I have long admired Joanne Woodward, and I remember the first time I saw "Sybil," the supposedly true story of a woman with more than a dozen personalities. Woodward played the psychiatrist who treated the woman in that made–for–TV movie.
At the time, I did not know Woodward had been in a similar movie some 20 years earlier in which she played the patient so "Sybil" was a role reversal for her. The movie in which Woodward was the patient was called "The Three Faces of Eve," and it premiered on this day in 1957.
There were many similarities between the stories. Given the subject matter, I suppose that was unavoidable.
By comparison Woodward had it easier in 1957 than Sally Field did 20 years later. Granted Woodward only had to portray three different personalities while Field had to do some 16, but I couldn't help feeling, when I saw "The Three Faces of Eve" that Field must have picked Woodward's brain or watched "The Three Faces of Eve" — or both — before she started work on "Sybil."
I saw "Sybil" first. When I saw "The Three Faces of Eve," much of what I saw Woodward do was what I had seen Field do.
But Woodward did it first — and won an Oscar for Best Actress in the process. So, arguably, one could say Woodward did it better — although Field did win an Emmy.
Lee J. Cobb played the role that Woodward eventually played in "Sybil." He was the doctor who treated her, who diagnosed her condition.
Although it was not her real name, the patient was known as Eve White, a timid and reserved individual who suffered from excruciating headaches and occasional blackouts. Her behavior became so erratic that her husband (David Wayne) brought her in for treatment. While speaking with Cobb, a second personality emerged, one whose personality was the opposite of Eve White's — so she was given the name of Eve Black.
Eve Black knew all there was to know about Eve White, but Eve White was oblivious to Eve Black's existence.
After Eve White had been sent to a hospital for observation and released, Eve Black attempted to kill Eve White's daughter, and her husband decided he had had enough. He left his wife and took their daughter to live with relatives.
That, too, was similar to "Sybil." Brad Davis played Field's long–suffering boyfriend who started out being supportive but apparently concluded that he, too, could not live with that.
Cobb believed Eve White and Eve Black were incomplete personalities, that they had to be united to form a complete personality, and that was the conclusion that Woodward's character reached in "Sybil."
And it would be hard to imagine anyone who was more different from Eve White than Eve Black. Eve Black was constantly going out on the town, drinking, carousing in night clubs.
But while Eve Black seemingly knew everything about Eve White, there were gaps in her knowledge. A third character could resolve things, and it turned out this comparatively stable character was named Jane.
Jane knew how the personalities had split. It went back to when Eve was a little girl. Her grandmother had died when she was 6, and it was a family custom for everyone to kiss the deceased person at the viewing. This was supposed to make it easier for them to let go.
When Eve's mother (played by Nancy Kulp years before she was Miss Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies) took her in to kiss her dead grandmother, it so traumatized the child that the personality split occurred.
If you have never seen the movie before but when you do you think the voice of the narrator is familiar, you're probably right. The narrator was Alistair Cooke, a journalist and broadcaster by trade who achieved his greatest popularity in America as the host of television's Masterpiece Theater for more than 20 years.
