The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (69 page)

I do believe that, whatever the medium is, the connection to people has to come down to a living person. Some
one
has to embody the realities, or it doesn’t mean as much. I address what neuropathy sufferers experience not as a medical problem but as a spiritual reality of engagement with death. Because neuropathy cannot be cured, it goes with you to the end, and one has to come to grips with that struggle
.

Perhaps I, as a woman, can wrap the realities in a symbol of feminine truth, which has to do with what people think of when they think of our Lady or the meaning of motherhood. This community has given me a new purpose: a mission to be a spiritual mother; and in that experience I often feel another spirit moving me
.

—Are you saying God is present?

   
Constantly
.

In the spring of 2006, the Neuropathy Association was invited to testify before the House of Representatives’ Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee in Washington, DC, to address why there should be an increase in funding for research into the causes, treatments and cure of neuropathy. It was the first time the Neuropathy Association and its twenty million neuropathy sufferers were invited to give witness on Capitol Hill. Following on the heels of the testimony would be the third Neuropathy Association benefit, to be held in Los Angeles.

Because Mother’s congressional appearance would be covered by the
CBS Sunday Morning
news show, we rehearsed her testimony in advance of the trip to Washington, which was made in the company of Sister Angèle and the association’s Tina Tockarshewsky.

A luncheon meeting prior to her appearance on Capitol Hill was held at the offices of the association’s lobbyist, where her eight-minute testimony was edited to conform to the enforced four-minute limit allotted the speakers.

It was interesting to watch her in this situation—a rehearsal for a professional appearance—and I was tickled to hear her say, when the final timing of the speech came down to a still-fat six minutes, “I could pick up the pace a bit.” But no one seemed concerned, and I wondered out loud if anyone on the committee would really tell a nun to shut up.

Only then, as we packed up for our walk to the Rayburn Building, did a group of junior lobbyists come into the room to meet Mother Dolores and—I’m not kidding—get her autograph. She seemed genuinely surprised, then opened her briefcase and took out a handful of five-by-seven glossies—already signed and carefully packed. What an amazing coincidence!

—
Well, you can take the girl out of Hollywood. . 
.

The committee room in the Rayburn Building looked like a movie set—cables on the floor, a Betacam set up and a sound man in the corner—not to mention the few dozen “extras”, playing concerned citizens, seated in the audience. In that setting, all she needed was a canvas-backed chair with her name on it.

The hearing was delayed while the Appropriations Subcommittee members voted on legislation to support grants and loans to college students. This process taking place in the House of Representatives was televised in our room (the measure was approved). When the committee convened, the slightly harried chairwoman warned that the delay would cause strict adherence to the time limit. I worried that might throw Mother a bit and, in fact, the pages she held when she gave her testimony were fluttering.

But the lady was sensational. The picked-up pace added to the persuasive impact of her message; though she ran two and a half minutes over the limit, they didn’t bump her.

—
Our efforts did not result in an increase of government funding, which disappointed me. However, our allocation was not reduced either, as it was for many organizations at that time. Still, Washington gave me a breathtaking curtain call. The city presented the most spectacular burst of cherry blossoms in twenty years, and we were there on the peak day of its splendor
.

Early the next morning we departed Washington for the West Coast to attend the Neuropathy Association benefit, which was being touted as Mother Dolores’ “Hollywood Homecoming”.

Within my mission of service to the neuropathy community, I was reunited with my Hollywood life. As soon as we turned into the driveway of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, I recognized the side street as one I used to ride my bicycle on
.

I believe we are all meant to return to one another; to return in the center of truth that is God, who is Love. No one can ever leave behind what he loves, and I did love Hollywood, right down to Mr. Westmore’s last powder puff and Nellie Manley’s last hairpin. I found God in the Industry—as I have found the Industry in God
.

It was a week of continuity of relationship. Maria kicked off the festivities with a tea at her former home in Bel Air, which the current owners graciously loaned us. Just being where I had spent so many happy times with the Cooper family brought tears to my eyes. My own family was represented by my cousin Ellisa Lanza Bregman, Mom’s sister Dariel Pittman Carter, Uncle Bernie Gordon and Daddy’s widow Liliana, who had become a good friend over the years. My ever-loyal Winnie came from Florida with her husband Carl. Paramount’s A. C. Lyles reminded me of his nickname for me at the studio—Miss Ponytail—as he reaffirmed his support of my life decision. Sheila McGuire brought her daughter, Katie; she looked so much like my younger self that I could have been peering into a mirror of long ago
.

