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

by Hart, Dolores

  “There is an aura off lightiness about Hollywood”, he warned and, citing the movie actress June Haver, moved in for the kill. “Catholic actresses are prone to do things like this for publicity.”

  I didn’t know June Haver then but was aware that, in 1952, she had walked out on her movie contract and entered a convent, only to leave a few months later. I held my tongue and merely assured him I wasn’t looking for publicity, but he went on.

  “So you think you want to be a contemplative. You know what contemplative life is all about?”

  “I think so”, I answered. “I’ve been there a number of times.”

  “You know they work with their hands? They garden. Do you garden?”

  “No.”

  “They cook. Do you cook? They sew. Do you sew?”

  “No.”

  “They have a life that is quiet, austere. They live in silence. They don’t talk on the phone. They don’t travel. They do without modern conveniences.” He gave an exasperated sigh and turned to Don. “Not only do I not recommend this girl to the contemplative life; I don’t know why you want to marry her.”

  “Dolores,” he said sternly, “you must think this over for a long, long time. It’s too big a step right now. I think you should see the archbishop as soon as possible. It’s more than I can handle.”

  When we left Monsignor Devlin, I told Don I was not going to see the archbishop. I couldn’t go through that again.

  “It tore me apart at the time,” Don said, “but, even then, deep down, I could see the other side. Having the background of religious vocations in my life, with friends who had entered the Jesuit Order, who had struggled with their vocations, I think I could understand. I felt that if I loved Dolores, I had to show her my support, whatever she was going to do.”

  I think that if Don had not been so blessed—I really mean that because he was given a great grace to stand behind me—my decision would have been even more devastating.

  “The next weeks were a difficult time for both of us”, Don remembered. “We went through the motions. We talked on the phone but did not see each other much. She got on with her life. I got on with mine.”

  Mom was disappointed when I told her the engagement was off, though underneath I think she was relieved. I decided not to tell her about my decision to enter religious life at that time. I wasn’t sure what she might do, and I just couldn’t face whatever that might be. I was also afraid that she would call Granny. No way did I want to fight both of them. Mom might start drinking and getting ugly about it, but Granny would fling her body between me and the monastery gate. I knew I would have to face that situation eventually, but as the days passed I kept putting it off.

  Don told his mother the whole story, and she was very shaken. She had known when we had the appointment with Monsignor Devlin that something was wrong, but the reality shocked her. I think it affected her more than anybody. She scalded me with her anger.

  The only friends Dolores told immediately about ending the engagement were the ones involved in the wedding: her bridesmaids Sheila Hart McGuire, Jan Shepard and the Malden girls, Mila and Carla—and she wasn’t completely honest with them. She couldn’t risk even a hint about Regina Laudis because Reverend Mother Benedict had made secrecy a condition of her acceptance.

  Frank Liberman set up only one interview—with Louella Parsons—to get the word out about the end of the engagement. The official story was that Dolores believed marriage should be a total commitment, and when she realized that she wasn’t ready to make that complete a commitment, she felt the only fair thing to both Don and herself was to call off the engagement.

  The first order of business was filling out the Regina Laudis application form—yes, an application form very much like the ones I filled out for employment when I was a teenager.

  —Except Ralph’s Market hadn’t asked me for my baptism and confirmation certificates.

  All the things that might be problematic in beginning monastic life are actually covered in the application, but they don’t appear as dire warnings. It doesn’t say: Are you aware that you will have to work under absolute supervision without questioning or that you will not be able to speak to your coworkers? Rather, it quietly asks if you have been able to do certain things.

  The five-page form included inquiries into her family background, health history, education and past employment, with emphasis on her work ethic:

  Do you find it easy, moderately easy, hard, moderately hard to take orders, suggestions, contradictions, criticism and complaints from coworkers?

  Moderately easy and moderately hard, depending upon circumstances.

  Do you find it easy, moderately easy, hard, moderately hard to take orders, suggestions, contradictions, corrections, criticism and complaints from your employer?

