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

by Hart, Dolores

  In her previous films, Dolores radiated health. As Lisa, she would be required to appear ill and worn. Getting the externals of the character is easy enough for a good craftsman. But healthy radiance can be masked only so far with makeup, and Dolores was concerned about projecting Lisa’s interior pain.

  A producer friend, Bobby Cohn, suggested she meet a woman he had recently met at a party. He had noticed tattooed numbers on her arm, and she told him she had been in Auschwitz. Since her arrival from Hungary, Suzanne Zada had been working as an assistant to a beautician and knew little about Hollywood. She had no idea who Dolores Hart was but agreed to a meeting as a favor to Bobby.

  Suzanne remembered, “The meeting was set up at the Beefeater Inn, and as I was escorted to a red-leather booth Dolores rose and said, ‘I think you should slap my face.’ I stood stunned as she explained, ‘I don’t know why we thought we could ask you to relive your suffering just so we can make a movie. I apologize.’

  “I was totally overwhelmed by the fact that she should be that sensitive, but when she said that, I suddenly knew that I wanted to share with her because I knew my help would allow this sensitive woman to get it right. If one person in the audience could appreciate the real degradation, if just one person realized the most tremendous cruelty is depriving a person of his humanity, I would be happy.”

  Suzanne’s eyes still carried that wound. “Why me?” she had asked repeatedly. “Why didn’t God choose another?” That question was what had made her suffering so hard to bear. “It wasn’t the daily beatings that hurt” she said. “It was the hurt inside, the knowledge that I had no reason to be proud, that I wanted to be loved but who could possibly love me? I learned constantly to avoid being noticed because if you’re noticed, you could be gassed. I trusted no one.”

  At that moment, the film became a personal crusade. I wanted to be able to show Suzanne I really did understand how deeply she was hurt. If she understood, it would make the work more than worthwhile. Alone, I spent hours staring at myself in a mirror, trying to remove all life from my eyes, leaving them hollow and dead. Suzanne’s words “I trusted no one” never left my consciousness.

  En route to our Dutch location, I caught sight of something I had seen only on cans of kitchen cleanser—a windmill. “Oh,” I cried aloud, “there’s one!” Others appeared on the horizon. “There’s one and there’s one!” My traveling companions began to laugh, amused at my naïve enthusiasm. “My child, you are now in the land of windmills”, they assured me. “You’ll soon see so many of them, you’ll hardly notice them at all.”

  My good fortune to work with respected actors continued with this film. Stephen Boyd was the inspector, and the other players read like a Who’s Who of the acting profession: Leo McKern, Marius Goring, Donald Pleasence, Hugh Griffith, Robert Stephens and Harry Andrews.

  I remember long rehearsals before each scene. Philip Dunne was not stingy with rehearsal time, and Mark Robson’s background as a director made him a generous producer. Their frequent and considerate notes to me were gifts of encouragement that I will never forget.

  Most of the location filming took place on Dutch canals or at sea, on barges and boats and a diesel trawler that the company named Madre Dolorosa as a compliment to Dolores. Although she and Stephen were constantly queasy, they were denied the solace of seasickness pills because Dunne felt they made his actors drowsy and interfered with their performances.

  It was a good thing that Dunne had a contented company. It would bode well for the production when they moved to Swansea in Wales, the exhaustingly uncooperative location that doubled for Palestine. That single location resulted in the film’s going over schedule.

  The weather proved so unpredictable that it forced Dunne to “double take” scenes to keep outdoor filming going whatever the conditions. He shot alternate takes of every scene both dry and wet so that sequences could be matched up in the editing room.

  I didn’t like Swansea. I thought of it as the sinkhole of Great Britain. For fifteen days we sat in pup tents and trawlers, fighting seasickness, rain, wind and sun. I was feeling the effects of going from one film to another without a break, and at the end of each day I didn’t know if I was seasick, sunstroked or hung over.

