Fifty years after she made her last movie, former film star Dolores Hart has become a celebrity again.
Now Mother Dolores, the prioress of a Benedictine monastery in Connecticut — and still known as the nun who kissed Elvis Presley (in King Creole) — she has just had her autobiography published.
Titled The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, it follows a documentary featuring her life as a cloistered nun that picked up an Oscar nomination last year.
In her Hollywood days, Dolores Hart made 10 movies, including Loving You (also with Elvis), Where the Boys Are and Come Fly With Me. She also appeared in several television series.
Of Elvis, she says: “He was a doll. Anyone who has any problem with him, you don’t know the truth. He was a beautiful person.”
She is most proud of playing the title character in the 1962 drama Lisa, as a Jewish girl who survived the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp only to be pursued by traitors after World War II intending to force her into prostitution.
Explaining to Catholic News Service the background to the documentary on her life, God is the Bigger Elvis, she said Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the late papal nuncio to the United States, summoned her to his office one day and told her, “You are to make a movie about consecrated life.”
Mother Dolores protested, saying all her Hollywood contacts were dead.
“And he said, ‘No, no, no, no. God will help you do this, because this has to be done,’ ” she recalled. Four days later, representatives of the HBO television network — none of whom had ever heard of Archbishop Sambi — called to ask permission to film at her convent.
Mother Dolores is the only nun to be accredited as a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the group that chooses the Oscar winners.
Catholic News Service said that comes in handy for the occasional movie night at the monastery.
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Image: NBC Connecticut