The Catholic Patriotic Minute #16: Mother Dolores Hart
Catholics For Catholics Special Edition | October 20th, 2025
Mother Dolores Hart: From Hollywood to a Benedictine Abbey
From a secular point of view, a famous actress abandoning a life of fame in Hollywood and a seven-figure contract for a life of poverty in a Benedictine Abbey may seem out of her mind. Yet, Dolores Hart knew that God was calling her to religious life simply because she felt complete peace at the Abbey, not as a fiancée or as a well-known Hollywood actress.
On October 20, 1938, Dolores Hicks was born to Harriet and Bert Hicks in Chicago, Illinois. Mother Dolores would later reveal that her parents married soon after they conceived her. Her mother Harriet’s parents tried to convince Harriet to get an abortion, but Harriet refused. Looking back, Mother Dolores said, “It’s because of my mother’s stance that I am alive and I exist.”
Because her father Bert began his career in acting in 1942, they moved to Hollywood the same year. However, Dolores did not remain long in Hollywood because her parents divorced in 1943. Her parents sent Dolores back to Chicago to live with her grandparents, and she attended St. Gregory Catholic School, where she would convert to Catholicism at the age of ten.
Dolores returned to California to live with her mother in Beverly Hills, where she continued to practice her newfound Catholic faith while she attended Corvallis High School, an all-girls Catholic school. After she received a call from an associate producer, Hal Wallis, from Paramount Studios while she was at school, Dolores rushed to Paramount. Wallis asked Dolores, “What do you want to do with your life?”. Without hesitation, Dolores answered, “I want to be an actress.”
An actress Dolores became. As Dolores Hart, her stage name, Dolores starred in her first film, Loving You, alongside Elvis Presley in 1957. She also acted in the 1958 film King Creole with Elvis. When they filmed King Creole, Elvis’s stardom was becoming more widespread, and subsequently they were forced into hotel rooms in between takes.
While Dolores and Elvis would wait in the hotel to film, as Dolores would recount later, “Elvis would open the Gideon Bible, as that was the version placed in the hotel rooms. Whatever passage he’d open it to, we would talk about it. He would ask me, ‘What do you think of this passage?’. Even in Hollywood, Dolores remained a practicing Catholic. Often, almost daily, Dolores would attend 6 a.m. Mass. She observed later, “Every role I got, I prayed for.”
When Dolores made her Broadway debut with The Pleasure of His Company, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award, in 1959, she would stay in New York City during their breaks because she could not afford the lifestyle of her fellow actors to go live in country homes. Her friend, however, recommended that Dolores go to the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, to rest. Dolores reflected on her first visit and her following visits to the abbey,
It was supposed to be a welcoming retreat from New York where I could reflect on what was going to be the next step in my career. But I wasn’t expecting just how peaceful it truly was. I found inner certitude. I felt like this is where I belonged. It became more than just a retreat. It’s the kind of feeling you get when you meet the person you’re going to marry. The more I came to visit the more it came calling to me. And the more I knew God was present to me in a very special way that I couldn’t deny.
Nineteen-year-old Dolores asked the Reverend Mother if she thought Dolores had a vocation, but Reverend Mother suggested for Dolores to return to her film career, mature a bit more, and then revisit these questions of vocation later.
Dolores obeyed, and she went on to star in films with renowned actors like Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Montgomery Clift, Warren Beatty, Karl Malden, and George Hamilton. She even played the role of Saint Clare of Assisi in the film St. Francis of Assisi. Dolores travelled to Assisi early to live and learn of Saint Clare. She was introduced to Pope John XXIII as Dolores Hart, and the Holy Father insisted, “Tu sei Chiara!” (“No, you are Clara!”). Dolores recounted, “His statement stayed with me and rang in my ears many times.”
Despite her rising fame in Hollywood and her engagement to an architect, and devout Catholic, Don Robinson, Dolores could not let go of the peace she felt at the abbey. She said, “What bothered me, in the back of my mind, is I was thinking about going back to Regina Laudis.”
Dolores broke off her engagement and immediately started giving away her belongings. She gave Karl Madden’s daughters all her dresses and jewelry. Dolores was about to sign a seven-figure contract, and so when she told producer Hall Wallis that she was leaving Hollywood for Bethlehem, he said, “Don’t bother coming back to Hollywood. I will never let you work again.”
In 1963, Dolores left her last promotional event for her movie Come Fly With Me to enter the Abbey of Regina Laudis as a postulant. She made her final vows in 1970 and became the Dean of Education at the abbey. With the help of her lifelong friend Patricia Neal, Mother Dolores established The Gary-The Olivia Theater at the abbey. She was featured in a HBO Documentary, “God Is The Bigger Elvis,” in 2012, and then in 2013, Mother Dolores published her autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows. She remains at the Abbey today.
From Hollywood to Bethlehem, Mother Dolores’s life is a testament and a story of hope for young American Catholics that God desires for us to find peace in our vocations.
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