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

by Hart, Dolores

  Soon we were going out a lot, mostly spending time alone or with my close friends, all of whom took to her. I knew very few of her friends. I was uncomfortably certain that I had to be making half of what she was earning, so our dinner dates were at Villa Frascati, on the Sunset Strip, because I had a press card that gave me a discount there, a perk of my profession. And I was able to take her to press screenings of upcoming films and to play openings, also perks. Her knowledge of theater was woefully lacking, and I found her taste in movies suspect. I made a list of essential films that we began tracking down—not a simple task in the days before DVDs. Her favorite actors then were Kim Novak and Rock Hudson. I made sure she was aware of Kim Stanley and Jason Robards too. And I was happy to set her right about the red-headed actress in Blithe Spirit—Kay Hammond, not Lucille Ball.

  We enrolled in extension classes at UCLA, our favorite being a course in film criticism taught by the dean of West Coast critics, Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times. We both still adhere to Schallert’s rule that the word unique does not take a modifier.

  During the next several months, Jim Stevens and I set up photo layout after photo layout with Dolores. For “date” layouts, a staple of the movie magazines, we paired her with every young actor in town: Tab Hunter, Tony Perkins, John Saxon, Patrick Wayne, Ty Hungerford (who became Ty Hardin), Earl Holliman. Usually it was the only time she would ever see the actor. Holliman was an exception. He became a close friend.

  Thanks also to Jim Stevens, I began accepting “handouts”—studio production stills—of Dolores to beef up Globe’s features on her. The publicity departments at all the studios then handed out photos to agencies in hopes that they would be published. Globe Photos had not accepted these before, preferring (somewhat snobbily) to represent only exclusive material produced in-house. But I now had a personal interest in helping Dolores’ career along.

  Unless the studio deemed it essential for her to be on the arm of a young actor, I would escort Dolores to occasional Hollywood functions. At those events, she usually kept her hand snugly in mine, not only as a romantic gesture but so she could squeeze my hand whenever someone she recognized, but whose name she couldn’t remember, approached. Dolores rarely wore her glasses when she went out, and her desperate squeeze signaled she needed identification before her glazed expression gave her away. I was more than repaid for this service; Dolores gave a great neck massage.

  I took her to meet my family in Eagle Rock, a suburb of Los Angeles, and Dolores and my mother connected straightaway. Mom took me aside after dinner and confided, very seriously, that she had “just met an angel”. An angel, I might add, who helped with the dishes that evening and, a week later without my knowing, drove back to Eagle Rock and spent the day helping my mother scrape wallpaper off the dining room walls.

  I ate Thanksgiving dinner that year with Dolores’ family. The meal was wonderful—Harriett was a great cook—and the house looked festive. But there was something unpleasantly familiar about the gathering. I realized that, as the dinner progressed, the atmosphere grew more and more tense. Based on my experiences with my father, I recognized it as the tension that all families of a drinker share at holiday time. Harriett had been nipping in the kitchen, and watching Dolores watch Harriett was depressing.

  —Mom would spend days meticulously decorating the house, and I loved her for that effort, but I got so angry that the preparations were ultimately such a fraud. She usually got so drunk she didn’t enjoy the celebrations. Neither did anyone else.

  So D and D were “going together”, but few people in the Industry were aware of it. About the only studio folk we saw were Jim Stevens and his wife, Delores with an e. Once in a while, there would be a mention of us as a couple in a gossip column, but that was offset by the many published date layouts with young actors (most of which I was setting up). As our relationship grew closer, the subject of religion came up with increasing regularity. As a non-Catholic I was not the most promising suitor she could have chosen. Dolores and I would discuss religion in general, Catholicism in particular. Actually, “spar” might be a better word because we would keep it light. Never did we argue about it. As long as we kept company, that subject was earmarked “to be continued”.

