The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows

by Hart, Dolores

  From the first day, Lonelyhearts was an unusual experience for me. It was the first time that the entire script was read by the cast before any work started, and then we rehearsed for two full weeks before anyone stepped in front of the camera. What a glorious opportunity to become really familiar with the character I was playing. I was used to rehearsing a scene once before it was shot. The picture could be half-over before I realized what I could have done, and it was already in the can. More rehearsals made it easier to become more friendly with my coworkers too—a big help in the love scenes.

  The director, Vincent J. Donehue, came to Hollywood from Broadway, where he had directed Sunrise at Campobello, produced by Dore Schary. Dolores thought he was a nice man, but he was not as helpful to her as Cukor and Kanter had been, probably because he was enthralled with Clift.

  The young Montgomery Clift had also come from Broadway in the late 1940s, making a tremendous impact in his first two films. Clift was very good-looking, a fact especially obvious when he and Elizabeth Taylor shared close-ups in A Place in the Sun. Tragically, just three years before Dolores met him at the first reading of Lonelyhearts, Clift had suffered major injuries in an automobile accident. Plastic surgery had repaired his face but couldn’t restore it.

  Montgomery Clift was a man I admired, loved and disliked with equal intensity. I sensed he found little repose in living, and acting seemed a self-torture that obsessed him. But I knew there was much I could learn from this haunted young actor.

  I was aware of the talk that his eccentricity had taken on a veneer of bitterness. I found him very intense and somehow disconnected. Frequently, we lunched together in his dressing room—he would always have raw hamburger and a little booze, which gave him a peculiar odor—and he would sit and rock. Without talking. And I would be absolutely positive that he wasn’t listening either. Just rocking. But then he would say something that was perfectly appropriate to the moment, proving I was wrong—he had been listening.

  Other times he would ramble on nonstop, almost as if he were talking to a doctor, or perhaps even his mother. I suspected that Monty related to most of the women in his life in a filial way. He never talked about acting, though. He was aware that I was going to Broadway, but as much as I wanted him to, not once did he offer advice.

  He could become morose: he was terribly conscious of the difference in his looks since the accident and spoke to me of his fear that he no longer had a future in films. He could cry at the mere mention of a heartbreaking experience, yet he could be callous and hard. It was as if he could touch a flower with the gentleness of a mother’s caress and then trample that same flower in an embarrassed retreat from the garden.

  I listened because my faith told me it was right to do so. I deeply responded to his internal pain, and more than once thoughts of Saint Thérèse flashed through my mind. I was giving a great performance in the dressing room, and it was never going to be seen on the screen.

  Dolores and I would spend evenings in the Black Hole going over lines. Her first scene with Clift was scheduled early in production, and forewarned by rehearsals in which he never set what he intended to do, she knew she had to be well prepared. Those evenings were wonderful dates. I read Clift’s part, and she was spontaneous and quite inventive with hers, enjoying the process immensely. Eager to see her shoot the scene, I visited the set.

  After a brief blocking rehearsal, Donehue called for a take. Dolores Justy was bright, strong and very real. Clift, however, didn’t know his lines. On the second and third takes, Dolores repeated her performance with equal intensity. Clift still didn’t know his lines. By take ten, I realized that as Clift became more confident in his performance, Dolores was losing the freshness in hers. If Donehue was aware of this, he chose to ignore it. His focus was on Clift.

  Finally—painfully for me—Donehue marked take twenty-seven for printing. After twenty-six tries, Clift finally gave an interesting performance. But by this time Dolores was drained. She had nothing left to give. I wasn’t prepared for such selfishness and was so convinced that it would continue that I didn’t visit the set again.

  On the screen, Clift’s performance is intriguingly quirky, though not near his best. Dolores manages to project an appealing character, but not as multidimensional as she had been in our nightly rehearsals. Claudia Belmont, in Films in Review, was one of several critics who disagreed with my assessment.