  Moderately easy and moderately hard. In my work my employer’s suggestions and criticisms were often contrary to my temperament, and occasionally my convictions had to stand the test of a clash. I therefore had to become overly independent in my thinking.

  How do you find taking orders, suggestions, contradictions, corrections, criticism and complaints from your subordinates?

  Easy to take suggestions. Hard to take orders. I find it extremely difficult to take any complaint or criticism from someone whom I have tried to please, and I find my pride stands in my way when I know I am right.

  —You can’t say they weren’t forewarned.

  I just wanted to present as honest a picture as I could. I felt deeply that they had every right to know the truth before accepting someone into their house. I insisted that they be aware that I had adapted myself from childhood in the art of disguising true feelings as a protective barrier and feared that this instinct probably couldn’t be erased spontaneously. So, I suppose it was a warning. But it was also a plea: Don’t wait until I’m inside with no defenses and then decide you don’t want what you’re getting.

  Dolores’ answers also revealed that she was nearsighted, had no notable debts and could provide the dowry required then by Canon Law as well as her trousseau. Dowries are no longer required at Regina Laudis, but at the time Dolores entered the usual amount was roughly $2,000, which was calculated as the legitimate need for any one person. Dolores would turn over $20,000 as her dowry.

  One question sought to determine if she wished to enter as a choir sister aspirant or an oblate sister aspirant. The distinction was an ancient one and firmly based in the European class system. The choir sister came with a background of wealth, and her sizable dowry supported the monastery and added to her family’s prestige. She was also usually educated and could therefore read the books necessary to sing the Offices. Historically, the oblate sister was usually an older woman from a poor or peasant background that automatically excluded her from certain activities. The oblates were not obliged to sing or even to attend every Office and performed mostly manual labor. They were the only ones allowed to go in and out of the enclosure, to do errands and to serve guests.

  —This system continued for a long time until it reached the point of perversion. Choir nuns could sit around all day having tea and doing petit point while the others did all the hard work.

  Regina Laudis never observed the distinction between choir and oblate sisters in its full demeaning implication. Still, since the oblate sister did not participate in chapter meetings, at which important decisions regarding the life of the Community were made, the feeling of “second class” remained. Thus, from the late 1960s, there has been but one class of nun with two “accents” of call. These accents are known as “enclosed” and “missae”, which comes from the Latin word meaning “sent”. Within the present understanding, the missae are women who have a gift for being the Community’s interface with the world and thus are “missioned”.

  At the time Dolores entered, the age of the applicant determined her position. Being under the age of thirty meant she would be a choir nun.

  In addition to my age, another reason Reverend Mother B
enedict decided that I would be a choir nun was because, as such, I could not even casually come in contact with the media. I responded to the questionnaire that I had a strong, but not loud, singing voice—second soprano—and that my background in Latin was limited to one high school course. But I promised that I would apply myself to the study of Latin during my novitiate.

  On the surface, her life in Hollywood appeared to be status quo, close to what it might have been if she didn’t have that decision hanging over her. She continued to fulfill every commitment she had made with the studios and, at the same time, immersed herself in the exhausting details of closing her life in California. Her lawyer, Sidney Williams, who was to have walked her down the aisle at her wedding, organized legal matters, including her dowry to Regina Laudis and a trust for Harriett. He also orchestrated the termination of her lease, while Dolores disposed of the apartment’s contents.

  She took a few days in January for the first of two pre-entrance retreats at the monastery, with Mothers Columba and Placid and now Mother Anselm, the mistress of novices, who would be her formation mother during her postulancy. Mother Anselm was one of the group of nuns from the Abbey of Jouarre.

  I met a young woman, Catherine Nugent, a guest in Saint Gregory’s. Catherine was a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington, DC. She also was considering the possibility of a religious vocation at Regina Laudis, and when I learned she not only was fluent in Latin but had even taught it, I said a few prayers for her to reach an affirmative decision.

