FILM FLAMMERY : Have You Heard the One About the Liar Who Got a Film Deal?

As hoaxes go, the one perpetrated by actress Carol Ann Francis on Hollywood could finally be worked out on screen as it didn’t in real life.

Francis has sold her story of how she played her own agent, Ann Hollingsworth--faking a highbrow British accent and affecting airs of a Bel-Air sophisticate solely via the telephone to get herself roles--to Barbra Streisand’s Barwood Films production company for TriStar Pictures.

Barwood’s president, Cis Corman, a former casting agent who even auditioned Francis for parts in such movies as Streisand’s “Yentl” and “The King of Comedy” because of Hollingsworth’s persistence that she at least be given readings, said she and Streisand became intrigued when the actress recently revealed her true story.

“It’s a fun story . . . ‘Tootsie’ in reverse or ‘How to Succeed in Business . . .’ from a woman’s point of view,” Corman said in a telephone interview from Barwood’s New York offices. Francis had tried unsuccessfully for years to land that plum movie role that would catapult her to stardom either on her own talents or with the backing of her alter-ego, a tenacious (some say obnoxious), telephone-tag playing pseudo-agent who got such industry heavyweights as Sydney Pollack, Lili Zanuck, Mark Johnson and Fred Roos to return calls--but never, however, ever agreeing to “take a meeting” or “do lunch” in person so as not to blow her cover.

“I knew all along that the fiercely talented little dynamo would prevail,” Francis said, mimicking Hollingsworth’s chirpy English speaking tone that has since been retired now that her secret has been let out of the bag. Her strategy to fake-speak some version of the Queen’s English worked decidedly in her favor in getting callbacks, she said, considering the town’s gullibility to be charmed by anyone who shares some vague connection to the country of Shakespeare’s birth.

It was Hollingsworth who got Francis cast as a Jordanian woman in the NBC movie “Desperate Rescue: The Cathy Mahone Story” (Francis’ heritage is part Lebanese/part French) and as a bit player in the movie “Death Becomes Her.” But mostly, like any of a number of other aspiring actresses registered with the Screen Actors Guild (17,200 at last count), Francis relied on part-time work to supplement her meager income earned in her first profession--by answering product research surveys. As hard-working as she was, Hollingsworth never became a player.

Francis’ scams played out in other ways too. She dressed up as a nun to get passed through the gates of the Walt Disney Studios to sing “Ave Maria” before “Sister Act” director Emile Ardolino (he recognized the scam and threw her out) and snuck into many a movie premiere by forcing herself into the middle of a cluster of invited guests with passes as they were waved through.

Then, last year, Francis figured she would try to sell the story of her double life to some of the very same people she tried to scam, including Pollack, who was said to be intrigued until he figured it to be too similar to his Oscar-winning “Tootsie,” and also Corman, who, though bowled over that she had been duped for years, wasn’t convinced it was a movie.

Francis finally pitched her own story to the New York Times, which resulted in a Sunday profile last February and a flurry of copycat stories and follow-up interviews on “Dateline NBC,” “Good Morning America,” “The Joan Rivers Show,” “Sonia Live” and other outlets.

The phone then began to ring for real. Francis made her deal last week.

“We were squeamish about getting into business with someone who’s a liar,” said Stacey Lassally, president of production for TriStar. “But (Corman) is not a huckster, she’s drawn to classy, original material and we believed in her belief in this woman’s story,” she said. “This is a comedy not about people in Hollywood who were duped--that’s a one-note joke. It’s more about someone who tried to break in and the pathos of that person having to listen (when playing her own manager) to her own rejections. It’s got a lot of poignancy.”

For her part, Francis has given up her original intent to adapt her book-in-progress--tentatively called “The Rita Redfield Story”--to the screen or to hold out any hope she’ll get a leading role in her own biopic.

A bit part, yes.

“It would be a hoot,” she said.