  Our romance was marked by a series of those delightful cards she drew. Ever since she was a tot, she doodled little cartoon figures and fashioned them into personal cards for friends and family. She sent one to Paul Nathan that crossed the desk of a coworker, Don Bradford, who had once worked for a card company and thought her sketches were terrific. One day he asked if she had ever thought about turning her doodles into commercial greeting cards.

  —He said that I should think of doing something as a sideline because actors are always without jobs and need some way of getting an extra dollar. Of course, the minute he said that, he had my undivided attention.

  For a combined investment of $250, Don and Dolores went into the greeting-card business. Hal Wallis smiled his consent and suggested that she use her own name in the trademark in order to cash in on her movie publicity. The line was christened Sweetharts. Decision making was left up to Don. Dolores’ contribution, apart from the sketches and greetings, was to appear at gift shows to promote the line. They didn’t make Hallmark nervous, but Sweetharts was doing well until Don’s untimely death in 1960.

  King Creole began shooting exactly one year after Loving You and found Dolores in a part that was an extension of her first two roles, though Nellie had a pinch more dimension. Nellie, unlike Susie and Angie, was desperate to change her life. Nellie was also faced with a decision that neither of the other two ingenues had to make: Should she do it with Presley’s character or not?

  Filling out the cast were Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dean Jagger and her friend from the studio talent department, Jan Shepard. Jan credits Dolores for her being cast as Presley’s sister. “She went right to Hal Wallis and said she had a girlfriend who would be perfect for the role, which got me a test.”

  The veteran director Michael Curtiz was signed to direct. Dolores hadn’t heard of Curtiz, although he had directed over a hundred American movies, including the classic Casablanca. For his part, Curtiz was not happy with the cast Wallis had handed him. He didn’t want Dolores in the film, or Jan, or, for that matter, Presley, whom he thought too inexperienced for such a dramatic role. It was the second time that Dolores faced being fired before she even started.

  There was no question that Presley would remain in the film, but Curtiz took his case about the actresses to Wallis himself. Wallis stood by the girls and told the director that they would stay, but if Curtiz wished, he could leave. In the end, they all stayed and worked well together. The only disappointment for the two actresses was that some of their dramatic moments were cut in order to expand musical numbers.

  The girls also didn’t care for Curtiz’ manner, finding him a vulgar man and a bully on the set. Although the Hungarian-born Curtiz had been in America for forty years, he hadn’t lost a week of his native accent. At best, he was difficult to understand; at worst, he needed subtitles.

  Mr. Wallis flew the entire cast and crew—except Elvis, who didn’t like to fly—to the New Orleans location on a chartered flight. When we arrived at the New Orleans airport, we got our first look at what was going to envelop us for the next several weeks. Kids. Hundreds and hundreds of screaming kids.

  New Orleans remained a madhouse for the entire shooting schedule. On the very first day, Elvis was mobbed when he tried to enter the hotel. The police had a bridge built connecting the roof of the hotel to the roof of an adjacent building, so he could enter and leave without being engulfed by a sea of pubescent humanity.

  Elvis was much more serious this time around. He was getting quite knowledgeable about the movie business, much more than I was. He knew Mr. Wallis made important pictures, and he wanted to be associated with quality. He desperately hoped that King Creole would be the beginning of a new direction for his movie career. He loved James Dea
n and wanted to have a career just like his, but he was afraid the Colonel would lock him into run-of-the-mill schlock, which is what ultimately happened.

  One morning, while we were waiting to be called to the set—we had to wait in one of the rooms in the hotel because the fans made it impossible for Elvis to wait on location—Elvis suddenly took the Gideon Bible out of a drawer and opened it at random, letting a finger fall onto a verse. He read it and turned to me and said, “Now, Miss Dolores, what do you think of that?” We talked about the verse and what it meant to us personally. He did this several times more, opening the Bible and casually selecting a passage. I was impressed to find that Elvis was no stranger to the Bible. He quoted from it quite often. Of course, he came from a deeply religious background; he was raised attending camp meetings and revivals.