  —In 1965, she did enter the monastery and is now Mother Maria Nugent, our dean of liturgy. And she has been, on occasion, my Latin tutor.

  Back in Los Angeles, it was a hectic time—yet delicate. I felt constantly out of breath from all the juggling. I didn’t see much of Don. I wasn’t avoiding him; I just had much to do. I had little time to see friends, and when I did see them, I had to be mindful of how little I could share with them. I was so absorbed in preparing for the monastery that my heart was hardly able to contain anything else. It was the only thing I thought of, and it was the one thing I couldn’t speak about.

  Besides her lawyer, only four friends were privy to Dolores decision: Maria, Winnie, Suzanne Zada and Valerie Imbleau, the young woman who had been the technical consultant on Come Fly with Me. Valerie had earlier relocated to New York, begun a new career as a photographer and revived her friendship with Dolores. She had even accompanied Dolores on a visit to Regina Laudis.

  Maria remembered, “I felt her call deeply. We had spoken of it metaphorically as hanging on to a branch of a tree, letting go one finger at a time. As long as she had one finger on the branch, she hadn’t let go completely. I knew at some moment a decision had to be made to keep holding or finally to let go.” Winnie was not surprised either; she had been aware of Dolores visits to the monastery. “I felt her decision was thoughtfully made over a period of time,” Winnie said, “and I was proud of her daring to run toward a genuine calling.”

  Valerie felt Dolores’ call on a profoundly personal level. Val was seriously considering entering religious life herself.

  Suzanne Zada, however, was aghast. “It was horrible that she was giving up a life that had so much promise. She was in full blossom, and to dig a hole and go into a monastery where she could be seen only through a grille—to me that was horrible. I looked upon the nuns at Regina Laudis as the enemy.”

  —Monastic life is a difficult and mysterious concept for many people and conjures up frightening images of austerity and isolation. I would come to hear over and over the concern that I had not chosen a more active life in the Church—teaching, nursing, social service. But I had thought of these only fitfully. There were areas of the active life that I found distracting and personally insufficient for my aims. I was choosing a contemplative life because of a desire to seek God in a pure and direct way and because of an instinct that I could neither define nor explain, except to say that it was the Spirit of God pressing me to find Him—and Regina Laudis was the way.

  It was decided that “D-day”—the date for my entrance—would be June 13, 1963. That would give me less than six months to close down one life and prepare for another.

  —Your cloak-and-dagger period.

  Don’t laugh. I probably would have made a good CIA agent.

  “Scripts and offers were being received with a regularity that should have put Dolores on cloud nine,” recalled Harry Bernsen, “but she kept putting everything off. I couldn’t understand why she was behaving that way. Just a few months earlier she had been ecstatic about the way the career was going.” Harry had four scripts from MGM alone. Joe Pasternak sent two scripts for comedies boasting major directors: A Ticklish Affair directed by George Sidney and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father directed by Vincente Minnelli (Shirley Jones got both roles). Boris Sagal was interested in her for Twilight of Honor (Yvette Mimieux was cast). And Henry Levin was still waiting for her to sign on for Honeymoon Hotel. Although Harry had no scripts on his desk from Twentieth Century-Fox at that moment, Dolores still owed that studio a third movie on her three-picture deal.

  Robert Rossen asked her to test for the title character opposite Warren Beatty in Lilith. He thought Dolores natural girl-next-door quality would make for an intriguing contrast with the character of a young schizophrenic in a New England sanatorium. Harry urged her to do the test for Rossen, but she asked him to beg off for her (Rossen’s other choice for the role, Jean Seberg, was cast).

