The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (18 page)

With Dolores evenings committed to performing, I took in some of the other plays that were on that season. She was in very good company. The 1958-1959 season included
The Visit, A Raisin in the Sun, Look Back in Anger, The Most Happy Fella, Sweet Bird of Youth
and
Look Homeward, Angel
. I was also able to catch a dress rehearsal of a new musical opening off-Broadway,
Once Upon a Mattress
, which began the enduring career of my UCLA pal Carol Burnett. Dolores couldn’t accompany me to the rehearsal, but I was finally able to introduce my two favorite ladies.

I was amazed at how closely their lives paralleled. As youngsters in Los Angeles, both Carol and Dolores had hidden away to avoid the violence of alcoholic parents. Both were reared mainly by grandmothers who were real characters. (I’ve always thought, given the chance, Granny Kude would have taught Nanny White to drink a martini standing on her head.). Carol and Dolores also share a wicked sense of humor, a down-to-earth sense of responsibility and the passion necessary to bring each to her ultimate dream.

D and D were able to go to the theater together only once, to the Actors Fund benefit performance of
Redhead
with Gwen Verdon. On a Sunday, we “attended” the Academy Awards together. Richard Altman, my friend from UCLA days, now living in New York and teaching at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, threw an Oscar party at his Greenwich Village pad. Several other transplanted Uclans were there, including Merv Kaufman and Larry Swindell, who was then the reviewer for the Westchester County Newspaper Group (and, fortunately, had called Dolores “enchanting” in his notice). Altman always maintained that he threw the party just to be able to say that Kaufman and Hart attended.

William Perlberg and George Seaton came backstage late in the run of
Pleasure
. The Perlberg-Seaton Company, which was headquartered at Paramount, had just bought the movie rights to the play, and that night they promised Dolores that she would repeat her role in the film.

I literally floated above the ground for the next several weeks. Then one night Debbie Reynolds appeared backstage with the news that she had just been cast in the movie—in my part. I was totally devastated. I barely managed smiles and congratulations. It was the only time I’ve ever experienced the urge to kill. All the original actors would be replaced save one. Twinkly Charlie Ruggles repeated his role in the movie. I could never bring myself to see it
.

George Peppard was the first cast member to leave the show, and I tried to get my friend James Douglas the part. James was a perfect fit for it and flew to New York to audition. I read with him. But Jim didn’t get the part. I had to call him to break the news, and it was the hardest thing I had ever done
.

Richard Altman contacted Dolores about the possibility of one of his students auditioning for the role, and they met Dolores for coffee after a performance. Thinking he looked wonderful for the part, she arranged an audition for him. But Robert Redford didn’t get it either.

In June, wedding bells were going to ring for Winnie, setting off an alarm in Dolores. She had met the groom-to-be and thought she recognized her father in him and cautioned Winnie, who would not be dissuaded. Winnie’s family was against the marriage but waited until just four days before the wedding to withdraw their support, taking back her grandmother’s wedding dress she was counting on wearing.

“I’ll never forget,” Winnie said, “Dolores took me by the hand to Lord and Taylor, where we saw an ideal gown on a mannequin. It fit me perfectly. Dolores bought it on the spot as a wedding present. She was supposed be my bridesmaid, but the wedding was scheduled in upstate New York on a matinee day, which made it impossible. Still, she drove up early that morning just to see me in my wedding dress. She had to turn around and drive back to Manhattan immediately.”

As the end of her contract grew near and the play was showing no signs of fading, the producers asked Dolores to extend until the end of the run and then go on the road with it. Since Hal Wallis had nothing in the offing for her at the studio, she strongly considered extending, especially since her New York agent, Ray Powers, had arranged for her to test for the TV presentation of Edith Wharton’s novel
Ethan Frome
, which would be done in New York. I was excited at the prospect because the book was a favorite of mine and I thought she would make a fine Mattie Silver.

—I didn’t get the role—Julie Harris did
.

Back in Hollywood, however, Harry Bernsen had lined up a test with director Henry Koster for the lead role in
The Story of Ruth
—a biblical drama—and both he and Hal Wallis felt Dolores should return sooner rather than later.

I had to agree that I would be better off in Hollywood, even if I wasn’t working, because at least I would be available. And I had come to the realization that, as much as I loved the Broadway experience, I did miss making movies
.

I was told that one of the rewards of a long run on the stage is that it gives you the opportunity of tiring of everything and everybody gradually, and you don’t feel the letdown when it’s over. Don’t believe it. I think it’s the biggest scourge of show business. I felt completely empty, and nothing filled the space for a long while after
.

Her last engagement before departing New York was to join other young players named by
Theatre World
as the most outstanding of the season for a group photograph.
Theatre World
has been, since 1944, the official chronicle of each Broadway and Off-Broadway season and acknowledges its best debut performances. Among the other actors photographed that day were William Shatner, Ina Balin, Larry Hagman and Rip Torn.

So, with 364 performances in
The Pleasure of His Company
behind her, a Tony nomination and a
Theatre World
award, “Broadway’s newest star” headed back to Hollywood, with a very tiny, very quiet, very secret Pogo in her pocket.