  “There is one example of good casting in Lonelyhearts”, Ms. Belmont wrote. “Dolores Hart in the part of Justy Sargent, the girl Adam wants to marry. The well-proportioned features of Miss Hart’s face combine into what used to be called ‘an open countenance,’ in which we think we see not only implacable honesty but also animal strength. It is an appealing and magnetic combination. If Miss Hart . . . holds out for the right roles, she can have a long and profitable career depicting the normal, feminine and loving woman every man desires.”

  Dolores would be better served by her other costars. Myrna Loy had enjoyed a long career in films. Originally employed as an exotic beauty in silent pictures, she reinvented herself as a sophisticate in the thirties and again in the forties as the perfect wife in movies such as The Best Years of Our Lives, the film that had made her one of Dolores’ favorite actresses. The fifties found her moving into character roles.

  Myrna was the lady. She was the epitome of graciousness and charm. We had our tests for makeup together, and she looked almost like she did years earlier, only I thought that age had given her an air of calmness, which is flattering to anyone. She took me under her wing and tried to broaden my intellectual horizons. She loved getting me into a discussion of current events. She was quite political and very aware. For several years she was film advisor to UNESCO, the first actor to be associated with that organization.

  I genuinely shocked Myrna when I let it slip that I didn’t go to rushes. She couldn’t believe it. She said that all actors should view rushes. “You always must watch yourself—even it’s only to make sure your stocking seams are straight!” I made a point to go to rushes after that.

  Robert Ryan, whose movie career spanned three decades and more than seventy films, was one of the screen’s most dependable stars. He was frequently labeled “an actor’s actor”, a term that reflected his versatility as well as the high regard in which he was held by his peers.

  Bob Ryan was the friendliest. He was so kind to this newcomer, even giving me tips whenever he could without stepping on Mr. Donehue’s toes. I thought he had much the same calmness that Myrna had and, unlike Monty, was a very contented man.

  As it turned out, Bob gave me what would be the best advice I ever got. When I told him I was going to be in a play in New York, he said that if I ever needed vocal coaching I should contact Alfred Dixon. “He’s the best”, Bob stressed. “Remember the name.”

  The coworker Dolores bonded with most strongly was, surprisingly, Maureen Stapleton, cast as the frustrated housewife who seduces the lonely hearts columnist. Stapleton was a smoker, a drinker, a belcher, and she boasted a vocabulary that turned the air around her blue. On the surface, little about her should have appealed to Dolores, and little about Dolores should have appealed to her. But they became fast friends for the duration of the filming. They had no scenes together, but Dolores came to the set to watch Stapleton whenever she was working. They would spend time in one or the other’s dressing room, both of them savoring this odd-couple camaraderie, and at the end of the shooting day, Dolores would drive the license-less New York actress home. Maureen Stapleton was the one with whom Dolores shared her Granny Kude stories.

  Years later, Karl Malden told me that their bonding was inevitable. “Maureen and Dolores were mothers in capital letters. They both radiated trust—you could tell them anything. And they had taste in the people they chose to befriend.”

  —I treasured Maureen’s company, and on my last day of filming, thoughts of her friendship intensified the letdown I always had when relationships ended.

  Does that
still make you sad—when people who have been important in your life don’t relate anymore?

  I think that’s the centerfold of my vocation. Early on I grasped the pain of that aspect of making films. Bonds would form. The film would end, and then suddenly that relationship I trusted would be gone. It was, to me, shattering. I felt there had to be some centering in my life in which there was continuity.

  With barely a week before I had to leave for New York and rehearsals for the play, those hectic last days were mercifully interrupted by a tiny vacation that was both exhilarating and calming. I was a bridesmaid at Sheila Hart’s wedding at the beautiful old Mount Carmel Church in Santa Barbara, and Dick and I decided to make a weekend of it. We drove up on Friday so we could attend the rehearsal and dinner planned for the wedding party that evening.

  The wedding took place on Saturday morning, and the happy occasion became even more so for me by introductions to the officiating priest, Father Michael Doody, a Jesuit, and Father Armando Salazar, with whom Sheila had worked at the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Los Angeles. Both good men would remain forever firmly ensconced in my life and in my heart.

