detailed as the mini-series, but the acting is good. I thought Lange and Blanchard were both fine. I think it didn't make a big splash because the original "Sybil" was so iconic that nobody cared much about seeing a remake.

Break glass! Break glass! Break glass!

"The people, the people, the people...."

[quote] r51 Sybil has disassociated into a baby! I can’t get her back.

What the HELL did that monster do to you in the GREEN KITCHEN ? ! ? !

[quote]Dr. Cornelia Wilbur: What the hell did that monster do to you?

[quote][Sybil is curled up in the corner sucking her thumb]

[quote]Dr. Cornelia Wilbur: What happened in the green kitchen?

Close, R61.

Sorry....one of my alter (more forgetful) personalities wrote that.

Oh look-----ANGELS.

And Brad Davis as the hot boyfriend.

I wish these hosts could get off the couch and bother to clean themselves up just a BIT...but this is a good overview of the mini series, that uses a lot of footage from it.

This movie introduced me to mother’s personality disorder. It all felt so familiar.

I remember watching this at my aunt's house. During the scene where Sybil goes nuts and starts climbing on shelves my uncle said "If my woman started that shit I'd be out the door."

What a charmer : o

[quote]This movie introduced me to mother’s personality disorder. It all felt so familiar.

I had the same reaction to watching Mommie Dearest at age 19.

No, my mother wasn't famous or rich, but she was cold, vicious, spiteful, and faaaar too fond of hitting/spanking.

Apparently the real Dr. Cornelia was quite the eccentric and Joanne Woodward only dyed her hair red to approximate her.

And yet, R57 .....

[quote]Apparently the real Dr. Cornelia was quite the eccentric and Joanne Woodward only dyed her hair red to approximate her.

This is a good short video featuring one of Shirley Mason's college friends

R75 is interesting. It seems Shirley spent her whole life looking for a mother to nurture her

Also, I have always thought Shirley has some type of factitious disorder

R75, Thank you for posting that video. However the speaker clearing saw a mother who could act reasonably normal at times. Who knows what she was like when drunk or just extremely, uncontrollably angry.

Then the clueless speaker doesn't understand why a daughter who grew up with a super controlling, demanding, highly critical mother doesn't really know how to survive solo and is in fact rather fearful of doing "normal" things. Religion gave her a purpose, and a supposed substitute family while instilling even more of a pervasive fear of the world. Not good. Many regular churchgoers deal with constant, crippling anxiety about everything.

Bet the father was always a cheapskate, physically and emotionally distant with his 1st wife and daughter too. Just not there when needed.

Sally Field talks more in depth about SYBIL at the [bold]33:00[/bold] mark here:

(It's funny how when she came in for the initial audition acting very meek and downtrodden, to corrolate with the character, the alarmed producers and staff were whispering, "Oh my goodness...oh my goodness! This is very...I mean, we had no idea Sally Field was so terribly drab and [italic]depressed.")

I know we throw the term around a lot, but I think Shirley Mason was probably Borderline. The term even exists because it was thought to be on the border between neurosis and psychosis, and she seemed to be perfectly standing with one foot in each side.

Can't speculate on what her true relationship with Cornelia Wilbur was, but Wilbur was countertransferring like a mad woman.