Elvis Presley stars in King Creole trailer in 1958
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Hart, who turned 83 this week, was once billed as the ‘next Grace Kelly’. The clean-cut girl from Chicago was just 19 when she made her big-screen debut in Loving You. Elvis, himself, was still only 22 but already a major recording star and budding actor. He had already played a supporting role in 1956’s Love Me Tender but was such hot property in Hollywood he took the lead in Loving You as deliveryman Deke Rivers, an aspiring singer. Hart played Susan, “the girl who loved him too much to hold him back.” She also gave him his first proper on-screen kiss.
Hart recalled: “It’s the last scene of the film, but when you walk in on set, you’re told, ‘This is the first thing you’re going to do.’ I remember I had to put my arms around him and kiss him. There were about 100 people on the soundstage. Seconds into it, the director, Hal Kanter, yells ‘Cut! I thought, ‘Oh no, how can I kiss wrong?’
“He immediately asks for the makeup man to come over to fix me up. I thought, ‘What’s going on? That’s it, it’s over for me.’ Well, Hal tells me, ‘Dolores, you’re blushing in your ears. They’re red. We need makeup.’ I was so embarrassed.”
And then it was Elvis’ turn.
Dolores added: “After they fixed me up, we started again. And again, seconds later, he yells ‘Cut! Get some makeup for Mister Presley!’ When I looked, he was red! But that’s the way it was. We were just a couple of kids. But he was a simple and true man.”
However, she also revealed that her co-star’s sex appeal was unmistakable: “Elvis had a way of being that in itself was very innocent, even though from the waist down there was a serious invitation. He broke the whole mold with sexuality by just pulling back the curtains and saying, ‘Look, it’s not as ugly as you all are saying. We can dance to it, we can sing to it and we can enjoy one another.’ That’s why we loved him.”
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The two became close during filming and their chemistry was so palpable that she was invited back to star opposite him again the following year in King Creole.
She had nothing but praise for The King’s behaviour and old-fashioned manners: “When I first met him, he was just a charming young boy with long sideburns. He couldn’t have been more gracious. He jumped to his feet and said, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Dolores.’ He and Gary Cooper were the only ones in Hollywood who called me that.”
King Creole was one of the few to give Elvis a deeper, darker role as Danny, a young club singer embroiled in the seedy gangland underbelly of New Orleans.
The King always cited it as one of his favourite performances and Hart said he deserved better than he got from Hollywood in terms of roles and the way he was used.
Dolores said: “Elvis told me that this was the first picture where he’d really had a good acting part. He really wanted to be the next Jimmy Dean.
“He could have been done it, too, because he’d learned to play a character and not just himself. But his manager was just thinking about money and everything he did after that was just with girls and stuff.”
Dolores was right there as Elvis’ fame was already starting to take over his life: “By the time we did our second film, we couldn’t walk down the street because there were so many people waiting for him, just wanting to touch him.”
Incredibly, she was about to go through an even more extraordinary transformation of her own.
The pair bonded on set over their deep faith. It was something that would come to define her life.
Dolores told Fox News: “We spent the time in between the scenes talking about the Bible… He did it because it was in his heart. I started to ask myself, ‘What am I doing in Hollywood? Where is this going to take me?’ The realization became clear and really, it’s a gift. I was so lucky. God called me.”
The actress had stayed at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem,Connecticut, while she was working in New York to recharge her batteries but soon realised her life lay there.
Dolores said: “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.”
In fact, she was engaged to be married, to Los Angeles architect Don Robinson
Dolores ended the relationship and, at 24, walked away from Hollywood forever.
In 1963, during the press tour for her final movie, Come Fly With Me, she gave away all her worldly possessions and entered the convent. She told Come Fly With Me co-star Karl Malden it was “an affair of the heart.”
Robinson never married and would visit her there every Christmas and Easter until his death in 2011.
Hart withdrew from the world until she made a sensational comeback at the Oscars in 2012 when an HBO film based on her story, God Is the Bigger Elvis, was a nominee for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).
The former actress appeared on the red carpet in her habit and used the publicity to help raise awareness of the fundraising efforts to save the crumbling buildings of the monastery. The following year, she released an autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows.
Dolores still lives at the convent and still personally replies to the letters from film fans she continues to receive. She also remembers Elvis fondly and regrets his life and career didn’t take a different path.
She said: “If there is anything I am grateful for it is that I am one of the few people left to acknowledge he was an innocent.
“What is it about a great professional industry that will use someone like Elvis who’s got such gifts and use them personally and not give back to the person what they need? It’s not a marriage, believe me.”
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