  Dick and I spent the remaining time sightseeing in Santa Barbara, starting with Sunday Mass at the mission and walking hand in hand through its famous rose garden, which was in bloom. The whole weekend seemed filled with love. I knew I would never have told Dick I loved him in a moment off lightiness. It had to come from deep inside, and I thought I had no reservations.

  Yet, looking back, a distant cloud hovered, and it confused me. It made me question if I was really able to commit to a relationship and made me wonder what would happen if I were asked to commit myself to something else.

  Eight

  Less than a week after Dolores completed her work in Lonelyhearts, she was en route to New York on a late-night flight. That journey would change her life in ways she could never have imagined.

  One of the four stewardesses was Winnie Allen, who had been alerted about the VIPs on board. She saw the names Patti Page, which registered, and Dolores Hart, which did not. After dinner service, Dolores asked for an Alka-Seltzer. Winnie supplied the tablet, which could remedy any number of airborne discomforts from heartburn to anxiety, and later checked if her passenger was feeling better. Since Dolores was neither sleeping nor showing any signs of illness, Winnie asked if she felt like talking. The answer was affirmative, so for several hours, while the other passengers slept, the two young women bonded.

  Winnie learned that Dolores was headed to Broadway for her first professional stage appearance and that the Alka-Seltzer had calmed a nervous stomach. Dolores found that Winnie came by her concern for others naturally, being the daughter of a missionary. By the time the plane landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, the two new best friends had agreed not only to share a taxi into Manhattan, but to share digs as soon as they could find them. Winnie accepted Dolores invitation to stay overnight at her hotel, the venerable Algonquin on West Forty-Fourth Street, famed as the site of the Round Table luncheons of literary wits Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Marc Connelly and Oscar Levant.

  It was late morning when they checked in, and both girls were bleary-eyed when they finally got to the room and were met by an oversize bouquet of flowers bearing an invitation from Cyril Ritchard asking Dolores to join him for supper that evening. The girls turned the single room into a double by pulling the mattress off the bed. One slept on the box spring on the frame, and the other on the mattress on the floor.

  When Dolores returned from Ritchard’s that night, she wrote me:

  New York! I love it! Cyril—I am to call him Cyril—had me over to his Park Avenue suite (ahem!) for “a simple bit of goodies” before we start rehearsals tomorrow morning. I just love him. The cab driver took me through Central Park on the way home, and I pinched myself in case I was dreaming but it is all true. Oh, PS, Cyril is Catholic.

  —How did you know that? Did you ask him?

  Catholics always know other Catholics.

  The next morning, at precisely 10:00 A.M., I walked onto the stage of the Longacre Theatre on West Forty-Eighth and was introduced to the cast of The Pleasure of His Company.

  Cyril made the introductions as I ran down the collective resumes in my mind. Cornelia Otis Skinner: famous for her performances in Major Barbara and Lady Windermere’s Fan, acclaimed for one-woman shows she had also written; stately carriage; gracious. Walter Abel—my stepfather in the play—had a forty-year career in theater and movies. I remembered Charlie Ruggles from movies I watched in Grandpa’s projection room. He twinkled in movies. Still did, I noticed. Cute Jerry Fujikawa was in the original Teahouse of the August Moon. What with Cyril’s twenty-year career, which included Visit to a Small Planet and Captain Hook in Peter Pan on Broadway, I was meeting over a century of theatrical stardom. Talk about intimidation.

  The other newcomer in the cast was George Peppard, who would be my fiancé in the play. I didn’t know a thing about him, but he was one good-looking guy—single, too, but it turned out we had no social life outside the theater. I always felt as if he was looking down his nose at me.

  The only familiar face that morning belonged to our costume designer who was also making her Broadway debut: Edith Head, who greeted me in front of the whole company with “Hi there, Junior!”, which gave me a stamp of approval.

