Now, a year after Mason's death, the case is once again in the spotlight with three documentaries and at least as many books in the works.
The book was made into a 1976 TV movie starring Sally Field and was largely responsible for popularizing multiple-personality disorder-until then, a rare diagnosis. Mason was dead.Ī few weeks earlier, Mason had finally divulged her extraordinary secret, confirming what Guy had long suspected: the 75-year-old former college art teacher was the world's most famous psychiatric patient-the real-life model for ""Sybil,'' journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber's 1973 best seller about a woman so abused as a child that she developed 16 personalities, including women with English accents and two boys. But by the time her friend pulled up, it was too late. 26, 1998, Mason must have realized time was short she asked for Guy, who lived just a 10-minute drive away. So her friend Roberta Guy arranged for nurses to provide round-the-clock care. Her breast cancer had spread quickly, but she didn't like doctors and hated hospitals even more. She was at home, in the two-story gray bungalow on Henry Clay Boulevard in Lexington, Ky., that had been her refuge for 25 years. THE LAST DAY OF SHIRLEY Ardell Mason's remarkable life was peaceful.
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