The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows

by Hart, Dolores

  Winged Victory became the megahit of the 1943 Broadway season, winning critics and audiences alike. When the show closed in May 1944, Bert brought his buddy Freddy Cocozza home to Chicago to meet his sister Betty, whose photo had taken Freddy’s fancy. He was a hefty man with a voice that had been compared to Enrico Caruso’s and wasn’t shy about showing off his talent.

  —In fact, he used to sing so often—and so loud—that Granny once told him to shut up when he all but shattered her wine glasses. Aunt Betty, however, was more than impressed. Aunt Betty was in love.

  The entire cast of Winged Victory transferred to the screen when Bert’s home studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, made the movie version in 1944. Bert’s role barely survived in one scene. Directed by George Cukor, the movie is the typically patriotic, sentimental fare of the war years, but its cast includes five future Oscar winners: Malden, O’Brien, Buttons, Judy Holliday in her film debut and Cukor, who would also be one of Dolores’ future directors.

  Bert Hicks might have been starring in movies if the war hadn’t interrupted his career at Fox. After the war, the return of Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power and Victor Mature shoved Bert back to stock-player status, acting in B movies and appearing opposite aspiring actresses in screen tests. But his name popped up with regularity in the columns, usually preceded with the words “heartthrob” or “sigh guy”.

  Harriett was always supportive of Bert, subordinating her own dreams of a career to his. After she and Dolores joined Bert in Los Angeles, she committed herself to making the marriage work, hoping that Bert would change. Bert’s infidelity was, of course, beyond Dolores’ comprehension. It wasn’t until she was in her teen years that Harriett confided to her that her father had been unfaithful during their entire married life.

  I remember the fights, the yelling, but I don’t think I really connected them with the bruises I would often see on my mother. I remember, too, long periods of silence and waiting for the next explosion. It always came. But as violent as he would get with my mother, my father never lifted a hand to me. He never struck me or even said a cross word to me. I was never afraid of him. I always knew that he loved me and had a sense of pride in me. But I don’t remember Daddy being a constant presence in my life.

  We did have happy times as a family, especially when things were going well for him at the studio. Most of those memories are centered on trips to the beach. Both my parents adored the ocean, Mommy especially because she loved looking tan. They would pack me and my new favorite toy, Bulgy, a huge pop-eyed red rubber whale who had replaced Panda in my affections, in the rumble seat of our secondhand car, and off we would go for a day at Santa Monica Beach. While Mommy and Daddy sunned and swam, I was kept literally under wraps because I would sunburn in five minutes.

  Happy, though, wasn’t the right word for our life. Frantic would be more like it. It seemed as if we were always running to get somewhere, as if we could keep ahead of threatening undercurrents.

  Those undercurrents, Aunt Shirley remembered, reached a violent climax when her brother struck Harriett with such force that he broke her jaw. She was hospitalized and finally bowed to the fact that she was married to an unstable, sadistic man. She made the decision to separate for good, and fearful that Bert might come to the house when she wasn’t there and take Dolores, Harriet sent her to Chicago to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Kude until the situation was finalized.

  The only problem was I had to go alone. Granny would be at the Chicago station to meet me, but for the three-day journey I was on my own. Well, not really. Mommy made arrangements with one of the porters, a big black bear of a man, to take charge of me. You could do things like that then. She bought two seats so I could have room to sleep and sewed a label on my coat with my particulars—identification, destination and into whose hands I was to be delivered. I didn’t like having that sign on me, but I wasn’t in the least frightened. It was another adventure. Even so, I was sad. I knew that Mommy and Daddy weren’t going to live together anymore.

  Dolores’ visit to Chicago was cut short with the announcement that Harriett had once again reconciled with Bert and wanted her child back home, a request that Esther granted very reluctantly.

  The reconciliation ended almost as soon as it began. There wasn’t going to be another one. Harriett filed for divorce again. “This time it will stick”, she vowed in a newspaper interview on the divorce, borrowing a phrase usually identified in Hollywood with reconciliation. With no meddling judge to intercede, this time the divorce was granted. It marked the end of the marriage, but it would not be the end of the relationship. Harriett may not have had success as a wife, but she could be a friend for life.