  Anything that could jinx our company did. One night, a storm grew to such massive proportions that our camera longboat washed away, the Traveler got stuck in a sand dune and our transformers conked out. When the sun at last peeped through, a huge swarm of bees took over the beach. Mr. Dunne was forced to reshoot the entire day’s work.

  Crowds of people from Swansea lined the hills above the location, watching the filming, all of them within critical camera range. It was annoying—and expensive—when we lost shots because a boy scout troop waved or light flashes from binocular lenses were caught by the camera.

  —You know, forty years later, I received a touching letter from a Welshman named Alun Rees, who was a child of seven on that hill above our location. He wanted me to know how special that day still was to him. You’re welcome, Alun.

  On top of all this, a letter from Granny confirmed that Mom had gone off the wagon again. I exploded. I wrote her that I couldn’t care less what was going to happen to her. God knows we all want love and attention and someone to care, but my mother—and my father, too, for that matter—seemed to go through life thinking they were the only two people on earth with those needs and the rest of us were created to serve them. So I was in a blue funk when we came to the climactic scene in which I’m shot and Stephen carries me onto an army tank. The crew promised to put real bullets in the gun to put me out of my misery.

  I was relieved when the company moved to London for the remainder of production. I took a comfortable flat in Eaton Square, a far cry from the tent on the Swansea beach.

  There was a sequence in Waterloo Station that had to be shot on a Sunday night because the facility could not be closed down during the day. It took most of the night, and at the end of the shoot, I was so tired I didn’t bother to take off my costume or remove my makeup before I was driven to Eaton Square. After the driver dropped me off at the flat, I realized I had left my purse in the dressing room. I had no money and, more important at the moment, no key to the building.

  While I was standing forlornly on the street, a London bobby drove by and asked what I was doing in that neighborhood. Mind you, in my costume—a tattered wool skirt, crumpled blouse, stained trench coat—I looked like one of the hundred neediest cases. I told him I lived in the building and didn’t have my key. He asked for identification, which of course I didn’t have; he told me to be on my way or he would have to take me to the station. I walked away slowly until I saw him leave, then I turned back. I was desperate to check the back door in case it was unlocked, but as soon as I reached the rear of the building the bobby was beside me, and I was taken to the local police station. I protested to anyone within earshot that I was an actress making a movie in London and they could check all this by calling Elstree Studio.

  Someone noticed the “tattooed” numbers on my arm and was momentarily sympathetic. I asked for a washcloth. As I removed Lisa’s identification numbers, someone at Elstree finally picked up the phone, and this jailbird was released.

  —The next day, the studio publicist put out a story that screen actress Dolores Hart had been arrested by London police who mistook her for a streetwalker. It was picked up by newspapers all over the world.

  During production, the film had its title changed from The Inspector to Lisa to focus on the character of the refugee for the European audience that would have a deeper acquaintance with the war-scarred and the displaced.

  Lisa marked a reunion with Stephen Boyd, with whom Dolores had enjoyed a rapport during the Playhouse 90 production two years earlier. The lengthier production schedule of a movie provided time for the two to nurture a personal relationship denied them by the fast pace of television.

  A romance between Dolores and Stephen began in the press, with gossip items sugge
sting that the two must surely be having a love affair. Photo layouts, following the fan-magazine formula, gave credence to the gossip. But indeed, something real was developing. Dolores’ relationship with Stephen Boyd would be her only professional relationship that would also become a romantic one.

  Stephen was an amazingly gentle man for his brawn and size. He wasn’t tall but had substantial bulk—which I was gratefully aware of when he had to carry me. Most of my scenes were with Stephen, and we were frequently together for publicity interviews and photo layouts. But we also seemed to seek out each other’s company in private time. When I was working, I usually didn’t date, but on Lisa, I saw Stephen for supper almost every night.

