> The nun who kissed Elvis: Extraordinary story of a starlet who turned her > back on Hollywood to live in a convent will appear at the Oscar ceremony > > > > > Looking back: Dolores Hart and Elvis Presley promoting Loving You; Hart went > on to become a nun > > > > The speculation will continue until the last minute about the fashion parade > in store for us at the Oscars this weekend, but we can be sure that at least > one of the actresses trooping into Hollywood's Kodak Theatre will be wearing > black -- the black habit of the Benedictine order of nuns. > > The last time Dolores Hart walked the Academy Awards red carpet - in 1962 - > she was the blushing starlet who had given Elvis Presley his first screen > kiss. > > After a whirlwind rise to stardom, the 23-year-old beauty had secured a > $1-million contract and roles opposite some of Hollywood's leading men. > > But then she gave it all up - disappearing from public life so completely she > might have been a figment of some movie mogul's imagination. > > But this Sunday she will finally return as the woman she chose to become - > Mother Dolores, prioress of a cloistered nunnery in rural Connecticut, a > Benedictine nun who has spent the past 50 years living a life of hard manual > work, contemplation and prayer. > > Now 73, she has agreed to make a rare foray from her isolated life at the > Abbey of Regina Laudis in order to celebrate an Oscar-nominated documentary, > God Is The Bigger Elvis, which has been made about her life. > > She says she is enormously excited about the biggest night in the > showbusiness calendar - even if she has to go up on stage. > > And while the Oscars may not be used to people who dress in plain clothes and > walk with a stick, this is a woman who's already experienced the sort of > movie star adulation about which many of today's preening, pouting actresses > in their megabucks designer gowns can only dream. > > > > Mother Dolores still has the piercing blue eyes and demure, flawless beauty > that once made Grace Kelly comparisons inevitable. > > She was just 18 when she made her screen debut, co-starring with a young > Elvis in Loving You. The 1957 film was only his second movie, and his > lingering kiss with Dolores Hart made her the envy of women everywhere. > > She is still asked what it was like and her unexciting, if rather sweet, > answer is that they both blushed so much that filming had to be stopped while > their purple ears were swathed in make-up. "If there is anything I am most > grateful for, it is the privilege of being one of the few people left to > acknowledge he was an innocent," she said of Presley ten years ago. > > > > > Devoted: Actress turned Benedictine cloistered nun, Mother Delores standing > on the grounds of the Abbey of Regina Laudis > > > > The film made her name and she swiftly made two more, starring alongside > Montgomery Clift and Anthony Quinn, before teaming up again with Elvis in > King Creole in 1958. > > She was to pack in nine films in five years, including the cult comedy Where > The Boys Are with George Hamilton. All the time, she remained a devout Roman > Catholic, getting up at 6am for Mass each day and praying before every > audition. In what was to be her last film, 1963's Come Fly With Me, she > played a beautiful airline stewardess looking for romance and excitement. > > But in real life she was gravitating towards something very different. The > only child of two good-looking, bit-part Hollywood actors who separated when > she was young, her lonely, unsettled childhood was split between the glamour > of Los Angeles and a Catholic school in Chicago, where she lived for some of > the year with her grandparents. > > After she left school, she moved to Hollywood, and in 1957 was signed up, > aged 18. Fame came quickly, but she found the emotional side of film-making > unsatisfying. "You worked intensely for maybe ten weeks, and then you break > and you never see the person again," she said later. > > > > > Flawless beauty: Dolores Hart with George Hamilton in Where The Boys Are > > > > While starring in a Broadway play, a friend suggested she take a break and > stay at a guest cottage in the grounds of a Catholic abbey in Connecticut. > But she had unhappy memories of school. I said: "Oh, I don't want to go to > see more nuns," she says. My friend said: "Just try it, they're contemplative > and they won't talk." Sure enough, Dolores instantly found peace, and the > close-knit community she had been craving since childhood. She talked about > becoming a nun there and then, but she was only 21 and the abbess considered > her too immature. > > Dolores certainly sounded surprisingly unworldly for someone who had already > spent a few years in Hollywood, telling the abbess she was worried that a > Catholic girl like her shouldn't be making films with Elvis, because she > could be "aroused by the boys." It took three years and several more visits > to the abbey before the nuns agreed she was ready to take holy orders, but by > then she was engaged. > > Don Robinson, a successful Los Angeles architect, had been courting her for > five years. But as they returned from their engagement party, she admitted to > him that she wanted to become a nun. > > > > > Ceremonial: Things could have been different and Dolores could have been a > fixture at the Oscars... but her life took a very different direction > > > > Robinson was devastated at first but, as a Catholic himself, brought himself > to accept it as God's will. > > In the years that followed, he went out with other women, but never found one > he wanted to marry. Devoted to the woman he could never have as his wife, he > continued to visit Mother Dolores in her nunnery at Christmas and Easter > every year until his death just three months ago. > > "I never got over Dolores," said Mr Robinson shortly before he died. "I have > the same thoughts [about her] today as I did 52 years ago." > > But if Don Robinson showed great understanding of Dolores's desire to serve > God, her studio was furious. > > When studio MGM asked her to promote Come Fly With Me, Dolores said she > wanted to visit "friends in the country." The studio drove her to the abbey > in a limousine, unaware she was never coming back. She became a novice nun > that day. > > If the studio executives were angry at what they saw as a betrayal of their > trust, everyone else, including her family, was incredulous. The Press even > pounced on a rumour that she had retreated to a nunnery after having Elvis's > love child. "It was hurtful and aggravating because ours was really such a > fine relationship," she said years later. > > Her early days as a nun were difficult as she came to realise that being a > pampered star was no preparation for the hard life in the nunnery. > "The first night I felt like I had jumped off a 20-storey building and landed > flat on my bottom," she says in the new documentary. "I had no idea it was > going to mean working in the garden, ten people sharing one bathroom, the > sternness." > > 'I can understand why people have doubts. Because who understands God? I > don't.' > > On top of the physical labour, each day Dolores had to keep three periods of > silence and sing Latin chants seven times. The outside world and her fellow > nuns expected she would soon be pounding on the abbey doors to get out. > Dolores admitted she had grave doubts herself. "The first few years were a > very, very difficult transition," she says. > > Even in her cloistered world, she was not cut off from her past. She became a > close friend of the actress Patricia Neal in the Eighties after a mutual > friend suggested Neal stay at the abbey to recover from the end of her > turbulent marriage to Roald Dahl. The nuns calmed her down and Neal ended up > staying at the nunnery for nearly a year. She later converted to Catholicism > and is buried in the abbey grounds. > > Mother Dolores has also remained an Oscars voter, watching DVDs of nominated > films sent by the Academy in her office. "Watching films tells me what's > happening in civilisation and how much people are suffering," she says. > > She has suffered herself in recent years, her health blighted by a > neurological disorder. But as the documentary's director, Rebecca Cammisa, > told me, the nun still has much of the actress in her. "I think she sees > returning to the Oscars as a sort of homecoming," says Cammisa. > > "If she had stayed in the film business, she would have been this huge star. > It just shows you how strong her calling [to be a nun] must have been." > > So as she walks into the Kodak Theatre on Sunday, it's hard not to think > Dolores Hart won't feel a twinge of regret for what might have been. She > admits she has "struggled" with her vocation all her life. > > "I can understand why people have doubts," says Mother Dolores. "Because who > understands God? I don't." > > > > P.S. : She also acted as St Clare with Bradford Dillman (as Francis) in the > film "Francis of Assisi). > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > >
