Actress-turned-nun Mother Dolores Hart
Posted on 02/27/2012 7:11:31 AM PST by NYer
Actress-turned-nun Mother Dolores Hart
I wrote in April about the new play "Nunset Boulevard" by Dan Goggin opening at Theatre at the Center in Munster.
In this stage comedy, a group of nuns trying to raise money to save its convent dares to risk a cross-country trip to face the evils of today's Hollywood and audition for a new movie based on the life of Dolores Hart.
Although the play was pure silly imagination, Hart, now 73, is the very real actress who had a successful film career in 1950s Hollywood opposite famous leading men such as Elvis Presley, Montgomery Clift, Robert Wagner and George Hamilton.
But in 1963, at age 25, Hart, who was born and raised in Chicago, gave up her movie career to become a nun.
And Sunday, wearing her full black and white habit, she walked the red carpet of the Academy Awards for the first time in decades and for a very good cause: to raise money and awareness for her order of nuns, which needs help to save her convent.
Also, a movie about her life was nominated for Best Documentary.
Suddenly, Goggin's stage play that entertained audiences in Munster doesn't seem nearly as far-fetched.
Hart's order of sisterhood is from the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn.
Mother Dolores, as she is now known, is the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary short "God is the Bigger Elvis," which will air April 5 on HBO.
It chronicles her life as a nun after a Hollywood career in which she co-starred with Presley in "Loving You" in 1957 and "King Creole" in 1958, Anthony Quinn in "Wild is the Wind" in 1957 and Hamilton in "Where the Boys Are" in 1960.
The name of the documentary plays up her tag as "the nun who kissed Elvis." In her roles opposite Presley, just years before her calling to become a nun, she had scenes sharing passionate kisses and embraces.
The last time Hart walked the Oscars' red carpet, there wasn't a Joan Rivers, TMZ or "Entertainment Tonight."
It was April 9, 1962, at the Santa Monica Civic, and it was syndicated Hollywood columnists such as Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons and Army Archerd of "Variety" who ruled media coverage.
She said she dropped her Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences membership after accepting her nun vows, but agreed to have it reinstated in 1990 at the urging of our own region Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden, who then was president of the Film Academy and who had worked with her on her final film, "Come Fly With Me."
"They could send me films to be evaluated, which they couldn't do in the 1960s," she told writer Susan King of the Los Angeles Times last week.
"He (Malden) felt my opinion would be important to them. He felt to have an opinion of someone who had led a contemplative life would have significance. The lady abbess (her superior) was completely convinced by him. I was reinstated. I had to pay my dues; we didn't want to take any privileges that weren't appropriate."
She’s still pretty after all these years. And bravo to Karl Malden - one of Hollywood and New York’s greatest actors.
Starlet-turned-nun gets another taste of the Red Carpet treatment
She looks fabulous for 73 years of age! Abbey life agrees with her. And look at those long, slender fingers. My grandmother always called them 'piano' fingers.
She’s gorgeous! I noticed her hands as well.
Think of almost all the other actresses younger than her that have ruined themselves with surgeries and fake this and that. Not to mention the drugs and other abuses. God Bless this lady.
Was “Where the Boys Are” shot partially in San Francisco? The reason I ask is that an ex boyfriend of mine was hired as an extra in that. Fraternity men from UC Berkeley were told to report to some location in SF (I think it was the docks). Those who showed up in brown shoes were made soldiers, and those wearing black shoes were provided uniforms as sailors.
It was very early in the filming and no one was sure what the title would be, or when the film would be released, but the working title was “Where the Boys Are”. This would have been late in 1958, but I don’t think the film actually came out until the early 1960s. I think that those chosen were paid $100 per day — a princely sum at the time.
I never saw the film, and all that soldier/sailor footage probably ended up on the cutting room floor.
Did she really come to the Oscars?
I didn’t see her.
How beautifully she has aged. I hope that they raise the money needed to keep the Abbey alive.
Filming locations for
Where the Boys Are (1960) More at IMDbPro »
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA
(studio)
Thanks.
I always tape the Oscars to run through all the commercials-
guess I accidentally ran through her appearance.
I guess ABC hostess Robin Roberts did not single her out because of her habit. But ... she was there!
Dolores Hart arrives before the 84th Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
Well, I think it was started in San Francisco because of my friend’s involvement. That film may have never made it to the final version, but that was the working title. I know that the finished film is supposed to be Ft. Lauderdale (isn’t this the movie that started the whole spring break craze?) I find it hard to believe that they could integrate San Francisco scenes into a Ft. Lauderdale movie, no matter how handsome the college boys were in their sailor suits and army fatigues. The “light” would be so different in the 2 locations that the SF shots would look totally out of place, even if they did have big beautiful ships in them.
She looks so happy. She does have beautiful hands, too!
She looks so happy. She does have beautiful hands, too!
But who knows?
Like any outstanding actress, she is aware how she looks on camera. Many pretty women are only too aware and this makes them seem stiff.
Very ordinary women, on the other hand, look great
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