  In the evenings after production wrapped, Elvis and I would share a limo back to the hotel. There were always hoards of shrieking teenage girls reaching out to touch him. He reacted politely, but of course he couldn’t stop or we would be stranded for hours. Once, however, he did stop for a moment and spoke to a girl who had just called out, “You re the king!”

  “Don’t call me the king”, he said to her softly but firmly. “There is only one king, the Lord Jesus Christ.” I thought that was lovely and wanted to say something to him, but I was too shy.

  Another evening, just as the limo pulled away from the crowd, a girl thrust her arm into the backseat, hoping to touch him. Her sleeve caught on the door handle, and she was pulled along with the car. Elvis shouted for the driver to stop. The car came to a halt before she suffered any injury, but Elvis got out anyway and made sure she was all right before we went on.

  —Thirty-five years later, I received a letter from that girl, then a woman with a family of her own in Canada, reminding me of that “horrendous but wonderful” moment. I am always touched when I remember that experience because many random hands must have reached out to him, yet he was so sensitive to one in trouble.

  Although her visits were less frequent than they were during Loving You, Mom did come to the studio to watch filming now and then. Sometimes she would be included in a cast shindig, something that made me nervous, for fear that she might misbehave. But Mom watched the drinking whenever she was part of a studio celebration. It was at home that the drinking was a problem. At home the chain rattling continued.

  As soon as King Creole wrapped, Mr. Wallis wanted to team me with Elvis a third time. I wasn’t keen on making a career out of being “the girl” in Elvis Presley movies, and besides, I got a look at the script. It wasn’t just “the girl”; it was the same girl. So I went to Mr. Wallis and asked him not to make me do that film. Surprisingly, he didn’t.

  The last time I saw Elvis was at the birthday party I gave for Jan Shepard at the Hazeltine house. I invited Elvis and warned him that he had to be on time because it was a surprise party. He said he would try, though I didn’t think he would come. But on the night of the party he was there, on time, laden with gifts and, of course, his guitar. For most of the evening, we had a private Presley concert. I dragged out the clarinet, and we played duets of “Danny Boy” and Grandpa’s favorite tune, “Whispering”. Elvis went into the army when Creole wrapped.

  The Paramount Talent Department folded in the spring. Never as strong a department as those of other studios that had rosters of young television actors to bolster the classes, it was deemed too expensive for Paramount to continue to subsidize. Charlotte Clary recommended that Dolores join a private class taught by a respected actor, Jeff Corey. A few years earlier, Corey had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to answer charges of Communist sympathies and name others in the Industry who attended Communist meetings. Not only did Corey not name names; he criticized previous witnesses who had and promptly got blacklisted in Hollywood. He began teaching acting in the garage of his home for the affordable fee of $25 a month. Dolores was thrilled to be accepted into the class, which included her pal Valerie Allen plus Jack Nicholson, James Coburn, Sally Kellerman and John Gabriel, who coincidentally had been a classmate of mine at UCLA.

  Harry Bernsen was hustling as if he had only one client. He had Dolores testing all over town. Anthony Quinn, who was making his directorial debut, tested her for the remake of Rafael Sabatini’s The Buccaneer. Inger Stevens got the part. Dolores tested for the role of Gary Cooper’s daughter in Ten North Frederick at Fox. Diane Varsi was under contract to that studio and was cast. Dolores was amazed when she was asked to test for the young Jewish woman in William Wyler’s Ben Hur. Wyler himself spoke to her following the test, judging that she came across as the least Semitic human being he had ever seen.

  —Heck, I could have told him that!

  Things had moved so fast for me career-wise. I knew I had to learn faster. I reasoned that I didn’t have the luxury of time, but I did have easy access to some of the world’s best actors. Even if I didn’t know what I was searching for, something was bound to rub off on me.

  What Dolores failed to realize was that, as relatively inexperienced as she might have been, she had something that was connecting with audiences and with filmmakers. Paul Nathan recognized it: “Sincerity. Honesty. That’s what brought her so far so fast.”

