The full title of this book is The Ear of the Heart; An Actress' Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows by Mother Dolores Hart and Richard DeNeut. I got inspired to get this book on my kindle after I caught an interview of Mother Dolores somewhere, either EWTN or a link on the internet. Anyway, her story is really interesting. The book reads like a gossipy Hollywood memoir that veers suddenly off into a wonderfully thought provoking story of the blossoming and development of the Abbey of Regina Laudis - home to a group of contemplative Benedictine nuns.
Dolores Hart is the daughter of a small time Hollywood actor who never quite made it big in the industry and his first wife; both were very young, still in their teens when they married. Dolores lived with her parents, who had a very rocky and violent marriage until she was about 9 when she went to live her maternal grandparents in Chicago. While living with them she attended a Catholic school, simply because it was the closest school to their house. While there she converted to Catholicism. She got the acting bug young and while in her first year of college got a call to audition for a movie. The audition conflicted with an exam but the teacher would not let her out of it. The audition won out and she got the role opposite Elvis Presley in his first movie. She made several movies after that and was on stage in a broadway play for a long run. This part of the book introduces you to many people, like Elvis, Maria Cooper (Gary Cooper's daughter who became her best friend), Stephen Boyd (whom she dated for a bit), Karl Malden, Patricia Neal and many other lesser known stars. She loved acting and she loved Hollywood but she felt empty too. Someone mentioned this beautiful monastary in Connecticut two hours outside New York City. When she was feeling very stressed during the long run of her broadway play she decided to go visit it. She fell in love. She kept finding excuses to go back to visit and did so over the next couple of years. Then finally she decided she had a vocation. She secretly wrapped up her career in Hollywood (she wasn't allowed to tell anyone!) and went into the convent.
Convent life was hard! Much harder than she thought. She cried herself to sleep for the next three years! It was an amazing stripping away of self. Somehow though she knew she belonged there even though she thought all the time about leaving. Life at the monastery (it later officially became an Abbey - I am not sure what the difference is but there is one.) One thing that made it even rougher was that first her father and then her mother died soon after she entered. They both had a couple of failed marriages and were raging alcoholics and it looks like it was very probably both deaths were suicides. But she really connected with the Lady Abbess of Regina Laudis and a number of other nuns. The life was rich with prayer, learning to sing the Latin office, silence, very hard manual labor, and then all sorts of things happened as the leaders of the abbey sought to make their 1500 year old lifestyle relevant to modern America. All kinds of lay communities developed in conjuction with Regina Laudis, a theater ministry began, conservation and better farming techniques were pioneered, and much more. The nuns were allowed to pursue higher education. One famous nun, called the Cheese Nun, had a documentary made about her research into cheese microbiology. I saw that documentary on PBS several years ago and didn't even realize it was the same abbey. They also wound up making two very popular cds called Women in Chant.
Lots and lots of other stuff happened too. Too much to recount in this review. It is a very interesting story. I would love to go visit Regina Laudis one day.
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