  At first, Stephen found it difficult to open up, but gradually he became willing to speak about his private life. When I was agonizing over Mom’s fall off the wagon, he told me I shouldn’t waste my time shaking my fist at her. He admitted that he also had a problem with alcohol and bluntly said that I couldn’t help my mother, that only she could help herself. He had stopped drinking only when he wanted to.

  I found him deeply spiritual. We had many discussions about religion, mostly in a general way, but occasionally we spoke of Catholicism. Stephen was adamant that although he was genuinely interested in the broad spectrum of religion, he was not attracted to any specific church. He would come to change that stand.

  Our dinners grew to two and a half hours of soul-searching and reaching out, which Stephen acknowledged as a gift of understanding. Most men are dominant and directive. They’re threatened by a woman’s inner sense of authority. Stephen could expose his vulnerability. He let me show my authority. It didn’t make him feel less masculine. I was grateful for his trust and began to feel that our relationship had a potential future.

  By the time we got to London, I knew that my feelings for Stephen had gone as far as they could go on a friendship level. I felt I had an obligation to indicate I was ready to move to a more personal one. Up to this point, there hadn’t even been a kiss. Not that I had never kissed Stephen, but it had never been that kind of a kiss.

  One evening, returning from one of our walks in Saint James’ Park, we stopped at the front door as we had on so many evenings, and I suddenly said, “Stephen, would you like to come in?” He looked at me and said, “Yes.” He leaned forward to kiss me, but the kiss was placed on my forehead. “Yes,” he repeated, “but you’re marked. Don’t you know that?”

  I was confused. I felt hurt. Had I exposed my vulnerability, my trust, only to be rejected? I wondered what he had meant by saying I was “marked”, but I didn’t ask for an explanation then. I never did. Our dinners and talks continued, but we never mentioned that evening. When the film was over, our lives moved apart. But I heard his voice—“You’re marked”—often.

  I was surprised when Don Robinson called and told me he was coming to London and wanted to see me. I wanted to see him too. It did seem a good time because I was scheduled for several days off after we filmed the pivotal sequence where Lisa is forced to relive the medical experiments performed upon her, and I was sure Don would be a welcome break. I couldn’t be sure, however, whether my eagerness to see him again wasn’t merely a rebound response to Stephen.

  The scene was highly emotional, and the fact that Mr. Dunne wanted to film it in a single close-up scared me. It was further intimidating that Arthur Ibettson, our cinematographer, planned to use a special camera lens, one usually used for film inserts—extreme close-ups, such as a shot of a person’s hand writing a letter—which would mean the camera was going to be only twenty-one inches from my face.

  We got through the first take, and Mr. Dunne wanted to print it, but due to an apparent technical problem, Arthur wanted another take for insurance. I felt I had used up all my voice in the first take, but I did it again. This time everything went well, thank God, because by then I had lost my voice completely. I was certainly ready for that four-day break.

  It had been several months since Don and I had seen each other. It was a lovely reunion. We took several day trips outside of London—I did the driving because I was now used to driving on the wrong side of the road—saw plays in the West End and dined at wonderful restaurants. More importantly, Don’s presence served to remind me of all that we had in common. I liked being with him.

  “We had only one disagreement”, Don recalled. “I was appropriately angry at poor service we had received in a restaurant and purposely did not leave a tip. When we left the restaurant, Dolores excused herself and went back inside, obviously to leave one.”

  —I did not apologize. I did it for Granny.

  In the days following his return home, I thought a lot about Don. I even fantasized our running off and getting married as in a romantic comedy. Why did those thoughts come only in an imaginary way? Why couldn’t I really think of myself as a part of them except in a reflective sense?

  During the entire production, Dolores bombarded Harriett with tough-love letters that resulted in Harriett’s renewed effort to stay sober. Dolores was encouraged enough to invite her to the last week of shooting in London and then on a vacation to Paris, Madrid and Rome before returning home.

