The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (6 page)

I had awakened to the possibility of that kind of direct communication during the times I had sat alone in the chapel at Saint Gregory’s. But this was the first time I knew I could speak directly to God, that I had that privilege. Out of that moment I found the gift of faith. Out of that moment I became a Catholic
.

That same day Dolores was given Benadryl to counteract the penicillin and decrease swelling. Within a short time she was fully recovered. She didn’t realize until many years later, after her entrance into the monastery, that this unusual, casual, direct conversation with God had been her first interior response.

I was baptized at Saint Gregory’s Church on October 4, 1948, a few days before my tenth birthday. When the priest sprinkled me with holy water, it was the greatest moment of joy in my ten years of life. I experienced a sensation of acceptance that any child, and especially a child in my circumstances, would find quite empowering. Even though my grandfather, grandmother and mother all had approved, I had crossed a boundary that was really of my own doing. I had found something that was now my own place, above and beyond all that had been cruel and dishonorable in my parents home
.

By the time I was ten years old, I had a very dramatic imagination. In becoming a Catholic, I thought of myself as part of a colorful new cast of characters in an exciting new story. I was a member of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the Saints, the Kingdom of the Angels
.

When I was first introduced to the sacrament of confession, I had difficulty grasping some of the things the sisters taught us. I knew stealing was wrong and sassing your mother, forgetting to feed a pet and being mean to somebody—that all made sense. But I did not understand why the sisters were always warning us to keep our bodies covered, as if there were something sinful about the body. Mom had always taught me that the body was natural, something to rejoice in
.

I started to keep a list of usual sins, but when I looked at it, I found I hadn’t done any of those things. So what to confess? I thought I could confess something I might easily do if I had the chance. If sins were expected, I would make up a few
.

—
I took it so seriously, so very seriously
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I was confirmed at Saint Gregory’s on April 24, 1949. The bishop welcomed me to the altar and, after confirming me, slapped my face. The slap said: “You’ll take a beating; be strong.” My cheeks burned with bravery. Now I was a real soldier of Christ
.

At confirmation you take the name of a saint who holds personal meaning for you. It signifies your devotion to that saint, who will help you in your mission in life. I took for my confirmation name Therese, after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who was just a little older than I when she entered the convent. She was described as a child who found Christ not through great healing miracles but through doing humble, simple things. She had such a sense of mission and purpose. The rigorous, sticky French spirituality of her time made it difficult to be an individual, and I suppose her stamina was very appealing to me
.

After my conversion, I had my first reflection about vocation: the act of being fully Catholic would be, of course, to become a nun. But I reasoned that that was what I should be thinking, so the reflection vanished as quickly as it had flared, not to materialize again until I was in college. Yet I still knew that I had something I had been missing. I had been deeply impressed by the sense of belonging that the other children derived from the practice of their religion; and as I participated with them, I began to feel that I too belonged there with them. My aunts had exposed me to other religions, but it was only as a Catholic that this sense of joyousness and purpose came over me
.

—Some people are quick to say that any child who had no more stability than I would clutch at anything with a sound foundation. That never bothers me because they are only confirming that the Church has strength and solidity
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Four

For the first time in her life Dolores had lived in one place long enough to have a sense of belonging. When Dolores was eleven, however, she returned to California to live with her mother, who was planning to remarry.

Harriett had been establishing a new life for herself, one that eventually would include Dolores, but since the divorce, she had enjoyed the single life that marrying at an early age had denied her. She played the field and had a number of suitors, but when she met Albert Gordon, a divorced man raising a nine-year-old son, she thought she had found the man who would give her a home and security.

Harriett met Al while she was working as a cashier at Gordon’s, a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Al and his two brothers, Gene and Bernie, owned Gordon’s, as well as liquor stores and a small deli.

I was unhappy about leaving Chicago, which I now thought of as home, but one thing cheered me: I would again be near Hollywood, where movies were made. I used to read the movie magazines all the time. I never let my family see me reading them, though. I was afraid they would think I was funny. The only Nancy Drew book I read was
Nancy Drew in Hollywood,
and I read that under the covers
.

—
If truth were known, my dream was to be a movie star. I used to say I wanted to be an actress, but that was just to hide the pretension of “star”
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After the wedding, the two families moved into a bungalow on Hazeltine Avenue in Sherman Oaks. One of Al’s liquor stores was on the corner. The cheery yellow house had a large backyard with fruit trees that supplied Harriett with an abundance of fruit for preserving.

Al Gordon was a good man—Jewish, but he did not practice his faith. At first glance, with his dark looks and large brown eyes, one might have taken him for a dandy. He was, however, all work. I liked my stepfather and wanted to call him something besides Al. “Daddy” would always mean my father, so Al became “Pop”. Pop worked days at the liquor store and nights at the restaurant. Mom often joined him in the evenings to help out or just to have drinks with friends after closing
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Harriett soon made friends with the neighborhood coffee-klatch ladies, who had been accommodating enough to loan her a sewing machine. The kids in the area were mostly boys, but they immediately accepted Dolores. Some years later, in a magazine interview, Harriett remembered her daughter “played football with boys before she dated them. She was always taking bikes apart and putting them together again. She would get on the roof and fix the TV antennae. The boys thought of her not as a girl but as their equal, a comrade who could whistle through her teeth just like they did.”

