The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (8 page)

Father Charles White, a Paulist priest from a parish in Westwood, came to Corvallis to conduct a retreat, a series of seminars devoted to religious topics. He looked like a head-on collision between the youthful John Paul II and Bing Crosby. I admired him greatly; he was one of the most loving people I ever knew. He was an orphan, so the world became his family
.

In her senior year at Corvallis, Dolores was elected president of the student body. She also began a relationship with Joan of Arc, first in a scene from George Bernard Shaw’s
Saint Joan
, suggested to her by the new speech and drama teacher, Beverly Zanoline. Dolores had earlier won a speech contest and had gone on to represent Corvallis in a final competition at the Lions Club. There were so many contestants that evening that she was almost asleep when her turn came. Approaching the podium she suddenly realized she couldn’t remember what she had prepared.

All I could do was stand there and say miserably, “I forgot my speech.” I ran from the stage and collapsed in tears in the backseat of our car. I vowed to my mother that I would never set foot on a stage again
.

“
Cripes,” she said, “it’s no big deal. After twenty-five speeches, everyone wanted to go home anyway. You’re not a failure, kiddo; you’re a prize.” Miss Zanoline apparently agreed with Mom because she scheduled a scene from
Saint Joan
for the class to present to the student body and cast me as the French Maid of Orleans. Everyone thought that the kids would never sit still for the “King of Heaven” scene; but, with reborn confidence, I insisted that they wouldn’t dare not sit still. I was the school president after all
.

—
It was a captive audience
.

The fact that a nationwide search was going on for an unknown actress to play the teenage Joan of Arc in the film version of
Saint Joan
may have added to the attraction. This well-publicized search was second only to the 1938 quest for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind
, with applications available in movie-house lobbies across the country. The film was to be produced and directed by Otto Preminger, who in the recent past had been responsible for
Laura, Carmen Jones
and
The Man with the Golden Arm
. He had lined up a strong cast of internationally known actors including Richard Widmark, John Gielgud, Anton Walbrook and Richard Todd to support the unknown actress. Dolores couldn’t believe it when she received a letter inviting her to read for
Saint Joan
. Her friends Gail Lammerson and Janne Shirley had submitted in her name an application for an audition.

Mr. Preminger personally conducted the auditions at the Academy Awards Theater in Hollywood. There were hundreds of girls lined up in front of the theater. I waited five hours for my turn and overheard other candidates saying the most frightening things about Mr. Preminger. I was petrified when my name was finally called. His appearance was intimidating; but he was astonishingly sweet to me during the interview, and I started to feel at ease
.

Just before the test began, Mr. Preminger asked me if I could cry easily. I told him I thought I could. “Fine”, he said and slapped my face and called, “Action!” Stunned and humiliated, but with tears streaming, I did the “King of Heaven” scene. Mr. Preminger asked me back for a second reading. To put it mildly, I was reluctant. I was afraid he might hit me again. He didn’t, but I was so nervous I read very badly, and that was the end of that. Jean Seberg, a young girl from Iowa, was the chosen one. From what I have been told, her life changed radically and so sadly. Over the years, I often prayed for Jean
.

The “King of Heaven” scene was useful twice more: first, when the high school cast was invited to present it on the local Gene Norman television show, which put Dolores in a professional atmosphere for the first time in her life; and again when she presented it in a bid for a scholarship at her school of choice, Marymount College in Los Angeles.

Just before graduation, arguments between Mom and Pop accelerated to the point where divorce was talked about. I could hear them late at night calculating who would get the television set and whether the car was community property. She added and subtracted ironed shirts and hot meals, while he added and subtracted scotch and sodas. Their ears were closed to my pleas to try to work things out as they sat there and divided love. Pop wanted to sell the house—he always called it the “big house”—and promised to pay my Marymount tuition if we moved to an apartment. Mom vetoed that fast, and Pop walked out. Then he came back once again. That summer no people moved through the house on Hazeltine, just shadows
.

I was peeved at Pop’s constant reference to the “big house” as if it were costing a fortune and his using my tuition as a wedge. Although I thought of his financial support of me as my due, I wasn’t about to ask for his help. I didn’t ever want to beg for anything
.

—
There’s a lot of Grandma Hicks in me
.

Pop made good on his threat to withhold money. Still, I had to acknowledge that Pop had been very good to me; when all was said and done, I didn’t dislike my stepfather, and my relationship with him continued to be affectionate
.

Dolores and her mother scraped together $400 for the tuition and took it personally to Marymount. It was after hours, and they traipsed up and down hallways, peeking into rooms until they found a lone nun sitting at a typewriter. Dolores presented the money and was told she was $75 short. The nun, Mother Gregory, was not a clerk but the president of the school, and she assured Dolores and her mother that something could be worked out.

That was when
Saint Joan
came through for Dolores again. The scene won her a scholarship of $500, which ensured that she would be able to attend the college. Her freshman year at Marymount would begin in September 1956.

The scholarship would pay for the tuition, but I was still responsible for room and board. So I enrolled as a day student and planned to live at home the first semester
.

On graduation day, I was valedictorian of the Corvallis class of 1956. I wasn’t chosen because I had the highest scholastic average but because the nuns thought I could speak better. Everyone was impressed except Grandpa. He still preferred that I was prom queen
.

