The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (26 page)

At the 1961 Oscar ceremonies, James Stewart all but broke down accepting an honorary award for Gary Cooper. Stewart’s emotional words to his old friend alerted the Industry that the ailing Cooper was near death.

The last time I saw Gary was in his Brentwood home, where I had once mistaken him for a gardener. He was a man who just fit in with nature, yet was so comfortable around people. To me, Gary Cooper
was
comfort. He always treated me with respect, kindness and affection. It was devastating to say goodbye to him. As I approached his bed in the dimly lit bedroom, he reached out and took my hand. “Hello, Miss Dolores,” he said with a smile, “working
?”

Gary Cooper was laid to rest on May 16, 1961. At his funeral, I held a religious relic in my hand. A relic is a sacred piece of matter from the body of a saint—it can be a bit of bone or hair or something that was close to that person’s body in life. The Church considers relics very precious because through them we can come into contact with the holiness of the person. The relic I held tightly was Gary’s relic of Saint Thérèse. Rocky had given it to me at the time of his death. It means a great deal to me still
.

Maria Cooper recalled, “My father had felt very paternalistic toward Dolores. He knew how close we were, and he felt kind of like she was a younger daughter, maybe much younger than her calendar years because she had not had the family environment that would have given her a kind of sophistication about the ‘ways of the world’ that her beauty and talent were leading her into. Although he recognized that she had the ‘street smarts her difficult life had provided, he still felt protective of her in terms of the ‘business’; he knew she didn’t have the training to move easily in the circles he foresaw as her road to being a really big star.”

Near the end of production of
Sail a Crooked Ship
, Dolores got a call from Harry Bernsen telling her that producer Mark Robson and director Philip Dunne wanted to meet with her to discuss their upcoming film
The Inspector
. She had been aware through the trade papers that the film was in preproduction because Natalie Wood was scheduled for it. Wood had abruptly pulled out of the project, and Robson and Dunne were interested in Dolores for a lead role.

The problem was that the film was scheduled to begin almost immediately, and I was shooting
Crooked Ship.
It didn’t seem possible that I could ready myself for another movie so quickly. But when I read the script, I knew I should do it, that it was decidedly a major jump toward the more demanding roles I coveted. I did note with some trepidation that the heroine was Jewish and feared that, once I tested, out I would go
.

But the meeting was not an audition. I wasn’t asked to test or even to read for the part. Mr. Dunne and Mr. Robson had already decided they wanted me for the role of the Jewish refugee, Lisa Held. The meeting was to see how soon I could get ready for the European start of production, scheduled in three weeks. Amazingly
, Sail a Crooked Ship
was to wrap in exactly three weeks
.

Mr. Dunne and Mr. Robson asked if I would object to having my hair practically shaved off for a flashback sequence in a concentration camp. Apparently they thought I would be horrified. If they had only known how glad I would be to have it off. On this film, I wouldn’t have to check it constantly
.

—
Besides, I was finally going to play a Jewish girl
.

I finished my last scene for
Sail a Crooked Ship
on Friday evening. The next morning I was on a plane for London and shaking with more fear than I had had since the night I left for Broadway
.

Fifteen

Based on the novel by Jan de Hartog,
The Inspector
was a straight-line suspense drama of a Dutch secret policeman who rescues a World War II concentration camp survivor from the clutches of a white slaver and smuggles her into Palestine. The production was scheduled to shoot in the Netherlands, London, Wales, Tangiers and along the Mediterranean. Interiors would be shot at Elstree Studio near London.

In her previous films, Dolores radiated health. As Lisa, she would be required to appear ill and worn. Getting the externals of the character is easy enough for a good craftsman. But healthy radiance can be masked only so far with makeup, and Dolores was concerned about projecting Lisa’s interior pain.

A producer friend, Bobby Cohn, suggested she meet a woman he had recently met at a party. He had noticed tattooed numbers on her arm, and she told him she had been in Auschwitz. Since her arrival from Hungary, Suzanne Zada had been working as an assistant to a beautician and knew little about Hollywood. She had no idea who Dolores Hart was but agreed to a meeting as a favor to Bobby.

Suzanne remembered, “The meeting was set up at the Beefeater Inn, and as I was escorted to a red-leather booth Dolores rose and said, ‘I think you should slap my face.’ I stood stunned as she explained, ‘I don’t know why we thought we could ask you to relive your suffering just so we can make a movie. I apologize.’

“I was totally overwhelmed by the fact that she should be that sensitive, but when she said that, I suddenly knew that I wanted to share with her because I knew my help would allow this sensitive woman to get it right. If one person in the audience could appreciate the real degradation, if just one person realized the most tremendous cruelty is depriving a person of his humanity, I would be happy.”

Suzanne’s eyes still carried that wound. “Why me?” she had asked repeatedly. “Why didn’t God choose another?” That question was what had made her suffering so hard to bear. “It wasn’t the daily beatings that hurt” she said. “It was the hurt inside, the knowledge that I had no reason to be proud, that I wanted to be loved but who could possibly love me? I learned constantly to avoid being noticed because if you’re noticed, you could be gassed. I trusted no one
.”