  I picked up Mom at Heathrow Airport, and I was so nervous I could hardly drive. I was always holding on to the hope that she would straighten out, and I was always disappointed. But Mom was in great shape, trim and buoyant and full of “piss and vinegar”, as she used to say. In the time it took to drive from the airport to the flat, we were giggling like girls again.

  The next morning, just minutes before we left the flat, I got a call from a man who said he was Frank Sinatra. Sure, sure, I thought, and I’m Princess Margaret. He said he wanted to take me to dinner to discuss a part in a movie he was going to make. I told whoever it was that I was in a rush and to send the script and hung up.

  The vacation was a great success. Mom loved London, Madrid, Rome and especially Paris—she fit the Paris scene like a cup on a saucer.

  Harriett was blissfully peaceful because she was the center of attention. She was the star, not just a nobody basking in reflected glory. Making sure Harriett got that notice was Dolores’ gift to her mother.

  When we finally arrived back home, I was able to tell Granny that during the entire trip I was proud to introduce Mom as my mother.

  Waiting for me at my apartment was a large envelope that had been forwarded from London. Inside was the script of The Manchurian Candidate. It had been Frank Sinatra on the phone! I called Harry at once, but it was too late. Leslie Parrish had been cast. Mr. Sinatra never called again.

  Lisa wasn’t a hit in United States, in spite of the lurid ads that Fox hoped would entice audiences—“They experimented on me, sold me like human cargo” and “Why am I terrified every time a man touches me?”—blurbs that New York Times critic Bosley Crowther charged gave the wrong impression of the film he found “an uncommonly colorful and tense adventure”.

  However, Lisa did well in Europe, where its thesis was still being lived on a daily basis. It was nominated for a Golden Globe by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as one of the best films of 1962. Dolores received strong notices, her best to date, although the only review she still remembers called her “too apple-pie American”.

  For Dolores, more important than the judgment of the critics was Suzanne Zada’s assessment. Dolores invited her to the first screening of the film and afterward, in the studio parking lot, she found Suzanne weeping. “It was there,” Suzanne told her, “the hopeless, lost feeling I had, there for people to see. I thought that God was trying to make up for what He did to me.” The friendship between these two women has lasted to this day.

  Lisa had an impact on Dolores. Never before had she felt such compassion for a character; nor had she ever gotten so emotional about a role that tears became a standard part of each day’s work.

  It wasn’t the acting of the role that affected me so deeply. It was the humanity of it, the undeniable sense of life I found in the character. I felt
more motivated to visit Regina Laudis after Lisa was over. Luckily, Columbia wanted me to make a personal appearance tour on behalf of Sail a Crooked Ship, which meant I could steal a few days at the monastery.

  It was when Dolores was on that publicity tour that her best buddy died. Grandpa Kude suffered a heart attack and was in grave condition in a Chicago hospital, with Esther, Harriett and Sister Dolores Marie at his bedside. Aware that he was dying, Fred asked his sister to summon a priest, who came and administered last rites and Holy Communion.

  I was appearing on a TV talk show but remained in contact with the family through the evening. I had asked them to make sure the TV in his room was tuned in to the show because I was going to do something just for him. I had arranged with a band member to borrow his clarinet, and when I stepped into the spotlight, I said, “This one’s for you, Grandpa”, and played “Whispering”.

  Moments before, however, Grandpa had slipped into unconsciousness, and Granny was afraid that my gesture would go unrecognized. But, miraculously, he revived while I was still playing. He didn’t see the performance, but Sister Dolores Marie was sure he had heard it. With her crucifix in his hands, an unmistakable look of tranquillity on his face, she told me, he had made his peace with God.

  Grandpa always said Sister Dolores Marie would probably pray him into Heaven. I think she did. As a boy he regularly went to early Mass before he began his paper route, but somewhere down the line he lost his faith, and Sister spent years praying that he would return to it. She told me she was gratified that he experienced a conversion at the end. Her words “at the end” troubled me for a long time. Was it “the end”?