When Hollywood Was Nice: Annette, Mother Dolores Honored This Week

In a summer where internal studio battles are exploding, talent agencies are attacking each other, gun violence is rampant in real life and on screen, football teams are spawning accused murderers, teen idols are out of control, and people don’t talk — they just text — it’s nice to reflect on this Sunday before Independence Day that there once was what, at least in retrospect, seemed to be a kinder, more innocent Hollywood. At least that was the feeling I got this week at two events celebrating two uniquely inspiring past stars, both very much off the radar of the industry that eats its young today. They are worth noting.
Many people today who worship the likes of the Kardashians may not know who Dolores Hart is. Or was. But in the late 1950s and early ’60s she was a genuine film star who gave Elvis Presley his first screen kiss in Loving You (1957) and again in King Creole (1958); searched for men in Where The Boys Are (1960); and co-starred opposite the likes of Montgomery Clift, Karl Malden, Anthony Quinn, Myrna Loy and many others until she suddenly gave it all up after attending the New York premiere of her last film (1963′s Come Fly With Me). She told the studio’s limo driver to drop her off at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, CT, and became a nun. That was exactly 50 years ago, and Mother Dolores, as she is now known, is still there and still doing great things with her life — even if it isn’t as the movie star she once was.
Mother Delores, now 74, has been in Los Angeles all week, and a few days ago I attended a reception thrown in her honor upon the publication of her autobiography, The Ear Of The Heart. It is the latest project to put the spotlight back on a remarkable life and story. In 2012, the HBO documentary God Is The Bigger Elvis, which also detailed her unusual journey “from Hollywood to Holy Vows”, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Short and brought Mother Dolores back to the Oscar red carpet for the first time since 1961. By the way, she is still a voting member of the actors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Sometimes she even wears a jacket with the AMPAS logo over her Habit — it was sent to her by one-time Academy president (and Come Fly With Me co-star) Karl Malden, who was also instrumental in re-instating her Academy membership in the early ’90s. The book is so compelling it could make a movie itself. Last week’s event, at which Mother Dolores and co-author Richard DeNeut read excerpts, drew some of her old Hollywood friends and co-stars like Tab Hunter and Earl Holliman, who both went on studio-set dates with her in the ’50s. Holliman told me they were getting very close to making out when she whispered in his ear, “Earl, I am in love with Jesus Christ”. He said there was not much he could do to match that kind of competition. Even then she seemed to know the path her life might take.