Dolores Hart: The Actress Who Gave Up Fame for Faith

In this latest installment of When Character Counted, we meet the actress who exchanged the glamour of Hollywood for a nun’s habit and the monastic life.

Dolores Hart starred with Elvis Presley in "King Creole" in 1958. She eventually turned away from Hollywood. Paramount Pictures/MovieStillDb

In 1957, 19-year-old Dolores Hart won the female lead in “Loving You,” the newest movie featuring Elvis Presley, where she became the first actress to kiss Elvis on screen. Since childhood, Hart had wanted to be a film star, and now her dream was coming true. “I often wonder why the Lord gave me such an opportunity to audition for Elvis,” she said 55 years later. “There were so many of us in line that day, and I just can’t believe I got the part.”

“Loving You” launched her into a whirlwind of movie-making: nine more films in five years, including “Where the Boys Are,” “Francis of Assisi,” “Come Fly with Me,” and another Elvis movie, “King Creole.” In these pictures she appeared with some of that era’s celebrated actors, men like Montgomery Clift, Warren Beatty, Karl Malden, Anthony Quinn, and George Hamilton. Dolores Hart was walking on a red carpet into the future.

Meanwhile, Hart had met California architect Don Robinson. After a long period of off-and-on dating, the couple became engaged.

Yet something wasn’t right.

In the Shadow of the Cross

In 1959, Hart was on Broadway as Jessica Poole in “The Pleasure of His Company,” a role that brought her an Emmy nomination. Burned out with the near-daily stage appearances, she sought the counsel of a friend, who recommended she spend some time in retreat at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Though reluctant to go, once there Hart found the rest and freedom from the world she’d sought. “It just felt peaceful,” she said years later. “I knew I was myself.”

Over the next few years, the actress several times revisited the abbey. Once Hart asked the abbess whether she too might have a vocation, but was advised to return to Hollywood and get acting out of her system before considering the contemplative life. She did so with a sense of relief, yet the thought of becoming a Benedictine and joining the community nagged at her. “What bothered me, in the back of my mind, is I was thinking about going back to Regina Laudis.”

Meanwhile, Hart’s faith deepened. Her father and mother were teens when she was born. When their marriage fell apart, she was sent to live with her grandparents in Chicago, who enrolled her in a parochial school, not for the religious education but because it was close to home. At age 10, she became a Catholic, and even after she rejoined her mother, she continued to practice her faith. Once established in Hollywood, she rose most mornings at 6 a.m. to attend daily Mass. “Every role I got, I prayed for,” she later said.

Dolores Hart and director Michael Curtiz, looking at sketches on the set of the film “Francis of Assisi,” 1961. Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images

‘An Affair of the Heart’

In 1963, Hart’s spiritual debate over her vocation reached the breaking point. She finally decided that she was called to exchange the glitter and fame of Hollywood for the austerity and peace of the convent.

Her decision shocked Hollywood and the nation. For one so young to give up wealth, success, and celebrity in favor of the religious life was for many people unfathomable. When she informed her agent of her decision, he gifted Hart with a golden razor, saying, “You’ve committed suicide.” Producer Hal Wallis told her, “Don’t bother coming back to Hollywood. I will never let you work again.”

Hart had become particularly close to actor Karl Malden and his family, often staying with the children when the Maldens were away. After making her decision, she drove to Malden’s house, gave her jewelry and dresses to his daughters, whom she had recently asked to be her bridesmaids, and told them she was leaving Hollywood on account of “an affair of the heart.”

Her toughest farewell was with her fiancé, Don Robinson. With the wedding only two weeks away, her unexpected announcement devastated him. She tried to explain, but as she later said, “How do you explain God?” Robinson would date other women, but he never married.

His story after their breakup also contains elements of an Arthurian romance. Robinson’s love for Hart never faded, and twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, he visited her in the monastery. By all accounts, the two of them remained companions of the heart until his death in 2011.

The year of 1963, as Hart later related, “was a terrifying time.”

An MGM studio portrait of Dolores Hart in 1963, the year she entered the monastery. Public Domain

Mother Dolores

Part of that terror rose from the abrupt shift in lifestyle and priorities that greeted her in the abbey. “The first night I felt like I had jumped off a 20-story building and landed flat on my back.” She was astounded to find that she had to sing with the others seven times daily and to share a bathroom with ten other nuns. She later described the novitiate as being “skinned alive.”

Yet she remained at Regina Laudis, serving as a prioress of education, developing a theater program for those outside the walls of the convent, counseling visitors, writing an autobiography, and living the consecrated life.

Whatever our religious faith or beliefs, if we put ourselves into the shoes of Dolores Hart in 1963, we must marvel at the struggles that assailed her, at her character and strength, and at her commitment, which flies in the face of all modern sensibilities.

Mother Dolores Hart at the 84th Annual Academy Awards on Feb. 26, 2012 in Hollywood, Calif. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

But as Hart related in an HBO mini-biography of her life, “The abbey was like a grace of God that just entered my life in a way that was totally unexpected, and God was the vehicle.” She then smiled and laughed a little when she said, “He was the bigger Elvis.”

Mother Dolores Hart still resides at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, where she serves as Dean of Education. She is also a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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