Free The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows by Dolores Hart, Richard DeNeut Page A

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.
    I knew Miss Barnelle would not permit a frosh to be cast over one of her senior girls. So I didn’t ask permission but went to the audition in secret. I got the part. Miss Barnelle was not pleased .
    Rehearsals, which occupied five nights a week, all but canceled Dolores social life, but she didn’t care. She admired the play and thought the part of Joan was perfect for her. The director was a priest from Hungary, Father Andrew Viragh, only recently liberated from behind the Iron Curtain. The cast included a young student, Bob Denver, in the role of the dauphin. Bob would make his mark in television a few years later as the star of Gilligan’s Island .
    Barbeau did not take lightly his promise to help Dolores land a movie career. He invested in a camera and took some head shots to include in the letters he wrote to studio executives, inviting each of them to a performance of Joan of Lorraine during its one-week run beginning December 11, 1956.
    As astonishing as it sounds, there were some takers. Representatives from Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century-Fox responded to Don’s invitation to see the play. I was asked to interview at both studios. The Fox possibility especially interested me because Daddy had been under contract there .
    Neither studio followed through, but there was another name on Barbeau’s list of invitees—Hal Wallis, one of the top producers in Hollywood. During his years at Warner Bros., Wallis had been involved in the production of over one hundred films, personally producing over half of them, including Casablanca . In the mid-forties he moved to Paramount, where he would rack up a total of sixty films, including Come Back, Little Sheba, The Rose Tattoo and the successful Martin and Lewis comedies.
    Wallis was taken with the genuineness of Barbeau’s letter and thought the girl in the photograph was fresh and pretty, so he asked the Paramount head of talent, William Meikeljohn, to check her out in