''Monastic life is impossible for most people to understand. People think that it is a life that is shut off, or you're gone from the world, but it's exactly opposite. You are more embedded into the world. It's a way of love that includes everyone that you've ever loved.''—Mother Dolores Hart, quoted in Thom Geier, “Mother Dolores Hart: The Nun Who Kissed Elvis Presley,” Entertainment Weekly, Feb. 11, 2011
This year’s most unlikely Oscar voter--perhaps the most unlikely one in the 80-plus-year history of the Academy--is Mother Dolores Hart. Film fans with very long memories may recall her earlier life as a Hollywood starlet of the late Fifties and early Sixties, when she made 10 films (including Where the Boys Are) before walking away from it all to enter the cloistered Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn.
Every year at this time, Hollywood engages in an awards ceremony not only flagrantly self-congratulatory but doubly laughable when you get a load of the vain bimbos and himbos on the red carpet. Though most readers of this blog would find Ms. Hart’s act of worldly renunciation in 1963 astonishing, the Tinseltown veterans who strut and fret their hour upon the stage must view her as something akin to a creature from another planet. (In fact, play Jeff Bridges’ 1984 film Star Man and see if his alien isn’t allowed a greater sense of humanity than most of the nuns depicted onscreen in recent decades.)
What a shame all this is--the men who run Hollywood will never understand the impulse behind Mother Dolores’ remarkable story, a total denial of self and commitment to God and others. Yet all of this comes with a funny bone that remains intact nearly a half century after she changed her life so radically. (In other interviews, when asked what it was like to kiss Elvis Presley onscreen in Loving You, she’s answered puckishly: “I think the limit for a screen kiss back then was something like 15 seconds. That one has lasted 40 years.")
The Entertainment Weekly article is fascinating not only for how Mother Dolores views recent Hollywood fare such as Black Swan, The Hurt Locker and Avatar (which won her vote for Best Picture last year), but also for the life she left behind (including a fiancee who, after their engagement ended, has never married) and the affectionate reminiscences of former co-stars such as Paula Prentiss Benjamin and Robert Wagner.
One hopes that someday, movie moguls will take to heart the true lesson of Mother Dolores' life: the persistent way that love abides, even in its most unexpected form.
This year’s most unlikely Oscar voter--perhaps the most unlikely one in the 80-plus-year history of the Academy--is Mother Dolores Hart. Film fans with very long memories may recall her earlier life as a Hollywood starlet of the late Fifties and early Sixties, when she made 10 films (including Where the Boys Are) before walking away from it all to enter the cloistered Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn.
Every year at this time, Hollywood engages in an awards ceremony not only flagrantly self-congratulatory but doubly laughable when you get a load of the vain bimbos and himbos on the red carpet. Though most readers of this blog would find Ms. Hart’s act of worldly renunciation in 1963 astonishing, the Tinseltown veterans who strut and fret their hour upon the stage must view her as something akin to a creature from another planet. (In fact, play Jeff Bridges’ 1984 film Star Man and see if his alien isn’t allowed a greater sense of humanity than most of the nuns depicted onscreen in recent decades.)
What a shame all this is--the men who run Hollywood will never understand the impulse behind Mother Dolores’ remarkable story, a total denial of self and commitment to God and others. Yet all of this comes with a funny bone that remains intact nearly a half century after she changed her life so radically. (In other interviews, when asked what it was like to kiss Elvis Presley onscreen in Loving You, she’s answered puckishly: “I think the limit for a screen kiss back then was something like 15 seconds. That one has lasted 40 years.")
The Entertainment Weekly article is fascinating not only for how Mother Dolores views recent Hollywood fare such as Black Swan, The Hurt Locker and Avatar (which won her vote for Best Picture last year), but also for the life she left behind (including a fiancee who, after their engagement ended, has never married) and the affectionate reminiscences of former co-stars such as Paula Prentiss Benjamin and Robert Wagner.
One hopes that someday, movie moguls will take to heart the true lesson of Mother Dolores' life: the persistent way that love abides, even in its most unexpected form.
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