[Reminds me of a joke. SB SM]
A nun gets into a taxi. The driver glances at her in the rearview and sees a particularly attractive, young woman. After driving for a minute. “Excuse me sister, but may I confess something to you?”
“Of course,” she says.
“It’s embarrassing,” he says.
“No worries,” she says. “I’ve heard it all.”
“OK,” he says, “I’ve always had this wild fantasy about kissing a nun.”
“I see … let me ask you, are you Catholic?” Yes, sister. “And are you married?” No sister. “Then pull over into that alley right over there.” He does as he’s told, and she gives him a kiss that steams up all the windows of the taxicab.”
As they are driving away, the driver blurts out “I’m sorry sister, but I lied. I’ married, and I’m Jewish.”
“oh …” she says. “That’s all right because my name is Jerry and I’m on my way to a costume party.”
In 1957, a 19-year-old actress from California shook Elvis Presley’s hand on a film set and gave him Hollywood’s first on-screen kiss. Over the next five years, she made ten films, earned a Tony nomination, and was being called the next Grace Kelly. She had an apartment in New York, a career with no ceiling, and a man who loved her completely. Then she drove to a monastery in Connecticut. And never came back.
Her name was Dolores Hart.
She had everything the industry said mattered. A co-starring role opposite Elvis in *Loving You* and then *King Creole*. Work alongside Montgomery Clift. *Where the Boys Are*, which became a cultural moment. A devoted man named Don Robinson who had already begun imagining a future together — a wedding dress had even been spotted by legendary costume designer Edith Head and photographed with Dolores’s name attached.
Then, in 1959, exhausted after a long Broadway run, a friend suggested she spend a few quiet days at a Benedictine abbey in the hills of Connecticut — Regina Laudis, in the small town of Bethlehem.
She went reluctantly.
“After a few hours there,” she said later, “you feel you’re in a special place.”
She went back. Then again. Each time, it became harder to leave.
She kept working. In 1961, filming Francis of Assisi took her to Rome, where she was granted a private audience with Pope John XXIII. She came home changed in a way she couldn’t fully name.
She returned to the abbey.
And then there was Don.
During a blinding snowstorm at the monastery, walking uphill toward a cross at the summit, something became clear to her that she had been circling for years.
She told Don the truth.
He was, as he has said in the years since, with the honesty that only comes from genuine love: *”Crushed. Are you kidding? I’m a human being. I loved her deeply and still do.”*
Don Robinson was a devout Catholic. In time, he gave her his blessing.
He never married anyone else. He still drives to the abbey every Christmas and every Easter.
He has said simply, without self-pity: “Every love doesn’t have to wind up at the altar.”
In 1963, at 24 years old, Dolores Hart wrapped her final film, made a brief stop in New York, got into a car, and drove to Regina Laudis.
One way.
She spent years moving through the stages of Benedictine monastic life. She took her permanent vows in 1970. She was elected prioress — the leader of the community — in 2001.
She became Mother Dolores Hart.
Hollywood was genuinely bewildered. What had gone wrong? What was she running from?
She has answered that question the same way for more than sixty years.
She wasn’t running from anything.
“What I discovered,” she said, “is that Christ is in every person you live with. You don’t find him apart from the people with whom you live and love.”
She never fully left American life either. She became the first nun ever admitted as a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — casting her Oscar ballot each year from inside the monastery walls. In 2012, HBO released a documentary about her called God Is the Bigger Elvis, nominated for an Academy Award. She co-authored a memoir. She built an outdoor theater at the abbey — funded in part by Paul Newman and Patricia Neal — where nuns and community members stage musicals every summer.
She did not retreat from the world. She chose a different way of being present in it.
Mother Dolores Hart is 87 years old. She has lived at Regina Laudis for more than six decades.
Don Robinson still comes at Christmas and Easter.
She kissed Elvis Presley on screen when she was nineteen. She drove to a monastery at twenty-four and never left.
Both things are completely true. Neither one cancels the other.
That is the whole story. And somehow, it is more than enough.
The correct answer
Is all of the above all
At once all the time
I just can’t keep up
with your creative output
but still I will try
That’s an amazing story about Dolores Hart. I’ll have to try and find that documentary. Loved the joke too!!
Elvis one told a reported that he slept with all his leading ladies except one– Mary Tyler Moore, who played a nun. I wonder if Dolores was counted in that group. Or, maybe Elvis exaggerated his allure just a little.
Jerry and Delores- what a combo!
🤔🫡
Is that the one where he first guesses her name as “Mulva”?