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All of Hollywood’s jaws dropped when Actress Dolores Hart announced that she would be leaving Beverly Hills behind to enter the convent as a novice. To be fair, who could blame them? Her colleagues couldn’t believe this young actress – at the peak of her career with several box office hits under her belt – was going to “throw it all away!” Of course, we know that Dolores hart certainly wasn’t “throwing her life away!” Nevertheless, many of us secretly want to know what led her to make such a dramatic decision! That’s why Doug Keck is hosting a...

From the Turner Classic Movies website:Rev. Mother Dolores Hart, a former film star who became a Roman Catholic nun, is the TCM Guest Programmer for May. Now Prioress of the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., Hart made 10 films in six years in the 1950s and '60s, appearing with such costars as Elvis Presley (Loving You, 1957), Anna Magnani (Wild Is the Wind, 1957) and George Hamilton (Where the Boys Are, 1960). Hart chooses Lisa (aka The Inspector, 1962), a film in which she starred as a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War...

The autobiography of Mother Dolores Hart (written with her long-time friend, Richard DeNeut), The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows, is now available from Ignatius Press. Here is some of the descriptive copy, from the Ignatius Press site: Dolores Hart stunned Hollywood in 1963, when after ten highly successful feature films, she chose to enter a contemplative monastery. ... Dolores was a bright and beautiful college student when she made her film debut with Elvis Presley in Paramount's 1957 Loving You. She acted in nine more movies with other big stars such as...

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...

When Dolores Hart, 73, walks the red carpet at this year's Academy Awards as planned, no interviewer will need to ask who made her dress. She will be wearing her nun's habit from the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., where she lives a life of contemplation and hospitality and is mother prioress. Mother Dolores, as she is now known, is the subject this year of an Oscar-nominated documentary short, "God Is the Bigger Elvis," which airs April 5 on HBO. The documentary chronicles her life as a nun after a Hollywood career that saw her co-star with...

Dolores Hart had it all. Billed as "the next Grace Kelly" for her beauty and acting talent, she had a seven-figure studio contract, roles opposite some of the industry's biggest names and was the envy of girls everywhere for giving Elvis Presley his first on-screen kiss. During a break 1963, aged 24, she told her bosses at MGM she was heading to see friends in the country. They sent a limousine to drop her off at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, in Bethlehem, Connecticut. It turned out to be a one-way journey. Next Sunday, nearly half a century after she...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Dolores Hart, who at age 24 startled the film world in 1962 by leaving a thriving screen career — including two roles opposite Elvis Presley — to become a nun, has returned to Hollywood for her first visit after 43 years in a monastery. Now the Rev. Mother Dolores Hart and prioress of the cloistered community at Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut, she has been renewing friendships from her studio years. Why? To spread awareness about a largely mysterious neurological disorder that afflicts countless Americans, including herself, called peripheral idiopathic neuropathy. Last month, Hart testified...