  At this time, Anthony Quinn fulfilled his dream of offering a class for working actors who wanted to stretch and hone their craft. Dolores joined the acting class alongside Carolyn Jones and Dennis Hopper every Wednesday night in makeshift quarters above a bedding manufacturing company.

  I had begun to think that my career was destined to be briefer than I had imagined. I didn’t like the testing process—not so much the actual test or even the “thanks but no thanks”; I hated the waiting for an answer. My cup looked decidedly half-empty, not half-full, when Harry arranged for me to audition for two rather important projects.

  Writer-producer Dore Schary, who had run two major studios, RKO and MGM, was now heading his own producing unit. The first production under his banner was to be the film version—albeit none too faithful—of Nathanael West’s best-selling novel Miss Lonelyhearts. Harry felt Dolores could do the role of the girl in love with the protagonist, a reporter relegated to writing the lonely hearts column for a metropolitan newspaper, and knew she could benefit from being in a cast that included Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy and Maureen Stapleton. He pitched Dolores to Schary, and an interview was set up for the following week.

  Simultaneously, Harry had learned that Roger Stevens of the Playwrights’ Company and actor-director Cyril Ritchard were in Los Angeles auditioning actresses for a new Broadway play, The Pleasure of His Company. Ritchard had already conducted six auditions for the role in New York and had scheduled two for Los Angeles. Ultimately five hundred hopefuls would be seen and considered. Harry got Dolores an audition for Pleasure on the same day as the one for Lonelyhearts.

  The first interview was with Mr. Schary. I dressed for the part of the conservative daughter of a middle-class family and brought a suitcase with a change for the play’s more sophisticated girl, who was very upper-class San Francisco, just in case there was no time to go home. And there wasn’t. I made the transformation in the women’s restroom at a gas station.

  The audition for The Pleasure of His Company was held at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Hollywood. It was my first time backstage in a real theater. I seemed to sail through the reading, and Mr. Ritchard, who was the director and the star of the play, asked me to stay and read again. I waited with another young actress also trying out, Sandy Dennis. Two hours later I read once more. By then I had had time to get nervous. That reading was a resounding flop.

  Ritchard would tell her later that if she had read so badly the first time she would never have gotten the part. But get it she did. In fact, she got both parts. At least three people were elated by the news: Dolores, Harry Bernsen and Hal Wallis, who had nothing for her, film-wise, and could demand substantially more by loaning her out than he was paying her. There was n
o profit in negotiating her Broadway salary. The Playwrights’ Company would pay her minimum, period. Wallis let her keep the Broadway money herself. But, of course, he took her off salary for the duration of the play.

  This exciting good fortune was all but wiped out by accelerated confrontations with Harriett. Their intensity grew until, finally fed up, Dolores decided she had to move out of the house. She packed two suitcases and made two calls, one to Paul Nathan, who arranged for her to live temporarily in her dressing room at the studio, and the other to me, asking me to pick her up right away.

  She remained in residence at the studio for several weeks and loved the arrangement. I saw her almost every evening, after my work and her daily search for new quarters. At night we had the dark and virtually deserted Paramount studio as our personal playground. We would walk hand in hand on the back-lot city-street set, and once, on a lark, we recreated a scene from Sunset Boulevard, the one in which William Holden and Nancy Olson strolled that same set—the “I will now kiss that nose of yours” / “If you please” scene.

  There was no time for Dolores to find a suitable apartment, since Lonelyhearts was scheduled to start immediately. She settled on a one-room studio with a Murphy bed in a nondescript building on tree-lined Flores Avenue in West Hollywood. The location was quiet and convenient to the studio and within walking distance of my apartment, but there was nothing attractive about her new home. We nicknamed it the Black Hole of Calcutta.

  I didn’t stay angry at Mom for long. I never did. Rarely did a fight go more than a day or two without a reconciliation, usually sparked by a note or a cartoon sketch one of us would send the other. Soon I was driving over the hill to Sherman Oaks for visits in a friendlier atmosphere. But I wouldn’t move in again, and I didn’t take back anything I had said to her.