She’s a nun now–has been in a cloistered Order for over 45 years. Rush out and buy the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine, which features a surprising and wonderful 6-page interview with Mother Dolores featuring a current photo.
Dolores Hart was one of my favorite 60s starlets. She co-starred with Elvis Presley in two of his best received movies Loving You (1957) and King Creole (1958), she led college coeds Yvette Mimiuex, Paula Prentiss and Connie Francis to Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break in Where the Boys Are (1960), gave a touching performance in the colorful adventure movie Lisa (1962) as a Dutch Holocaust survivor smuggled into Palestine while chased by the authorities, and along with Pamela Tiffin and Lois Nettleton played stewardesses out to trap themselves a man in Come Fly with Me (1963).
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU8AyxTLmOg
It was during promotion for Come Fly with Me that Hart announced her intentions to leave Hollywood for the convent. Pamela Tiffin remarked in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema (now available in soft cover with minor revisions), “Dolores Hart and I had some nice conversations. She is a warm, decent, and vulnerable woman. Dolores had some unhappy experiences in love matters. And if I’m not mistaken, she was ending one up at the time. She told me the story and was still very upset about it. She said she was going to enter a convent. And at that time I couldn’t understand it. I said, ‘Oh, but you don’t want to, Dolores!’ Now I understand it. So there she is.”
In the EW interview, Mother Dolores reveals that she almost signed a contract with MGM after doing Come Fly with Me. One wonders what roles she might have played if she stayed an actress. I easily could see her as Lara in Doctor Zhivago (MGM pushed contract player Yvette Mimiuex for the part but David Lean declined) or the young missionary played by contract player Sue Lyon in John Ford’s last movie Seven Women. I could even see her as Rosemary in Paramount’s Rosemary’s Baby. For me any 60s starlet would have been better in that role than Mia Farrow, but I digress.
Mother Dolores Hart is still an active member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences so the EW article concnetrates on her views of today’s Hollywood as she receives DVDs to vote for Best Picture and all the acting categories. It is just so great to see Dolores Hart get such a big splashy tribute in such a mainstream magazine.