  Harriett and Dolores moved to an apartment on Reeves Drive in Beverly Hills. The one bedroom and kitchenette was soon shared with Aunt Betty, who had relocated to the West Coast to follow her boyfriend, Freddy Cocozza, who was now pursuing a singing career.

  Betty was my love when she lived with us. She had beautiful black eyes and shoulder-length hair that bounced when she walked. She was one of the best playmates I ever had. She tried to be stern, but whenever I didn’t obey she would scoop me up and throw me, fully clothed, into the bathtub, turn the water on and shriek with laughter.

  But somehow, no matter what Mommy and Aunt Betty did, I felt lost, uncertain. Divorce, remarriage and redivorce left me angry—not unwanted, but lonely. I remember Mommy bought a picture and hung it over my bed. It was a picture of a small boy carrying a large round globe. She told me it was Jesus and the globe he was carrying was the world. I thought to myself, “That’s not the world; that kid just has a fancy basketball.” Still, I would stare at the picture, maybe out of a real desire to believe, and little by little, I wasn’t so alone. If that kid could carry such a burden, maybe I could too.

  Bert would come back on numerous occasions—always uninvited and usually drunk—presumably to see Dolores. Harriett would complain that he came back just to quarrel with her. But she would always let him in. If he had been drinking, she would put Dolores in the bedroom and close the door.

  When he would come back he was awful to Mommy. She never said anything bad about him to me, but I could see she was afraid of him.

  Aunt Betty, who always sided with my mother whenever Daddy was around, said she thought I was a remarkably well-adjusted little girl in spite of the fact that my family life had not been a good environment. It was the first time I had heard that word, in-vire-ment. I didn’t know what it meant. Must be something awful, I thought.

  On our first Christmas Eve alone, Daddy came by dressed in a Santa suit and very drunk. Mommy wouldn’t let him in, so he stood banging on the door, yelling and singing Christmas songs. He was making such a fool of himself in front of the neighbors that she was more embarrassed than frightened. She grabbed me, put me in the bedroom and opened the front door.

  Fortunately Betty was there, for once inside Bert’s holiday boisterousness turned menacing. Dolores could hear him bullying her mother while both women tried in vain to reason with him. She crept out of her hiding place and saw Bert holding a knife, threatening to use it on Harriett. Betty was trying to take the weapon away from him when the six-year-old child, crying, spoke to her father.

  —I told him to give Aunt Betty the knife because what he was doing was not good.

  Bert surrendered the knife. But the row continued. Clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the ugliness, Dolores hid in a closet and wrote a short letter to her grandmother: “Can I come to live with you? This is not a good invirement for a little girl to be in.”

  Two

  It was a difficult thing for Harriett to do, but she sent Dolores’ letter to her mother. Esther’s response came back like a shot: “This is enough! You have to send her here.”

  Mommy and I were sitting on the steps at school, facing a big picture window, when she told me she was sending me to Chicago. Although I had wished for it, I was not happy to leave my home. As I sat there on the steps, I thought my heart woul
d break, but ever so quietly I became aware of a lovely blue curtain that waved across the windows, and everything suddenly seemed peaceful. I asked Mommy what the curtain was for. She looked at the windows and said, “What curtain? There’s no curtain.” But I knew I had seen it.

  —That image has stayed with me, and only as a contemplative did I come to associate the waving blue curtain with the protective image of the Madonna.

  I was shipped off to Chicago, once again in the care of a porter my mother pressed into service. I wasn’t bright-eyed with expectations. I didn’t know that going back to live with Granny and Grandpa would turn out to be the start of a very happy time in my life.

  Granny was especially good to me. She didn’t spoil me—oh no, she was very strict—but she made me feel included. She taught me to wash and iron and clean house, to knit and crochet. She showed me how to brush and set my hair, and she helped me to learn to read by reading to me—every one of the Oz books. And she lectured me on the value of money and how to get the most for it.

