After the success of the Oscar-nominated documentary God Is Bigger Than Elvis about her life, it is no surprise that Mother Dolores Hart has written a book about her life called The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows. I love Dolores Hart and already pre-ordered my copy!

Book description from Amazon:

Dolores Hart stunned Hollywood in 1963, when after ten highly successful feature films, she chose to enter a contemplative monastery. Now, fifty years later, Mother Dolores gives this fascinating account of her life, with co-author and life-long friend, Richard DeNeut.

Dolores was a bright and beautiful college student when she made her film debut with Elvis Presley in Paramount’s 1957 Loving You. She acted in nine more movies with other big stars such as Montgomery Clift, Anthony Quinn and Myrna Loy. She also gave a Tony-nominated performance in the Broadway play The Pleasure of His Company and appeared in two television shows, including The Virginian. A new chapter in her life occurred while playing Saint Clare in the movie Francis of Assisi, which was filmed on location in Italy.

Born Dolores Hicks to a complicated and colorful Chicago family, Mother Hart has travelled a charmed yet challenging road in her journey toward God, serenity and, yes, love. She entered the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., at the peak of her career, not in order to leave the glamorous world of acting she had dreamed of since childhood, but in order to answer a mysterious summons she heard with the “ear of the heart”. While contracted for another film and engaged to be married, she gave up everything to become a bride of Christ.

[amazon_enhanced asin=”1586177478″ /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B008UIANNI” /]

A reader of my Blog brought this film called Beach Boy Rebels to my attention. I had never heard of it or most of the cast. With a title like that, it should have starred Aron Kincaid, Steve Rogers, Mike Nader, and Christopher Riordan. Willie Pastrano, however, was the only familiar name since I remember the tough guy boxer-turned actor from Wild Rebels and The Hooked Generation.

I did some research and click here to find out more about the movie. Some beach boys come upon stolen jewels and hock them to the consternation of the thieves. Look for an interview with the film’s director in the future on that site.

Below is a link to see the Robert Aldrich-directed western The Last Sunset (1961) starring Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten, and Carol Lynley. I’ve always had a hatred for this very strange slow moving western soap opera (a sort of  Peyton Place meets Cattle Drive) beautifully filmed in Mexico and Texas. It is a very offbeat western I should like for its strangeness and for co-starring Carol, but I don’t. Teenage Carol Lynley was never my cup of tea. I like the adult version.

httpv://youtu.be/uhDUIJZURpE

Kirk Douglas produced the movie through his production company and it was released by Universal Pictures. Fresh-off-the-blacklist Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay. Douglas plays a cliched black-clad outlaw clad in way-too-tight pants on the run for killing a man in a barroom brawl trailed by likable lawman Rock Hudson (best in show). Douglas turns up at the Mexican ranch of drunken cattleman Joseph Cotten and his wife, wind-blown Dorothy Malone playing as if she was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof‘s Maggie on the Prairie. Their tomboyish daughter is Carol Lynley (Universal pushed for Sandra Dee in the role but Douglas nixed it) with a most unflattering short haircut and giving one of her worst performances right up there, or down there, with her wooden turn as Alison MacKenzie in Return to Peyton Place the same year.

Douglas agrees to lead Cotten’s cattle drive from Mexico to Texas, so the lush can sell his herd for more booze money no doubt. Hudson shows up and decides to join the drive when he catches the batting eyes of Malone. He calls an uneasy truce with Douglas until the cattle are delivered. During the course of the cattle drive (hampered by a dust storm; stampeding cattle; an Indian attack, etc.)  secrets are revealed: Douglas and Hudson were former lovers, oops meant Malone; Cotten deserted his army brigade during the war explaining his heavy drinking to forget his cowardice; hot-to-trot Malone’s attraction to Hudson becomes evident to all while Douglas likes Lolita-ish Lynley much to Malone’s dismay, as she holds in her bosom a terrible truth about her daughter. The Douglas/Lynley romantic scenes are really icky but can you imagine how ickier they would have been with the even younger Sandra Dee in the role? Plecch! Once the cows are grazing safely in Texas, Douglas has his gunfight at the OK Coral with Hudson with only one gunfighter left standing. I wonder who? Sounds over-the-top and campy. Too bad it is played dead serious.

The Last Sunset grossed a respectable $3 million at the box office, but under performed considering the all-star cast. Critics gave the movie mixed reviews and the Harvard Lampoon bestowed on it the award for “Worst Performance by a Cast in Toto.” Click here for an entertaining more detailed behind-the-scenes look at the movie.