For the first time since I had held her in my arms at her christening, I saw my goddaughter, Gigi Perreau’s daughter Gina. I spoke with an old friend, Bob Thomas of Associated Press, just as I had at my last interview before I left Hollywood to enter religious life; at that moment, it didn’t seem as if much time had passed
.

Mother Dolores barely sat down for a minute during the entire afternoon, preferring to “work the room”. She stood beside a piano with Hollywood friends for a lengthy sing-along of pop songs of the forties and fifties. If I hadn’t physically sat her down on a sofa, she might be there yet.

“Sunday”, Don Robinson said, “was reserved for me. We went to Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd, which had been our parish, to lunch at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, as we had done so often, and then visited my sister, Kathi, and her husband, Don Koll, who had had a major stroke a year earlier that left him completely paralyzed, with no power of speech. Dolores had never met Don, but the connection between them was amazing. To watch him communicate with her with only his eyes made the day beautiful.”

Sunday afternoon was spent at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, just blocks away from the house on Hazeltine Avenue. The occasion was a performance of a one-woman show that Mariette Hartley had written and was appearing in. Mariette, who forty-four years before was to have appeared in
Come Fly with Me
, had not seen Mother Dolores since 1992, when she visited Regina Laudis with a problem.

Many years before, her father had committed suicide, and the pain of keeping this hidden had traumatized her. When she appeared in a television drama that dealt with a suicide in a family, Mariette heard from many others who were trying to cope with this kind of loss, and she agreed to speak at a single meeting of people who had lost loved ones to suicide.

“But when I was asked to speak on a regular basis at meetings across the country,” Mariette said, “I was afraid I couldn’t face that journey back into hell over and over.” She shared this fear with Mother Dolores, who told her, “There is an agony in going into those places, but I have learned in my years of contemplation that one’s deepest wounds, integrated, become one’s greatest power. You have to speak about it. It is your mission.”

“I speak to groups all over the country now for the American Society for the Prevention of Suicide,” Mariette said, “and there is much healing in those rooms.”

The title of Mariette’s one-woman play, written as a debt of gratitude, is
If You Get to Bethlehem, You’ve Gone Too Far
. The performance was also a gathering of old friends—a former college beau, Don Eitner, who directed the show; Marsha Hunt; Carol Soskin; Karen Cadle, producer of Mother Dolores’ first interview as a nun, “Conversations with God”; and Judy Lewis.

Dolores Hart and Judy Lewis were both young actresses when they met in 1960. Judy had grown up believing she was adopted by Loretta Young but, in truth, was her biological daughter. In 1935, Loretta had starred with Clark Gable in the movie
Call of the Wild
. She and Gable had an affair, and, when she became pregnant, they could not marry because Gable was already married. Abortion, for the Catholic actress, was never a consideration. Instead, she went to Europe, and when she returned home with Judy, identified her as adopted. Loretta soon wed businessman / producer Tom Lewis, and Judy was given his name. She learned of her true parentage twenty years later.

In early 1990, rumors that Judy was writing a book that would reveal her parentage reached Loretta’s ears and caused a long estrangement between the two. In a last-ditch effort to end the estrangement, Judy got in touch with Mother Dolores and was invited to the abbey.

“I had done all I could to reconnect with my mother and had given up hope”, Judy said. “I needed Mother Dolores’ prayers. Not long afterward, I received a letter from my mother that began ‘Would you like to spend Christmas with me?’ ”

Unbeknown to Judy, Loretta Young had remained in contact with Mother Dolores through the years and had written during this same period asking prayers for the same thing. Judy first learned of this at the time of her interview for this book.

The “Hollywood Homecoming” banquet was a joyful experience, a time of reclaiming friends, among them two wonderful surprises: Sister Dorothy Bartels, who was, before Vatican II, Mother Anthony, my favorite teacher at Corvallis; and Ralph Leo, who was a member of the Paramount production crew on the movies I made there
.

Brad Dillman and Mariette Hartley shared emcee duties, and among the kind people who spoke kind words were Lois Nettleton, Carol Burnett, Patricia Neal, Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin
, Variety
‘s venerable Army Archerd, AJ Carothers, Sheila Hart McGuire, Jan Shepherd, Valerie Allen and Earl Holliman, who escorted me to the podium just as he had escorted Dolores Hart to the Deb Star Ball in 1957
.