The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (24 page)

It was hard to believe that, from my window, I could look out over the Seine and see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Too excited to sleep, I got out the guide, which proclaimed Paris
the
city to walk in, and bravely ventured out to find a church, keeping for reference the Tower within navigating view
.

I must have walked for a couple of hours when I began to feel hungry. I stopped at a small bistro. The menu, of course, was in French, and I got out my
French for Tourists.
When the meal arrived, it was a bowl of dreadful-looking tiny fish in what could pass for motor oil. The full reality of my linguistic ignorance had sunk in. I paid the bill, fled the café and bought an apple from a street vendor. I just held out my hand full of francs, hoping he would take the proper amount. But he took the handful and was so effusive in his appreciation that I figured I must have just subsidized the education of one of his children. What was I doing in Paris? Alone! I had really gotten myself into a mess. I went back to the hotel and had a good cry
.

The telephone interrupted my tears. The caller was Earl Holliman, who was on a vacation in Paris and had learned from Paul Nathan that I was en route. He put himself at my disposal for my entire stay. That dried up the tears very quickly
.

Earl was at the hotel in twenty minutes. He brought along a friend, Bob Oliveira, a musician and conductor who lived in Paris. I could not have had more attentive—or attractive—escorts. Knowing the city inside and out, Bob led us to Saint-Germain-des-Prés and a little sidewalk café for omelettes and martinis rouges and a fascinating parade of straggly haired French girls and gaunt, bearded young artists
.

Overnight, I went from being Cinderella with only an apple for supper to the belle of the ball. With Earl and Bob, I got to experience not only the magnificent Louvre, Montmartre and the great flying buttresses of Notre Dame, but also special little places Bob knew. His favorite, L’Abbaye, was a tiny basement club on Rue Jacob where the audience showed its appreciation for the folk singers not by clapping, but by snapping fingers—in consideration for the upstairs neighbors. We stayed out until dawn and ended up at Les Halles, the early-morning flower market. Now I was really in Paris
.

Oliveira suggested what would be the highlight of Dolores’ French adventure. As a conductor, he admired Gregorian chant, and he thought she should hear the chant sung at the Abbey of Solesmes, several hours outside of Paris. The three of them piled into Oliveira’s car and headed there, stopping in Chartres to see the legendary stained-glass windows of its medieval cathedral.

I’ll never forget my first sight of the famous mismatched spires of the Chartres Cathedral, which seemed to appear suddenly on the horizon. It was like seeing Oz
.

As we approached Chartres, a storm was threatening. It got so dark that by the time we drove into the city, it was like night. Then began the rain. We were allowed into the cathedral but warned that it was a waste of our time, for without sunlight we would not get the full impact of the windows. We went in anyway, and as we entered, a flash of lightning lit up the entire church. The magnificent windows looked as though they had been ignited
.

The moon was high when we reached Solesmes, the abbey outlined against the now clear sky. We stood on a riverbank transfixed by the abbey’s wavy reflection in the moonlit water as its bells tolled a welcome. The next morning we went to ten o’clock Mass at the abbey. For the first time since I was at Regina Laudis, I heard Gregorian chant—but now sung by monks. With the sound of their voices I thought my heart would swirl up into the arches of the ancient Gothic church
.

I could not have asked for more: first, the sight of the Chartres spires all but puncturing the floor of Heaven, then those massive glass windows illuminated by God’s light and now the simple beauty of His music
.

But more was coming. There must have been an angel on my shoulder. A message from Maria Cooper was waiting for me when I returned to Paris. Maria and her parents were in the city, and I joined them for dinner that very evening
.

That night I became the Rocky Cooper project. Rocky is impossible to condense into a
Reader’s Digest
character. She’s the flavor of a delicious soup as well as the sting on the tip of the tongue when the soup’s too hot. She had long been displeased with my wardrobe. At dinner she asked how much money I had with me. About eight hundred dollars, I told her. “Good,” she said, “we’ll spend it
.”

Rocky was an astute shopper with incredible taste in clothes—I was her paper doll, and she didn’t give a damn about my budget. She selected; I handed over the francs—at Givenchy, the House of Dior, Balmain, Lanvin. The eight hundred was gone in a day, but at the end of our spree I had the smartest wardrobe any young woman could wish for
.

The on-again, off-again Fox contract and
Francis of Assisi
was on again. Bernsen wired that the part of Clare was definitely hers. Plato Skouras, the producer of
Francis
, sent a wire welcoming her to the company and instructing her to stay put because arrangements were being made for her hair to be done by the famous Alexandre de Paris. Her light-brown tresses were to be dyed to match Saint Clare’s blond hair, locks of which still existed in Assisi.

Since she still had four days before she had to report for costume and makeup tests at Cinecittà, she was invited to spend them with the Coopers in London, where Gary would be filming what would be his last movie,
The Naked Edge
. The Coopers were living at the Savoy and booked Dolores there.

Everything in London looked like a CinemaScope movie shown on a regular screen. The people were long and thin, with long, thin umbrellas and shoes and mustaches. Even their words were long and thin. My
a‘
s were already broadening by the time I checked into the Savoy and “awsked” if there were any messages
.

All the clichés fell beautifully into place. Maria and I went to the Tower of London and London Bridge, saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, visited the London Zoo, and browsed art galleries and antique shops. Maria found a little church all but hidden on a small side street where I joined the Coopers for a lovely Mass. On the spur of the moment, Maria and I decided to have a picnic in spite of the threatening clouds amassing above. We bought chestnuts, tarts, cookies, ice cream and, as a concession to our waistlines, a grapefruit, and headed for Hyde Park. Raindrops began just as we were spreading our blanket. A short while later, the same blanket and goodies were spread on the floor of my hotel room and the English picnic commenced. There were so many golden moments like this with the Coopers that complemented the dream of mine that was coming wondrously true
.