—Mom taught me how to whistle through my teeth—a loud, piercing, real-boy whistle that, later in life, I found effective for hailing cabs in New York City. I once whistled like that in the common room at the monastery, and food dropped from mouths
.

Older sister and younger brother bonded easily. Dolores and Martin were close in age, so there was no awkward initiation period. She was also enough of a tomboy to make for comfortable coexistence and sufficiently pretty to make him feel proud. They shared a fondness for
Dragnet
and
I Love Lucy
on TV, which Dolores got Jewish Martin to join her in giving up for Lent. Together they built a small stage in the garage, where they presented puppet shows to family and neighborhood friends.

Pop took us on excursions to Rosarita Beach and Las Vegas. At holiday time, Mom would decorate the house like Macy’s department store. She even accompanied me to Mass on occasion. I was starting to experience the things the children at Saint Gregory’s spoke of when they talked about their families
.

I had, at long last, a strong sense that Mom and I were going to be all right, that we were finally going to make it as a family. All the stressful years that had taken their toll on Mom were over, and she seemed truly content for the first time in a long while. Our relationship, which had always been close when I was very young, got closer. I became her confidante, a younger sister
.

Dolores saw little of her father during this period. Bert had married yet again but still had not settled down. His drinking and his wife abuse continued—a sympathetic Harriett often administering to his battered third wife, Deena—and he went from job to job in Los Angeles and Chicago. He tried selling used cars for a short time and then sold pots and pans door-to-door, pretending to be a religious man. That was a brief career, ended abruptly by the authorities. Forever chasing the butterfly of success, he even tried his hand at gold mining in Alaska, but the Hicks Gold Mining Company was another short-lived addition to his many failed schemes.

—We got one thing out of the mining company—a lot of free stationery. I’m still using it for note paper
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When it came time to enroll in school, Dolores told her mother she didn’t want to attend public school. Saint Francis de Sales was close to their Sherman Oaks home, but Dolores could not be enrolled because she was from a divorced home and had a Baptist mother and a Jewish stepfather.

This got Harriett’s Irish up, and she confronted the priest at Saint Francis de Sales and read him the riot act. “I may be a Baptist,” she said, “in fact, I may even be a heathen, and I am divorced and married to a Jew. But my kid is Catholic because she chose to be Catholic, and if you refuse her admittance because of me, you are defeating the message of your gospel. Jesus did not refuse the little children, and if you don’t take her, between the Baptist and the Jew, this kid won’t stand a chance. So you better find a way.”

Dolores was entered into the sixth grade, impressed that her mother had gotten through to him with her impassioned speech. But Harriett later confided that, when Dolores was out of earshot, she fired a final salvo at the startled priest: “If you don’t let her in, I’ll be down here in the morning and personally throw a brickbat through every one of your god-damned stained-glass windows.”

On my first day, I noticed a scroll on the wall of my classroom containing the words of Saint Francis de Sales: “The same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either he will shield you from suffering or he will give you unfailing strength to bear it.” I felt that message was somehow meant for me
.

Her favorite teacher was Mother Anthony. When, in 2004, I spoke to Mother Anthony, who had become Sister Dorothy Bartels after Vatican II, she sounded no more than thirty as she recalled Dolores in the seventh and eighth grades, some fifty-five years before. “I seem to remember Dolores always on a bicycle, wearing one of those beanies that were so popular with the kids, with the tiny propeller on top. A very good student, curious about everything—and not at all ‘actressy’. I also remember that she used to doodle Shmoos—those shapeless cartoon figures in the
Li’l Abner
comic strip—on everything, including her homework and test papers.”

Dolores became part of a small group of kids who earned the nickname “Can-do Gang”, because of their fearlessness in tackling any challenge with humor and imagination. “Can-do” reflected the spirit of America at that time, having finally emerged from the Depression era. The Can-do kids became friends for life: Gail Lammerson, Arlene Howsley, Janne Shirley, Marilyn Finch, who also would become a nun, Judy Conway and Joseph Allegretti, the lone boy in the group, who had a reputation for helping people. A half century later, Joe remembered Dolores: “She was not only pretty but very quiet and serious and, yes, I thought, saintly.”

At Saint Francis de Sales I came across a book on the French actress Eleanora Duse. I thought it was the most wonderful book I had ever read, and I locked some of her sage observations inside me. Her art depended on intense naturalness—“I did not use paint. I made myself up morally.” That made sense to me. She recounted going to her mother’s funeral and being aware of her feelings and reactions to use later when she was acting. At the time I was horrified at her heartlessness—but also fascinated. It did seem a means to pack away difficult moments into a memory bank that could be called up when needed later. I vowed to store up memories of all the things that affected me, so I could use them when I was playing a role. Eleanora also said something else that I wrote down in my diary: “When we grow old, there can only be one regret—not to have given enough of ourselves
.”

Way, way back in my mind, even that early, I was aware of the fact that my life was not for me, that it somehow was something outside of me. I remember walking up and down the ramp at the back of the Drake Theater and thinking that my life was meant for something else. I knew it was going to be ecstatic; I was sure of this because I had decided to be an actress. In my mind it was preordained
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