Whose Life Story Is It, Anyway?

A federal court in New York is being asked to decide the question of who owns the rights to the life story of Chris Costner Sizemore. But the answer will depend largely on which Chris Sizemore the court decides to consider: Over the last half century, there have been 23 of them, all inhabiting the same body.

The story of Sizemore’s split personality--publicized by her therapists in medical journals and in a popular book--became the basis for Joanne Woodward’s Oscar-winning performance in the 1957 film “The Three Faces of Eve.”

For more than 40 years of her life, Sizemore exhibited 22 distinct personalities. Three of those personalities were dominant at any given point in her life. Woodward portrayed Sizemore as “Eve White,” “Eve Black” and “Jane.”

But the 23rd Chris Sizemore, the 61-year-old woman who says her own personality has been restored since 1977 and now makes her living by lecturing and writing on mental illness, wants control over the rights to her life story during the years following her recovery.

But Fox, the studio that released “The Three Faces of Eve,” claims it has owned those rights--including her life story since 1977--under a contract Sizemore signed in 1956 for $7,000.

Sizemore chronicles her post-recovery years in an upcoming book, “In Sickness and in Health,” to be published by William Morrow & Co. in October. When Sizemore attempted to sell the film rights to the book to actress Sissy Spacek last year, Fox objected. “Twentieth Century Fox Corp. acquired all motion picture rights in all versions of Ms. Sizemore’s life story under a contract signed April 24, 1956,” a studio attorney wrote to Rick Nicita, Spacek’s agent at Creative Artists Agency. Sizemore responded by filing a lawsuit last week.

“The contract does not give Fox the rights to her story after 1957,” argues Sizemore’s attorney in New York, Carol E. Rinzler. “At best the contract is ambiguous.” A Fox spokeswoman declined comment, saying the studio does not discuss pending legal matters.

Spacek’s publicist, Andrea Jaffe, said she was unaware of Spacek’s project on Sizemore--which was reported in the entertainment trade press early last year--and refused to provide any further information about its status.

But Sizemore and her book agent, Mary Yost, said Spacek had agreed to option the book for $20,000, and to purchase the rights to it for $250,000. In addition, Spacek had agreed to hire Sizemore as a consultant on the film.

Although Woodward’s character in “The Three Faces of Eve” returned to a normal life, Sizemore said that in reality she did not recover for another 20 years, after she had switched psychiatrists and was being treated by Dr. Tony Tsitos in Virginia. In her upcoming book, Sizemore details her life in the years following her development into an “integrated person”--after her real self was distilled from the competing personalities through therapy, she said.

As she moved into normalcy, her two children were reluctant to relinquish the former mothers they had known, Sizemore explained. Her son, for example, objected to Sizemore’s decision to throw out the purple clothes worn constantly by one of her personalities. “The children kept souvenirs from these personalities,” Sizemore said in a phone interview from her Florida home. “I myself went through a grieving period. They were a real part of my life.”

In addition, when Sizemore was under the control of her various personalities, the mother-daughter relationship was reversed, she said. That relationship had to be shifted once again after her recovery. Her husband, long accustomed to making all the household decisions, had to adjust to Sizemore’s new need for input on her own life.

Sizemore attributes her disorder to a series of frightening and grotesque episodes she witnessed when she was 2 years old--a dead man’s body in a ditch, another man’s body cut in half at a nearby lumber mill and a severe cut that her mother sustained.

She remained anonymous during the swarm of publicity that surrounded her case in the 1950s and 1960s. Not even friends and neighbors knew about her condition. “We accepted no invitations and extended none,” Sizemore said.

But since the early 1970s, when hordes of TV and print reporters turned out at a South Carolina college class where she had agreed to speak, Sizemore has made her illness a public cause. She is now a visible advocate for the rights of the mentally ill. She is a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation and a member of the board of North Carolina’s Mental Health Assn.

Sizemore alleged in the interview that she was unduly influenced into signing away the rights to her life story by her then-psychiatrist, Corbett H. Thigpen. “Today, I would know it wasn’t quite right,” Sizemore said. “There was no Fox representative present, it was not done on legal paper, I had no attorney representing me and (Thigpen) never suggested that I have one.”

Thigpen, reached this week at his Georgia home, declined comment on Sizemore’s allegations.

Sizemore maintains in her lawsuit that it was a conflict of interest for Thigpen, who was at the time negotiating with Fox over the sale of the rights to his own book, to arrange her deal. That book, which Thigpen co-authored with the late Hervey M. Cleckley, became the basis of Fox’s film.

Thigpen, who treated Sizemore once a week at his Augusta, Ga., office, would not allow Sizemore to see the “The Three Faces of Eve,” when it came out, concerned that it would damage her progress, she said. She saw it in the 1970s, and said, “Joanne Woodward did a superb job.”

Spacek’s interest in portraying her life, she added, “was very exciting. I think she could portray my life superbly.”

Sizemore says her lawsuit against Fox is about “freedom of choice,” something she says she never had during the 40 years that she was plagued by the multiple personality disorder. “I feel like every battle I fight and win helps other mental patients,” she said.