  An essential part of her costume was a garter into which she stuffed her tips. She made good tips because, as she frequently proclaimed, she was the best in the business and the only one at the Round Table who could carry eight plates on her arms at once while, as an added treat, making her false teeth slide in and out.

  —My favorite memory is of Granny on duty at the restaurant, standing on her head while she drank a martini. It was a performance she had perfected through many rehearsals.

  If Granny was my best friend, Grandpa was my best buddy. Grandpa was German and, whenever he got mad, he would say the same thing: “Gott, ich bin ein dummer Esel. Schlag mich auf den Kopf und mach’ mich wieder klug.” He said it so often that I memorized it, but I didn’t know what it meant, so I was afraid to say it. It was later translated for me, and I admit there have been many times over the years when I’ve said it myself: “God, I am a dumb ass. Hit me over the head and make me smart again.”

  Grandpa was also a heavy drinker when I came to live in Chicago. You would think I would have recognized the problem, but I didn’t. I mistook his rosy cheeks as blushing. Later he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and successfully stayed off booze for twenty years.

  Grandpa worked as a projectionist at the Drake movie house on Montrose Avenue and used to bring me with him to the projection booth on weekends. Whenever he would take a snooze, it was my job to wake him up in time to switch projectors. In between I would watch all the movies through the little projector window.

  I was spellbound. I eventually got to know the stories so well that I could act them out myself, copying the expressions of the actresses. I began to work out the reasons for pausing or holding a certain look, which allowed for a feeling to be portrayed. I can’t believe I was thinking about those things in the second grade.

  My favorites were Myrna Loy, Gary Cooper and Loretta Young. I loved The Song of Bernadette. I had never seen a human being as ethereal as Jennifer Jones. I loved Miracle on 34th Street and The Bishop’s Wife and a year or so later, The Snake Pit and Sunset Boulevard, darker dramas I wasn’t supposed to see. My very favorite movie, though, was Blithe Spirit. I loved the actress who played the ghost, and for years I thought she was Lucille Ball because of her bright red hair.

  —The single performance, however, that made me want to be an actress was Gene Tierney’s in Laura.

  Grandpa got me my first job—at age seven—washing tombstones at the cemetery behind our duplex. I got a nickel a marker, and when I earned two dollars I bought a Tinkertoy set. Grandpa was a mechanical mastermind and had a workshop in our basement. He motorized everything, including my Tinkertoys—together we built a working Ferris wheel. I would stand and watch him, and whenever he asked for a “gozinta” I would hop to it.

  —Gozinta?

  That’s something that goes into something else.

  Although Harriett thought that she was sending Dolores to Chicago on a temporary basis, when it came time to return her to Los Angeles, Esther balked. Harriett made a beeline for Chicago. Tug-of-war was declared.

  I sensed very early that a battle was going on for me. Mommy and Granny were very much alike, each fiercely protective of her territory. The two of them could write the most affectionate letters to one another and exchange extravagant expressions of love on the phone yet, within minutes in each other’s company, turn into snarling competitors. How often I heard “This is my daughter, not your daughter” or “She’s more mine than yours.” I instinctively knew I needed both of them and somehow managed to referee.

  For five years, Dolores bounced between them like a tennis ball, except that the rackets were swung at one another. At first, she spent school terms in Los Angeles, vacations in Chicago. When she hit the third grade, the schedule reversed.

  When Mother Dolores looked back on those years from the vantage point of a half century, she determined that she had had the best of both worlds. The Kude household provided her with family and stable roots. In Los Angeles, Harriett was a constantly available presence, as much a girlfriend as a mother—she was, after all, in her early twenties—and their time together produced a solid bond that stood strong against later assaults that would have permanently alienated most mothers and daughters.