Nine

The year in New York was one of the great learning experiences of my professional life. I had worked with a gifted company of actors and had studied with a master. I was coming back to Hollywood with confidence in my craft
.

I was also coming home with a heart filled with unanswered questions. I prayed that if the answers remained beyond my comprehension at that moment, God would give me the grace to live with the questions
.

The questions concerned that monastery in Connecticut that Faith Abbott had recommended. While Dolores was still in New York, the idea of visiting the monastery surfaced in her thoughts from time to time. What could it hurt to find out more about the place, she would wonder, but then she would turn her attention to something else.

Until the chilly autumn day she stood on a crowded corner in mid-town Manhattan and stared as the traffic light turned green, then red, then green again and she couldn’t move a muscle. A policeman approached her and asked if anything was wrong. She said she was only daydreaming, but when she got back to the apartment she told Winnie that it was time she did something about Faith’s suggestion.

When Faith first mentioned Regina Laudis, I thought it would be “blue” Catholic—you can’t get any more Catholic than that. Faith had been drawn to its traditional ways—Latin prayers and full-length habits. Still, it seemed to have potential as a getaway to massage the kinks out with meditation and prayer, and the fact that the order was contemplative happily meant that the nuns would not be constantly available
.

Dolores wrote to Regina Laudis for permission to visit overnight. The guest secretary, Mother Columba, thought the letter sounded very nice and shared it with the guest mistress, Mother Placid, who had grown up in New York City and was not unfamiliar with show-business folk.

Both women were convinced that actors and artists felt comfortable at Regina Laudis. Mother Placid had recently spent time with a visiting group of aspiring actresses who all lived at the Rehearsal Club in Manhattan. “The play
Stage Door
was about that place”, she was quick to tell me, sharing a bit of insider information. “Performers are always fun, if a little affected, and that group was particularly ‘actressy’—you see, they had all seen Ingrid Bergman play a nun. Frankly, I expected the same from this Dolores Hart. But I agreed that the letter was thoughtful and sincere.” An invitation to visit was extended.

Very early on my next day off—Monday, November 12, 1958—Pogo and I boarded a bus at New York’s Port Authority. I knew I was not supposed to bring pets into the guesthouse, much less on the bus, but Winnie was on call with the airline and I couldn’t leave him alone. He rode in my pocket. Two hours later we were deposited at the Regina Laudis “outpost”, Phillips Diner, in the small town—a village really—of Woodbury, Connecticut. At that time, Phillips resembled what it was, a real 1940s Pullman car. It has changed over the years but is still there. Out front was a phone booth. I had no small coins, so I splurged and dropped my sole quarter into the slot to call the only taxi listing in Woodbury
.

I shared with the driver, Herbie Robertson, the directions I had been given: “You’ll drive through Woodbury and up Flanders Road toward Bethlehem, to the monastery. If you get to Bethlehem, you’ve gone too far
.”

The drive up Flanders Road was short but, to my artist’s eye, full of God’s beauty. Although mid-November was late for the Technicolor extravaganza of a New England autumn, more than enough color remained in those woods, sparsely dotted with neat Connecticut houses, to inspire a greeting card or a calendar
.

As we turned onto the rugged grounds of the monastery, a small red-and-white farmhouse with a stone chimney came into view. Beyond and above the little house was a large, imposing building that looked like a factory, which, I was to learn, it had been. This was the monastery. Herbie deposited me at the entrance with cheerful assurance that I would enjoy my visit. I followed the handwritten instruction tacked to the door and knocked, then entered
.

I stood in a small entry. There was another door inside, the top half of which was a grille. The room certainly evoked a sense of the past
.

A nun appeared behind the grilled door
. “Benedicamus Domino”
(“Let us bless the Lord”), she said in an imposing, accented voice. I would later learn this was the portress, Mother Mary Aline, but at this moment there was no conversation. I was simply informed that Mother Placid would meet me in a parlor and was directed outside to an attached building just beyond a small chapel. Again, following printed instructions, I knocked and entered a tiny, dimly lit room of the same dark wood, divided by a grille of wooden lath, with straight chairs on either side. Not the parlor I was expecting. In a cloister, the word
parlor,
from the French
parler,
which means “to talk”, refers not only to the special room I was in but to a conversation with a nun. I sat and waited. Before long, a small—almost tiny—nun bounced into the parlor on the other side of the grille. She had a soft, round face with a very open smile under bright, twinkling eyes
.

“When I entered the parlor,” Mother Placid remembered, “I saw this lovely young woman with no trace of artifice about her. ‘You must be Miss Hart’, I said, with a hint of relief. During the next hour we talked about theater and films and found we shared an interest in art. She was very down to earth, direct. There was no mention of vocation. She was interested only in a place to come and get the cobwebs out. But I remember I had a feeling that she would return.”

Mother Placid thought her religious name was wonderful because, as she put it, “Guests expect a tall, willowy lady, and they get this pygmy who seems to have a screw loose somewhere.” I didn’t tell her that, with my sense of irony, I had expected a nun with the name Placid to come equipped with a ruler to whack my knuckles
.