  Hal Wallis changed his mind again. Instead of casting her in A Girl Named Tamiko, he decided to loan her to Universal Pictures for the romantic comedy King of the Mountain opposite Marlon Brando and David Niven. Its release title was Bedtime Story, but it didn’t ring any bells until it was remade in 1988 as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and later musicalized for Broadway. That offer carried a deal for two additional films that would have given Dolores multiple-picture commitments with three major studios plus Hal Wallis, who had drawn up a new contract giving him a picture a year for four years and put Dolores in line for a pay raise to $7,000 a week.

  I knew I was creating chaos, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to tell Harry, or anyone in the business for that matter—certainly not the truth. Harry was under pressure and in a constant state of frustration. I knew the agency was going to be furious and not only over lost commissions. I could make them look foolish by letting them negotiate commitments that I wasn’t going to fulfill.

  But how could I sign those contracts? I couldn’t tell the truth because I hadn’t yet been officially accepted into the monastery; I would have been burning bridges behind and in front of me. Professionally, I was walking a very precarious tightrope. How I wished I had the security of knowing the thing was going to happen. No one was telling me, go ahead; this is right! Or no, it’s not to be; hold on to your day job.

  The only one I could unburden my heart to was, of course, Maria. I must have written her every other day. I told her I had to know that if everything fell through, and I was in the poorhouse instead of the monastery, she would bring me an ice cream cake—with a file in it. I was also speaking pretty regularly with her father during my prayers, asking him to advise me or, if he already had influence upstairs, to put Someone Else on my case.

  Even though she had no intention of doing the Brando film, in order to quell any suspicions at the agency she did keep an appointment with Larry Germain, the hairstylist at Universal, for preliminary wig fittings. Jan Shepard went to the studio with her, and afterward the girls stopped at nearby Dupar’s restaurant. There, over hot-fudge sundaes, Dolores confided that she wasn’t going to do the film.

  “I couldn’t believe it when she said she was turning down a costarring role with Marlon Brando”, Jan related. “I thought she had gone off the deep end. I asked her why, and she answered, ‘Because I’m getting married.’

  “Well, knowing the engagement with Don was off, I asked Dolores whom she was marrying. She said, ‘Christ.’ It was then she
told me about her visits to the monastery and that she had found there what she had long been searching for. She also swore me to secrecy. I didn’t even tell my husband.”

  Without giving any explanation, Dolores asked Harry to put everyone off as long as he could—which he reluctantly did. The agents were having a tough time buying her vague references to “personal reasons”, but the head honcho, Phil Gersh, was sympathetic. In his best fatherly manner, he told her that the agency would give her a hiatus from professional involvements and slow down on drumming up activity in the business—stop the pressure but remain behind her with no questions asked. Gersh told me many years later that he thought that Dolores was going through a severe depression over the breakup but that he and Harry were confident that she was on the threshold of becoming a major star.

  There was one offer Harry had that I could do. It was a segment on the filmed TV series The Virginian, which would take only a week. It was the least I could do for all of Harry’s efforts on my behalf, and the timing couldn’t have been better. The show was the perfect answer to the disorder in my life, and the role so undemanding that I could have phoned it in.

  Shooting began the week of February 23, 1963. February 23 had been the date for the wedding. I wrote to Mother Columba,

  Wow, I really don’t know how the people on the series maintain their sanity. We don’t finish shooting until 7:30 or 8 at night, and by the time I get home and study the dialogue for the next day, it is past 11, and up again at 5:30. The routine at Regina Laudis will seem easy in comparison—well, I can dream, can’t I? By the way, James Drury, our leading man, got an attack of the flu yesterday right after our love scene. Couldn’t help but think it was the Regina Laudis bug and he didn’t even know it.

  It was necessary for me to get the approval of my parish priest to be eligible for acceptance into the monastery. Monsignor Devlin had left no doubt that he would reject that request. When I advised Reverend Mother that I was empty-handed as far as approval was concerned, she felt my best course of action would be to get permission from the Archdiocese of Hartford on my next trip east, using the monastery address as my residence. Mother Columba wrote to the archbishop of Hartford and received an appointment for me to meet him at the end of the month.