  Those years also provided Dolores with an opportunity to get to know her extended family, both sides offering dramatically rich characters. Her maternal great-grandmother, Louella May DeWitt Bowen, called Nellie, was another strong-willed beauty, five foot ten and as thin as the rails she would chop for firewood. She was of real pioneer stock, having come east from Kansas to Illinois in a covered wagon to marry Casper Bowen, a blind coffin maker and fiddle player who regained his sight in his fortieth year and found he had a wandering eye. Once, during World War II, a nephew went AWOL and fled to Colorado to hide out. Grandma Bowen, determined to help him but with no money to make the trip, accepted a friend’s offer to take her the thousand miles—on his motorcycle. It’s not difficult to see where daughter Esther got her pluck. Unfortunately, the parallel didn’t stop there. During Grandma’s absence, Grandpa Bowen dallied.

  When I met them, they shared a three-room house—with warped linoleum-covered floors, a potbellied stove and an outhouse—across from the railroad station in Galesburg, some three hundred miles from Chicago. There was one old, old rug on the floor that covered the area linoleum no longer did. The rooms didn’t have doors, just curtains hanging on cut-off broom handles. The couple lived on Bowen’s pension and the money Grandma earned by cleaning the local bank at night.

  —Grandma Bowen was fierce of heart but a praying woman who could recite the chapters of the Bible from memory and could forgive a husband’s unfaithfulness because she had married for life.

  When she was in Chicago, Mommy would take me to see my Grandpa Pittman in Williamsfield. It was really the sticks, way out in the country, but I loved going there. Grandpa Pittman owned the only restaurant in town, and, boy, was he a handsome devil with his dark hair and mustache.

  Fun times in Williamsfield were spent with Grandpa Pittman’s new family (I called them cousins, but they were actually my aunts and uncles) mostly down at Murphy’s Pond, which was just beyond the Santa Fe railroad tracks. Bruce Pittman, the eldest, was several years older than I and a real cutup. One day he got me into the small shed next to the tracks for a little show and tell, but what I didn’t know was that all the other kids were hiding to watch. They began hooting and hollering, and then they told my mother what had gone on. When we got back to Chicago, I was taken to the back bedroom. Mommy took off a belt and said,“Okay now, every time I hit the bed, you cry.” While Granny eavesdropped outside, Mommy whacked and whacked the bed, and I screamed and screamed. I was getting some practical experience in acting.

  —Are you still in contact with those cousins?

  Yes. But no one ever mentions the incident. I’m the only one who remembers it.

  And maybe not.

  And maybe not.

  My great-a
unts and -uncle on my mother’s side were nothing if not colorful. Aunt Ruth was an amateur tap dancer. On her eighty-fifth birthday, still going strong, she made a tape of her tapping, which she sent to me at the abbey. Aunt Ruby collected all kinds of guns and was expert with every one of them. Aunt Vivian was the only Bowen relative who was fond of Daddy and, to Granny’s everlasting irritation, made her home available as a place he and I could spend time together when he was in Chicago. I adored Uncle Clyde. He had only two fingers on his left hand, the result of a childhood prank involving a firecracker. He always treated me as a little person, not a child, and he was so funny.

  —When I became an actress he sent me a note: “I am your most loyal fan since you were a little girl. I have seen all your movies and the only thing I can’t understand is where in the world you picked up a name like Natalie Wood.”

  During those years, Daddy came back into my life sporadically, sometimes in Los Angeles, sometimes in Chicago. He never brought me presents, not even for my birthday or at Christmas. Well, except once—an oversize, glossy publicity photograph of himself.

  My father’s halfsisters—Gladys, Shirley and Virginia—were teenagers when I met them. Unlike Granny’s side of the family, which was church-living but not church-going, the Hicks girls went to church a lot. They took turns taking me to Sunday school—or schools, since each went to a different church. I think rather than confuse me, this gave me a sense that church was special.

  Once a year, for two weeks, Sister Dolores Marie would come to Chicago. I looked forward to each magical visit. Sister smelled of lavender and dressed with starched linen around her face, which was like an aging peach, fuzzy and full of color. The linen was stiff as a board; you could bounce a coin on it.

  Fred Kude, who never forgave his sister for “being taken in by the Church”, had not spoken a civil word to her for years. It was Esther who paid for Sister Dolores Marie’s annual trips out of her garter money so Fred could remain blissfully prejudiced.