Lizzie 1957

One for the ‘three faces of Eve’ gene

Elizabeth (Eleanor Parker, ‘The Sound of Music”) Is Just your Average Girl, From your neighborhood, shes works a dull job, she has a boyfriend and lives with her aunt, and shes in her early twenties , The trouble with Young miss Bess is that’s she continues to have reoccurring headaches and slight cases of insomnia , often sleeping in her on set of clothes and waking up in other set .
Almost overnight he starts to receive threatening letters left in places she will only know where to look signed by a ”Lizzie” , a name she is apparently not familiar with in her day to day life .Her Mental condition starts to wither away rapidly and her Aunt (Joan Blondell,”Grease”,Nightmare Alley “)decides to take her to a Dr. Wright (Richard Boone) who after seeing her decides to put her under hypnosis . Unknown to all, Deep in her subconscious,
Dr. Wright finds that Elizabeth carries three personalities around with her ,One is Elizabeth, the shy one that everyone knows,” Lizzie”, the wild ,tarty ,nymphonycal , sociopath .And three ,Beth, the good asexual moral guardian that Elizabeth feels she should have been. Dr. Wright must find a way of exorcising the other two personality’s and help create a dominant personality to help rule ,
This ones ”VERY” camp, in a 1950’s sort of way (which we Love) and lets face it, between Joan Blondell and the three personalities of Parker ,someones gonna choke from trying to chew up all the furniture, But on a serious note along with “three faces of Eve” strangely also released in 1957 and ‘Possessed” (1947) released a good ten years before is still one of the earliest films (aside from the Jekyll and Hyde franchise)that explores Multiple personality Disorders as a serious medical disorder.
Eleanor Parker , who is usually good at playing both side of the field, either self sacrificing wives (Above and Beyond 1952) , People with twigs up their ass (”Scaramouche” , the Baroness from ”The Sound of Music” ) , or people who are bordering on a Multiple Personality (See ”Woman in White” on this Blog), although considered to be in second place to Joanne Woowards portrayal in ‘Eve” its certainly worth a look ,its not a lesser film , it seems to fall in the shadow.