  The Pleasure of His Company may have been the last of an honored Broadway genre, the sophisticated comedy of manners that had nothing more serious on its mind than a good time. The drawing-room comedy presented simple human truths with wit and charm and was usually environmentally restricted to the upper class. Pleasure was written by Samuel Taylor—who had established his flair for the form with Sabrina Fair—and the coauthor was the show’s leading lady, Cornelia Otis Skinner. Ritchard, too, did double-duty as the director and star, playing Pogo Poole, an irresistible rogue of a playboy who descends on the San Francisco home of his ex-wife and their about-to-be-wed daughter he has not seen for many years. The plot concerns the giddy rapport of the reunited father and daughter, which threatens to break up her engagement, as well as his brief attempt to rekindle a spark in her mother.

  Producing the play were the Playwrights’ Company and Fredrick Brisson. Prior to Pleasure, Brisson, the husband of actress Rosalind Russell, had produced only musicals. Two of them—The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees!—had been anointed with Tony Awards as the best musicals of the two preceding seasons. The Playwrights’ Company boasted a formidable list of founding members. Individually, Robert E. Sherwood, Elmer Rice, Sidney Howard, S.N. Behrman and Maxwell Anderson had written the most honored and respected American plays of the first half of the twentieth century. They founded the Playwrights’ Company in 1938, producing their own works and those of other major playwrights. In the seasons since, they had been responsible for more Tony- and Pulitzer-winning plays than any other producing organization.

  —Also, Maxwell Anderson had written Joan of Lorraine.

  The company rehearsed on the Longacre stage they would occupy when the show opened. Within a few minutes of the first day, Ritchard called out to Dolores, “We can’t hear you, dear child.” She would hear that same remark, said with growing concern, throughout the day.

  I seemed incapable of projecting my voice past the first few rows. At the end of rehearsal, Cyril came down to the stage and, in front of the entire company, announced that I would have to improve overnight or he would send me back to Paramount “jangling rosary beads”. I was devastated. The other actors politely smiled it off, but I was humiliated. I remembered Anna Magnani’s judgment: amateur.

  Suddenly I heard the echo of Robert Ryan’s voice. “If you ever need a vocal coach, call Alfred Dixon. Remember the name.” I contacted Mr. Dixon immediately, and he agreed to see me that same evening. He was a very pleasant man who tried to put me at ease by telling me even Katharine Hepburn had needed help.

  He looked over the script and asked what I was being paid. When I told him my rehears
al salary was $75 a week, he was stunned. He couldn’t believe that I had contracted for so many sides for so little money. Highway robbery, he called it. I confessed I had no money at the moment but promised he would be paid when I began receiving a performance salary, which he also found shockingly meager. He told me not to worry, promising that he could raise my projection level overnight.

  We worked for four hours on proper breathing exercises and making very loud mooing sounds. When I got back to the Algonquin, I continued the exercises in earnest. Within fifteen minutes, there was a gentleman from the front desk at the door, asking if there was anything wrong. Neighboring guests had complained of distressed sounds coming from my room. I assured him all was well. But I spent the rest of the night in the shower, water on full blast, mooing into a pillow until I was exhausted.

  Unbelievable as it seems, there was a small improvement in my projection the following day. Cyril didn’t mention the rosary beads once, and Robert Ryan became my patron saint. Cyril was so relieved, he promised that the company would pay for additional coaching. Mr. Dixon admitted he could teach me all I needed to know in three lessons, but to protest their “slave wages” he charged the Playwrights Company for ten weeks of tutoring.

  —To this day, whenever I have to speak at a special occasion, I do Mr. Dixon’s exercises. The only difference is that here at the abbey we have a dairy, so there’s never a complaint.

  We rehearsed six days a week, from ten in the morning until six in the evening. Our elegant genius worked us like a madman, but I adored him. After rehearsals, I would meet with Mr. Dixon. On some days I didn’t seem able to get anything right, which made me wonder out loud why they picked me in the first place. On those days, Cornelia and Walter would be especially sweet, and my pet, dear Charlie, would shuffle over and, with a wink and an “Oh, phooey”, tell me not to let my disappointment get me down. All through the production, Charlie was my living report card. When I was good, I got a kiss.