During the summer between high school and college, I got a job at the Glen Aire Country Club in Sherman Oaks. They tried me out in several positions, but I ended up making hamburgers in the small pool cafe. It was a pretty boring job, so I daydreamed a lot about being an actress. The jukebox in the cafe continually played Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly singing “True Love” from
High Society.
The kids at Corvallis had teased me about looking like Grace Kelly. But when Grace Kelly was my age, she was already modeling in New York and studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. And there I was, making hamburgers
.

Five

Marymount College was founded in Los Angeles in 1933, separately from but parallel to Loyola, the Catholic men’s university. These institutions would merge and become Loyola Marymount University in 1973, but in 1956 Marymount was still a small liberal arts college almost hidden behind eucalyptus trees in the hills above the UCLA campus.

The usual liberal arts curriculum was substantially supplemented by courses in religion, including apologetics.

—Apologetics?

   
Literally
, apologetics
means “defense of your faith”. One way to think of it is how a person who has faith would try to explain to someone who does not believe why it is necessary to believe
.

There were also personal improvement classes such as charm and etiquette, with emphasis on how to comport oneself like a lady, how to carry on an intelligent conversation and how to set a table.

Most of the classes were taught by nuns, but there were “civilian” teachers too. The well-known modeling agent Caroline Leonetti taught charm and etiquette, and Roger Wagner, of the Roger Wagner Chorale, taught singing. Marymount also boasted a dramatic club. Virginia Barnelle was the head of the drama department.

Classmates Gail Lammerson and Maureen Bailey worked alongside Dolores and still remember her as “a vivacious comedienne who kept everyone in stitches with pantomimes made up in a flash—say, a bullfight, and she would play the bullfighter
and
the bull.”

The school’s living accommodation was Butler Hall, a dormitory with a nun in residence to “keep the girls safe”, and only one public telephone, which imperiled their social life. Finances kept Dolores from moving into the dorm during her first semester, but later she became a Butler Hall resident.

In the mid-twentieth century, college girls were expected to be on campus at all times unless they had permission to leave. They signed out and signed back in. Weeknight curfews were early, but if grades were kept up, girls were allowed to stay out until ten o’clock. The deadline was extended two hours on weekends. Marymount didn’t have uniforms, but its dress code was strict. Dolores and fellow class counselor Deanna Smith were monitors of the code, charged with reporting any classmates who were in violation.

—
Neither of us ever snitched. In fact, one night we joined the rest of the Butler Hall residents in a protest over the dress code. We “decorated” the trees facing Sunset Boulevard with our garter belts and bras, which caused a traffic jam of hotrod drivers from both Loyola and UCLA
.

I liked all my classmates, but especially Sheila Hart. When we met, Sheila was holding court in Butler Hall. I found her gay and witty, energizing, and I figured I would have to make a pretty big impression to get her attention. I followed an impulse and improvised one of my “scenes” on the spot. I pretended I had something important to say, opened my mouth wide, then clapped my hand over it, pantomiming with great distress that I had just swallowed a fly. I made my impression. Sheila made one too. She was the only girl who went for a glass of water
.

Five decades later Sheila recalled that the chemistry between them was immediate: “There are some people who are a match from the first moment. Somehow you know you’ve just met someone you will cherish for the rest of your life.” The girls shared like points of view. They also shared similar hurts—the divorce of parents as well as the devastating effect alcohol can have on a family. Both had gone through a polio scare. About the only difference between them was Dolores’ lack of interest in fashion. “She just didn’t care about clothes”, Sheila laughed, “and relied on me whenever she needed to buy something.”

Most importantly, we found in each other the same gentleness of budding womanhood and deep-rooted Catholic values, part of Sheila’s upbringing but a personal discovery for me. We could talk to each other on a level beyond usual freshman nonsense
.

The two girls would walk up into the hills behind the school, trespassing on the nearby Bel-Air golf course. “It was on one of these walks”, Sheila said, “that Dolores wondered out loud if possibly there was something more in store for her than just becoming a Catholic. Although she laughed it off—‘No, thank you, I’m going to be an actress’—I was always aware that there was something about her, a longing. I used to think of it as her Hound of Heaven, and I was honored that she would share that with me. She hadn’t ever talked about it with the nuns at school.”

I did not understand or know how to describe what I was feeling because I was sure I would be a candidate for the loony bin. But I seemed to be searching for something. I felt I didn’t fully have the understanding of the Church that I needed, so my pursuit would introduce me to a number of Catholic orders such as the Carmelites and the Franciscans. For a brief time I was a Dominican tertiary and took classes on the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas at a Dominican house of studies. To take on study of Aquinas was no small challenge
.

—
Throughout my life, I’ve had difficulty concentrating while reading. At school, I relied a great deal on synopses. I was able to pull out the pith
.

Early in her freshman year, Dolores met Loyola philosophy major Don Barbeau, who was older than most of the students by some ten years. He had been a Trappist monk before he entered Loyola, and he drove a 1938 hearse instead of a regular car. He was also involved in Loyola’s upcoming production of
Joan of Lorraine
, Maxwell Anderson’s modern take on the story of Joan of Arc, and asked Dolores if she would be interested in reading for the lead.

Barbeau was genuinely convinced that Dolores had movie potential, and he promised to invite Hollywood producers to see the play. Dolores figured this was just a line, but the thought of doing that play did interest her because one of her favorite actresses, Ingrid Bergman, had played it in the original Broadway production, and, well, it
was
Joan of Arc. The drama department’s Virginia Barnelle, however, would be a formidable hurdle.