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

of usual sins, but when I looked at it, I found I hadn’t done any of those things. So what to confess? I thought I could confess something I might easily do if I had the chance. If sins were expected, I would make up a few .
— I took it so seriously, so very seriously .
    I was confirmed at Saint Gregory’s on April 24, 1949. The bishop welcomed me to the altar and, after confirming me, slapped my face. The slap said: “You’ll take a beating; be strong.” My cheeks burned with bravery. Now I was a real soldier of Christ .
    At confirmation you take the name of a saint who holds personal meaning for you. It signifies your devotion to that saint, who will help you in your mission in life. I took for my confirmation name Therese, after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who was just a little older than I when she entered the convent. She was described as a child who found Christ not through great healing miracles but through doing humble, simple things. She had such a sense of mission and purpose. The rigorous, sticky French spirituality of her time made it difficult to be an individual, and I suppose her stamina was very appealing to me .
    After my conversion, I had my first reflection about vocation: the act of being fully Catholic would be, of course, to become a nun. But I reasoned that that was what I should be thinking, so the reflection vanished as quickly as it had flared, not to materialize again until I was in college. Yet I still knew that I had something I had been missing. I had been deeply impressed by the sense of belonging that the other children derived from the practice of their religion; and as I participated with them, I began to feel that I too belonged there with them. My aunts had exposed me to other religions, but it was only as a Catholic that this sense of joyousness and purpose came over me .
—Some people are quick to say that any child who had no more stability than I would clutch at anything with a sound foundation. That never bothers me because they are only confirming that the Church has strength and solidity .

Four
    For the first time in her life Dolores had lived in one place long enough to have a sense of belonging. When Dolores was eleven, however, she returned to California to live with her mother, who was planning to remarry.
    Harriett had been establishing a new life for herself, one that eventually would include Dolores, but since the divorce, she had enjoyed the single life that marrying at an early age had denied her. She played the field and had a number of suitors, but when she met Albert Gordon, a divorced man raising a nine-year-old son, she thought she had found the man who would give her a home and security.
    Harriett met Al while she was working as a cashier at Gordon’s, a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Al and his two brothers, Gene and Bernie, owned Gordon’s, as well as liquor stores and a small deli.
    I was unhappy about leaving Chicago, which I now thought of as home, but one thing cheered me: I would again be near Hollywood, where movies were made. I used to read the movie magazines all the time. I never let my family see me reading them, though. I was afraid they would think I was funny. The only Nancy Drew book I read was Nancy Drew in Hollywood, and I read that under the covers .
— If truth were known, my dream was to be a movie star. I used to say I wanted to be an actress, but that was just to hide the pretension of “star” .
    After the wedding, the two families moved into a bungalow on Hazeltine Avenue in Sherman Oaks. One of Al’s liquor stores was on the corner. The cheery yellow house had a large backyard with fruit trees that supplied Harriett with an abundance of fruit for preserving.
    Al Gordon was a good man—Jewish, but he did not practice his faith. At first glance, with his dark looks and large brown eyes, one might have taken him for a dandy. He was, however, all work. I liked my stepfather and wanted to call him something besides Al. “Daddy”