Between costume fittings and makeup tests in Rome, I went sightseeing, once again in the company of Earl Holliman, whose extended holiday had taken him to Italy. But all the monuments and statues and fountains we saw paled before the highlight of my time in Rome—the day I spent at the Vatican
.

I received an unexpected invitation to tour the Vatican from Monsignor William A. Carew, of the Vatican Secretariat of State. I was overjoyed and assumed that the invitation was extended at the request of a VIP at the studio. Imagine my surprise when Monsignor Carew told me that my friend Father Salazar was behind it and that the tour would also include an audience with Pope John XXIII
.

On the day of the audience, I met Monsignor Carew, who not only was as courteous a gentleman as I had ever met, but was as handsome as George Peppard, with wavy blond hair and a broad smile that showcased his glistening teeth. If he had been an actor, he could have gotten any part he wanted. During the tour, I asked Monsignor Carew what it took to be a successful Vatican delegate. He winked and said, “The Holy Spirit”. Then he reached in his pocket, pulled out a small comb and added, “And this, of course
.”

Monsignor Carew escorted Dolores and Earl into the Hall of Benediction, where a number of people were already assembled. Pope John XXIII was the pontiff who had announced from the pulpit that everyone—not only Catholics—has a way to Heaven if the condition for Christ is in his heart. Thus, he was the man who had relieved Dolores of a troubling concern ever since her conversion.

The pope was carried into the room on his portable throne, and just as he passed us, his slipper fell to the floor. His Holiness rocked with laughter, and Monsignor Carew seized that moment to introduce me as the Hollywood actress who would be filming a movie on the life of Saint Francis. “Ah,” Pope John smiled, taking my hand, “Chiara
.”

I thought he had misunderstood. “Oh no, Your Holiness, my name is Dolores Hart
.”

“
No, no,” he repeated, “you are Chiara
.”

“
Dolores, Your Holiness
.”

“
Chiara
.”

Years later I recalled that, up to that moment, I had not the slightest awareness of any religious significance that my involvement in the film might have for me personally. I thought of my participation on a professional level only. Might there have been another level of meaning? It was a piercing thought
.

—
You don’t usually get your vocation from the Holy Father
.

Thirteen

Production on
Francis of Assisi
began on October 26, 1960, one week after Dolores twenty-second birthday. The cast included Bradford Dillman as Francis, Stuart Whitman, Pedro Armendáriz, Finlay Currie and Cecil Kellaway. The director was Michael Curtiz, who three years earlier had tried to get Dolores fired from the cast of
King Creole
. This time he was enthusiastic about her casting.

But Dolores, mindful of how crude Curtiz could be, wondered about
his
suitability for this particular film. Brad Dillman voiced a stronger opinion. “He was a calamitous choice. Foul-mouthed and vulgar and here he was, directing the life of a saint.”

Almost immediately upon their introduction, Brad learned to rely on Dolores, because of her past association with the director, for translations of Michael Curtizisms. On a shared ride to Assisi, Curtiz looked out the car window and said, to no one in particular, what sounded like “The ships are crazy.” Dolores saw Brad’s face go blank. She pointed out the window and whispered, “The
sheep
are
grazing
.”

I settled in on the top floor of the Subiaco Hotel, overlooking the most beautiful city I would ever see. Only 115 miles from Rome, Assisi was another world. Except for traffic lights and telephone poles, which were camouflaged for the filming, little had changed in the town’s narrow, winding streets since the thirteenth century. I can’t remember ever having been so moved by the realization of the existence of God on earth. It was no wonder Francis and Clare were saints. They lived in paradise
.

Not a hundred feet from the hotel stood the Church of Saint Francis. I heard the bells ringing in the tower in a voice grown rusty over eight centuries. I closed my eyes, and suddenly the words of Saint Paul were with me: “Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man the things that are waiting for them that love him.” It made so much sense there
.

The weather was another thing. During the entire month they shot in Assisi, cold, drizzling rain greeted the actors every morning. But when they reached the location for that day’s filming, Dolores and Brad remember vividly, it was always bathed in sunlight. “It was sort of supernatural”, said Brad. “Maybe not a miracle, but Dolores would tell me God was certainly watching over the production.”

The third star of the film, Stuart Whitman, was very sweet and attentive from the first day—so attentive that I began to steel myself for a pass. But Stuart wasn’t a pouncer. He was the perfect gentleman. As a matter of fact, in my entire time in Hollywood, I had to fight off advances only once. I think it was simply that the men were afraid to risk being rejected, and their assumption was that they would be. Their egos guarded against the embarrassment of being turned down, and as a result, they treated me like a lady
.

Besides my friendship with Brad, another lasting relationship came out of
Francis of Assisi
—with Geraldine Bogdanovich Brent, the only other American woman on location. Gerry had a small role as a nun but did not have sights on an acting career. Gerry was the Tuna Queen; her family owned StarKist. In fact, she created the character Charlie the Tuna for the ads and became known as “Charlie’s mother”. After I entered Regina Laudis, Gerry became a patron of the monastery, subsidizing many practical needs of the Community
.

Great pains were taken to ensure the film would be historically and geographically accurate. With the cooperation of the Franciscan fathers, the company was allowed to film in Assisi’s ancient churches and shrines. The Palm Sunday prayer of Saint Francis was recreated in the Church of San Pietro, which necessitated clearing the building of pews because thirteenth-century worshippers knelt on the floor. Even a number of the Franciscan monks appeared before the camera.