A blockbuster book was published back in 1973 that would go on to become a cult classic and sell millions of copies.

SYBIL, written by American journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber (1918 – 1988), told the story of a woman with 16 personalities.

Such was the impact of the book, which three years later would be made into a telemovie starring Sally Field as the title character, (re-made in 2007 with Jessica Lange playing the role of the psychiatrist) it became a cultural phenomena and changed, at least for a number of years, the course of psychiatry.

Years before either of these films were released, another movie based on a real-life case of Multiple Personality Syndrome was leaving it’s mark on audiences.

THE THREE FACES OF EVE was a 1957 American film that earned Joanne Woodward the Academy Award for Best Actress. It was based on a book written by two psychiatrists about a woman named Christine Sizemore who was thought to be ‘inhabitated’ by three distinct indentities.

In an inspired piece of casting, Joanne Woodward would be cast years later as the pyschiatrist in the 1976 movie SYBIL.

If THE THREE FACES OF EVE was popular culture’s entre to the world of Multiple Personality Syndrome, SYBIL was the full- blown, ten course, ‘finest silverwear’ banquet.

Only problem was, many of the details of the real life case concerning the woman that the world would come to know as SYBIL were fake. This is according to a book published in 2011 by American journalist Debbie Nathan.

‘Fake’ is maybe too strong a word. ‘Greatly exaggerated’ is proabably a better description for the mix of half-truths, distortions and outright fabricatons that were used to create and publicise the world’s most famous Multiple Personality Syndrome case.

Over the next few weeks, SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK will seek to seperate fact from fiction and uncover the truth of SYBIL.

HAPPY DAYS your thang? Better click HERE

Last week I was harking back to my days as a film, theatre and music reviewer for the University Student Newspaper. I ommitted one little yarn that still brings a smile to my face.

A posse of the reviewing staff had been summoned to a meeting inside the ragtag, poster-strewn and dimly-lit cave interior of the student newspaper office.

There we all were, in various reclining poses gathered on the stained red carpet floor that smelled of cigarrettes and booze, when the Editor – a guy I only ever knew as ‘Ed’ – never being certain if it was short for ‘Edward’ or ‘Editor’ – strode in barefoot wearing his faded blue skinny jeans with holes in them (before ripped jeans were a thing), stroking his Fu-Manchu-styled goatee and announced in his most earnest politicians-address-tone, “The record company is complaining about all the bad reviews we’ve been writing”.

At the speed of thought and with not even the flutter of an eyelid, one of our poison pen hacks – a clever wit named Scooter Patterson, who would go on to become a lawyer but not before being arrested and thrown into a McDonalds backroom cold storage freezer for staging a mock hold-up of the restaurant during Prank Week – shot back, ” Tell ’em then WE’RE complaining about all the sh-t records they’re sending us!”

Another thing from this time was the big-time like I had going for one of the celebrity film critics of the day, Pauline Kael (1919 – 2001). She began writing movie reviews for THE NEW YORKER in the late 60’s and continued up until 1991. She published more than a dozen books of film criticism as well during these years.

Such was her influence in the 1970’s, some U.S. film distributors introduced individual press screenings for each critic because her remarks in joint press screenings were thought to be influencing her fellow critics.

Director Quentin Tarrantino grew up reading Kael’s criticism voraciously. He’s been quoted as saying she was as influential as any director was in helping him evolve his own cinematic style.

I so loved the charm, wit and insight – the sheer ‘penmanship magic’ if you will – she brought to all of her reviews (which in the hands of others amounted to little more than glorified plot synopses) I reckon for a time I wanted to BE her, at least in the writing sense. No less than a writing superstar hero was what she was to me.

In 2018 a documentary celebrating her life was released with Sarah Jessica Parker (SEX & THE CITY) narrating.

How I got onto this topic in the first place was checking out a 1963 movie called CRITICS CHOICE. Lucille Ball plays a woman who has always wanted to write a play. Her husband (Bob Hope) who is an acid-tongued newspaper theatre critic is less than encouraging.

In a movie full of funny lines, Lucille Ball’s character knows too well the downside of being married to a paid opinion giver –

Born critics just can’t help themselves it seems…

Everyone, critics included, used to love this show – for the first five seasons anyway. Get your critical hit of HAPPY DAYS –HERE.

A thousand years ago – give or take a decade – I was a movie critic.

In my madcap and untethered University days, I used to wield the poison pen regular-as-you-like for the University Student Newspaper. Not just film reviews, but music and live theatre as well. If it sang, danced or tried doing anything resembling entertainment, I happily cast judgement.

I remember thinking I’d near won the life lottery every time I got to take home a bunch of free (vinyl) albums from the record company. Same with getting sent along to one of those ‘Press only’ film screenings or scoring complimentary tickets to the latest play showing about town.

Yep, living the life on the fringes of glamour, celebrity and popping ‘Opening Night’ champagne corks I most definitely was. For a while. Or so my nineteen-year-old brain thought.

Slowly however, a sinking realization as heavy and dark as a ready-to-pop rain cloud came floating into view. There was a price to be paid for being showered in entertainment freebies.

That price came in the form of having to sit through, listen through and, towards the end, sleep through literally hour-upon-hour, bucketload upon bucketload of what I would sniffily refer to back then as ‘mediocrity’.

You realize eventually that though you may live in hope for it to be otherwise, masterpieces don’t come along very often. I mean, why would they?

The ‘really goods’ and even just plain ‘ol garden-variety ‘goods’ also, it turns out, manage to stay hidden for long stretches of time.

If you’re seeing lots of ‘entertainments’ – in their great many forms – it’s easy to develop a type of numbness or what could be termed ‘repelling shield’.

You become, in the words of my old mustache-twirling advertising copywriter teacher, ‘hard to impress’.

And when that happens, and you start mistaking your own tastes for some objective, Godly yardstick for quality and what’s worth people’s attention, well… you may very well be on the sunken, sad road to self-deception on the grandest of scales.

That and the fatiguing chore of having to wade through and think up creative ways to talk about just so, so, soooooo much featureless chaff to get to the golden, life-giving wheat, were the reasons I walked away from the life of a critic.

These memories came flooding back to me the other night as I watched an ol’ time Bob Hope movie CRITIC’S CHOICE (1963).

Hope plays a caustic theatre critic whose wife (played by Lucille Ball) decides to write a play. Reviewing his wife’s play on opening night in his usual fault-finding manner leads naturally to all manner of marital strife. Here’s a taste –

Log on next week for…

Critics loved HAPPY DAYS – for the first five seasons anyway. Tune in HERE to get your HAPPY DAYS hit.