Hart, who turns 84 later this month, was once described as “the next Grace Kelly” but these days she is best known for being the only voting nun at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The clean girl from Chicago was only 19 when she made her big screen debut in 1957’s Loving You. Elvis himself was still only 22 but already a major recording star and emerging actor. He had already had a supporting role in the 1956 film Love Me Tender, but he was immediately a sensational Hollywood king, taking on his first leading role in Loving You as deliveryman Deke Rivers, an aspiring singer who portrays the love story of Susie Hart, “The Girl who loved him so much. For his disability.”
Aside from making headlines when she took holy orders, Hart also holds a place in movie history as the actress who gave Elvis his first proper kiss on screen.
“It’s the last scene of the movie, but when you get on set, you’re told, ‘That’s the first thing you’re going to do,'” Hart recalls. I remember having to put my arms around him and kiss him. There were about 100 people on the sound stage. Seconds later, director Hal Kanter shouted ‘Cut! I thought, ‘Oh no, how can I kiss wrongly?’
“He immediately asked the make-up guy to come and fix me. I thought, ‘What’s going on?'” That’s it, it’s over for me. Well, said Hal, ‘Dolores, you blush in your ears. It’s red. We need makeup.” I was so embarrassed.”
Then it was Elvis’ turn.
The two became close during filming and their chemistry was so obvious that she was again invited to star in front of him again the following year on King Creole.
She had nothing but praise for the King’s old demeanor and manners: “When I first met him, he was just a charming boy with long sideburns. He couldn’t have been more generous. He jumped to his feet and said, ‘Good evening, Miss Dolores.’ It was he and Gary Cooper. The only ones in Hollywood who called me that.”
King Creole was one of the few to give Elvis a deeper, darker role as Danny, the young club singer involved in the New Orleans slick gang.
King has always cited it as one of his favorite shows, and Hart said he deserved better than he got from Hollywood in terms of roles and the way it was used.
Dolores said, “Elvis told me this was the first picture where he had a really good acting role. He really wanted to be the next Jimmy Dean.
“He could have done it too, because he learned to play the character and not just himself. But his manager was only thinking about money and all he did after that was just with the girls and stuff.”
Dolores was there as Elvis’ fame was already starting to take over his life: “By the time we did our second movie, we couldn’t walk down the street because there were so many people waiting for him, they just wanted to touch him.”
Incredibly, she was about to make an even more extraordinary transformation on her part.
Dolores said, “It was meant to be a welcoming retreat from New York where I could think about the next step in my career. But I wasn’t expecting how peaceful it really would be. I found a certainty within. I felt like this was where I belong, and it became more than just a sanctuary.” .
“This is the kind of feeling you get when you meet the person you are going to marry. The more you come to visit, the more you will contact me. The more I know that God is present to me in a very special way that I cannot deny.”
In fact, she was engaged to marry Los Angeles architect Don Robinson.
Dolores ended the relationship, and at the age of 24, she moved away from Hollywood forever. In 1963, during the press tour of her last film, Come Fly With Me, she gave up all her worldly possessions and entered a convent. She told Come Fly With Me co-star Karl Malden that it’s a “affair from the heart.”
Robinson never married and would visit her there every birthday and holiday until his death in 2011.
Hart pulled out of the world until she made a dramatic comeback at the Academy Awards in 2012 when the HBO film based on her story, God Is the Bigger Elvis, was nominated for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (Short Subject).
The former actress appeared on the red carpet as usual and used publicity to help raise awareness for fundraising efforts to save the dilapidated monastery buildings.
The following year, she released an autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows.
[ad_2]