At that moment, the film became a personal crusade. I wanted to be able to show Suzanne I really did understand how deeply she was hurt. If she understood, it would make the work more than worthwhile. Alone, I spent hours staring at myself in a mirror, trying to remove all life from my eyes, leaving them hollow and dead. Suzanne’s words “I trusted no one” never left my consciousness
.

En route to our Dutch location, I caught sight of something I had seen only on cans of kitchen cleanser—a windmill. “Oh,” I cried aloud, “there’s one!” Others appeared on the horizon. “There’s one and there’s one!” My traveling companions began to laugh, amused at my naïve enthusiasm. “My child, you are now in the land of windmills”, they assured me. “You’ll soon see so many of them, you’ll hardly notice them at all
.”

My good fortune to work with respected actors continued with this film. Stephen Boyd was the inspector, and the other players read like a Who’s Who of the acting profession: Leo McKern, Marius Goring, Donald Pleasence, Hugh Griffith, Robert Stephens and Harry Andrews
.

I remember long rehearsals before each scene. Philip Dunne was not stingy with rehearsal time, and Mark Robson’s background as a director made him a generous producer. Their frequent and considerate notes to me were gifts of encouragement that I will never forget
.

Most of the location filming took place on Dutch canals or at sea, on barges and boats and a diesel trawler that the company named Madre Dolorosa as a compliment to Dolores. Although she and Stephen were constantly queasy, they were denied the solace of seasickness pills because Dunne felt they made his actors drowsy and interfered with their performances.

It was a good thing that Dunne had a contented company. It would bode well for the production when they moved to Swansea in Wales, the exhaustingly uncooperative location that doubled for Palestine. That single location resulted in the film’s going over schedule.

The weather proved so unpredictable that it forced Dunne to “double take” scenes to keep outdoor filming going whatever the conditions. He shot alternate takes of every scene both dry and wet so that sequences could be matched up in the editing room.

I didn’t like Swansea. I thought of it as the sinkhole of Great Britain. For fifteen days we sat in pup tents and trawlers, fighting seasickness, rain, wind and sun. I was feeling the effects of going from one film to another without a break, and at the end of each day I didn’t know if I was seasick, sunstroked or hung over
.

Anything that could jinx our company did. One night, a storm grew to such massive proportions that our camera longboat washed away, the
Traveler
got stuck in a sand dune and our transformers conked out. When the sun at last peeped through, a huge swarm of bees took over the beach. Mr. Dunne was forced to reshoot the entire day’s work
.

Crowds of people from Swansea lined the hills above the location, watching the filming, all of them within critical camera range. It was annoying—and expensive—when we lost shots because a boy scout troop waved or light flashes from binocular lenses were caught by the camera
.

—
You know, forty years later, I received a touching letter from a Welshman named Alun Rees, who was a child of seven on that hill above our location. He wanted me to know how special that day still was to him. You’re welcome, Alun
.

On top of all this, a letter from Granny confirmed that Mom had gone off the wagon again. I exploded. I wrote her that I couldn’t care less what was going to happen to her. God knows we all want love and attention and someone to care, but my mother—and my father, too, for that matter—seemed to go through life thinking they were the only two people on earth with those needs and the rest of us were created to serve them. So I was in a blue funk when we came to the climactic scene in which I’m shot and Stephen carries me onto an army tank. The crew promised to put real bullets in the gun to put me out of my misery
.

I was relieved when the company moved to London for the remainder of production. I took a comfortable flat in Eaton Square, a far cry from the tent on the Swansea beach
.

There was a sequence in Waterloo Station that had to be shot on a Sunday night because the facility could not be closed down during the day. It took most of the night, and at the end of the shoot, I was so tired I didn’t bother to take off my costume or remove my makeup before I was driven to Eaton Square. After the driver dropped me off at the flat, I realized I had left my purse in the dressing room. I had no money and, more important at the moment, no key to the building
.

While I was standing forlornly on the street, a London bobby drove by and asked what I was doing in that neighborhood. Mind you, in my costume—a tattered wool skirt, crumpled blouse, stained trench coat—I looked like one of the hundred neediest cases. I told him I lived in the building and didn’t have my key. He asked for identification, which of course I didn’t have; he told me to be on my way or he would have to take me to the station. I walked away slowly until I saw him leave, then I turned back. I was desperate to check the back door in case it was unlocked, but as soon as I reached the rear of the building the bobby was beside me, and I was taken to the local police station. I protested to anyone within earshot that I was an actress making a movie in London and they could check all this by calling Elstree Studio
.

Someone noticed the “tattooed” numbers on my arm and was momentarily sympathetic. I asked for a washcloth. As I removed Lisa’s identification numbers, someone at Elstree finally picked up the phone, and this jailbird was released
.

—
The next day, the studio publicist put out a story that screen actress Dolores Hart had been arrested by London police who mistook her for a streetwalker. It was picked up by newspapers all over the world
.

During production, the film had its title changed from
The Inspector
to
Lisa
to focus on the character of the refugee for the European audience that would have a deeper acquaintance with the war-scarred and the displaced.