Dolores Hart

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Dolores Hart and Stephen Boyd (1961)

Dolores Hart OSB (born October 20, 1938 in Chicago , Illinois ; real name Dolores Hicks ) is a former American film actress who starred in ten films between 1956 and 1962 before she decided to enter a Benedictine monastery , where she is prioress today.

biography

childhood

Born at 10:30 a.m. on the morning of October 20, 1938, Dolores Marie Hicks was the only child of actor Bert Hicks and his wife Harriett Lee Pittman. Because her parents, who soon moved to Los Angeles , argued constantly and the marriage was considered broken, little Dolores lived temporarily with her maternal grandparents in Chicago.

Betty Hicks, a sister of her father, married Mario Lanza , who thus became her uncle. Dolores was often babysitting the Lanza children until the family moved to Italy .

actress

At the age of eight she stood for the adventure film Amber, the great courtesan (original title: Forever Amber ) for the first time in front of the camera.

In 1956, she signed a film contract with producer Hal B. Wallis and made her film debut at Elvis Presley's side in Gold from a Hot Throat ( Loving You ). Wallis asked her to adopt a new name. In his opinion, Hicks wouldn't do well on billboards. As a first name he preferred Susan, the name of her first film role. Because her long-time friend Sheila Hart was about to get married and would therefore drop her old name, she wished to transfer her old name to Dolores. So it was that Dolores took the new surname Hart. In early press releases she was introduced as Susan Hart and as "the girl all other girls will hate for kissing Elvis Presley for the first time in a movie." But when her mother read this, she got angry and made such a fuss that Wallis finally agreed to keep her first name Dolores. While one on the maternal family side was happy to be rid of the old surname Hicks, her father was anything but enthusiastic about this decision.

After two films with Anna Magnani , Anthony Quinn and Montgomery Clift , she shot again with Elvis Presley in 1958. Immediately before but she had a nine-month engagement at Broadway in New York , where she at Longacre Theater for the play The Pleasure of His Company on the stage stood. It was at this time that she felt drained and - following the advice of a friend - traveled to the Benedictine monastery Regina Laudis for the first time on November 12, 1958 to relax. After the two-day stay, her batteries were recharged and she was ready to return to the stage. During her other stage appearances in New York, she traveled several times to the monastery and after the end of her engagement in New York stayed for a whole week before returning to Hollywood .

During the shooting of her fifth film The Plunderers ( The Plunderers ) in 1959, she had serious doubts about her previous life as an actress. As she was combing her hair in her cabin and looking in the mirror, she heard the following words in her head: "You know that this is not what you want". This warning "voice" kept coming back over the next two years.

During the shooting of her seventh film Francis ( Francis of Assisi ), which took place on location in Italy, she received an audience with Pope John XXIII. who called her by her film name Chiara and gave her a decisive impetus for her early entry into religious life.

Because she had already applied for admission to the Regina Laudis monastery, but still had to wait for the confirmation of admission, she could not enter into a longer-term film contract, but on the other hand she could not make her project public without running the risk of not being accepted into monastic life and thereby losing their future in the film business. So she played for time and among other things - surprisingly for the outside world - suggested an offer to co-star Marlon Brando in Two Successful Seducers ( Bedtime Story ). Instead, she accepted an offer for a guest role on the television series The People at Shiloh Ranch ( The Virginian ). This was around the end of February 1963 turned Episode 1.28 entitled The Mountain of the Sun .

nun

At the beginning of 1963 Dolores Hart turned her back on Hollywood, broke her engagement to the businessman Don Robinson, who never married afterwards and visited her annually at Easter and Christmas until his death in 2011, and entered the Benedictine nunnery “Regina Laudis” in Bethlehem ( Connecticut ) a. She first completed the usual probationary period as a postulant , in which she was addressed as Miss Dolores (dt. Miss Dolores ). It was a difficult time when she often felt lonely and abandoned, cried almost every night and thought seriously about leaving monastic life. At that time, the atmosphere in the Regina Laudis monastery was still very different from the situation in today's abbey . The postulants and novices were not yet allowed to address the profession of nuns, newcomers were treated like nobody and moved in a zone that did not "belong" to that of the nuns with perpetual profession . There was a real breakup.

When she was dressed on June 29, 1964 , she became a novice and henceforth was addressed as Sister Judith (German sister Judith ). In a religious sense, Judith is seen as a complement to Dolorosa in that the first is the strong one who can conquer the suffering that plagues the second. This mutual interaction of the two names and their meanings may have been one of the reasons for the choice of this name by the abbess .

By taking her first vow on June 29, 1966 , Sister Judith was now in the position herself for the first time to influence developments in the monastery, which she hopes that today's postulant or novice will no longer have to go through the phase of isolation, how she lived it herself at the time.

With the last vow made on July 11, 1970 , she became a nun with all rights and duties and has since been addressed as Mother Dolores (dt. Mother Dolores ). She was overjoyed that she got her real name back. In January 2001, Mother Dolores was appointed Prioress of Regina Laudis Abbey.

illness

At the beginning of 1997, mother Dolores underwent root canal treatment , which resulted in neuropathy that not only led to long-lasting jaw pain, but also caused her serious problems with standing and walking over a long period of time, so that she only used a wheelchair to cover greater distances could. For four years the disease was so severe that she couldn't even snap her fingers.

Others

With the support of her friend Patricia Neal , mother Dolores founded the open air theater The Gary-The Olivia in 1986 , which is located on the property of the Regina Laudis Abbey and is intended to encourage people to visit the abbey. It was named in honor of Gary Cooper , the father of their mutual friend Maria Cooper Janis, and the daughter of Patricia Neal, who died at a young age. In addition, CD projects were carried out in the abbey.

Dolores Hart is still eligible to vote for the Oscar award with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences .

A short documentary about her life, God Is the Bigger Elvis , was nominated for an Oscar in 2012 .

On August 14, 2013, she visited Graceland for the first time and participated in the celebrations in honor of Elvis Presley.

Filmography (selection)

swell

  • Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2013 ISBN 978-1-58617-747-8

Web links

Commons : Dolores Hart  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 6f
  2. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 14ff
  3. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 24
  4. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 35f
  5. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 51
  6. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 83f
  7. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 104
  8. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 110ff
  9. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 122
  10. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 139
  11. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 194
  12. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 185f
  13. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 187
  14. ↑ The People of Shiloh Ranch: The Mountain of the Sun. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  15. ↑ a b Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 209
  16. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 205
  17. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 201f
  18. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 210
  19. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 227
  20. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 232
  21. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 244f
  22. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 264
  23. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 342
  24. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 252
  25. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 276
  26. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 402
  27. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , pp. 387f
  28. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 398
  29. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 345ff
  30. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 352
  31. ↑ Mother Dolores Hart, OSB and Richard DeNeut: The Ear of the Heart , p. 372ff
  32. ↑ Mother Dolores visits Graceland (accessed September 10, 2013)
personal data
SURNAME Hard, Dolores
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hicks, Dolores; Mother Dolores
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois , United States