HBO Film Reveals the Power of Cloistered Life: In a Word—“Love”

By Mary Claire Kendall 

Originally published in The Wanderer www.wandererpress.com

Dolores Hart and Elvis Presley in Loving You (1957).
Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures

“How do you explain love?” Mother Dolores Hart asks in HBO’s Oscar-nominated film, God Is the Bigger Elvis, premiering on Holy Thursday.*  

Directed by Rebecca Cammisa, this 40-minute documentary answers the question as it artfully describes, through the medium Hart mastered, cloistered life at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut—the only enclosed Benedictine monastery and working farm in the United States.  As Mother Prioress, Hart leads the community of 38 that follows the strict Benedictine schedule of work and prayer.

Much of the story is told through the prism of Mother Dolores’ life, which she relates with grace, charm and wit.

The film dramatically opens with Elvis singing “Young Dreams” to Dolores Hart in Loving You (1958).  “I often wonder,” Mother Dolores reflects, “why the Lord gave me such an opportunity to audition with Elvis… And, I just can’t believe I got the part.”  Two years later, while starring on Broadway, a friend introduced her to the Abbey. Her life was never the same.

“I never felt that I was leaving Hollywood,” she says. “The Abbey was like a grace of God that entered my life… totally unexpected…  God was… the bigger Elvis.”

Tackling a batch of letters with her loyal parakeet Toby by her side, she reads one from an “adorable” fan, who enthuses she and Elvis were his favorites. “What are you doing now?” he ends, eliciting a hearty laugh, a pause and, another hearty laugh. 

“I was 19 and just on the threshold of the biggest career that you could ever have,” she comments. “Hal Wallis offered me a seven year contract.”

When a visitor tells of his distress over a missing loved one, Mother Dolores promises she will pray. She comments afterwards, “My role is to help a person discover you can always find hope and if you can find hope you might find faith.”

“My early life,” she reflects, was “most unstable”—her grandmother counseled her teen parents to get an abortion. But, this very instability nurtured her vocation as she realized, “The stability factor had to come within myself.”

In Hollywood, she rose every morning at 6 a.m. whether or not she was working, to go to mass. 

“Every role I got I prayed for.”

While Hart was pursuing her career, the reverend mother clarified for her that “chastity doesn’t mean that you don’t appreciate what God created. Chastity says use it well,” which gave her “a sense of peace” -- and a desire to return to the abbey.

Besides Elvis, she was starring opposite heartthrobs like Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Warren Beatty, who wanted to open her contract to MGM, raising her value to $1 million.

“But… in the back of my mind,” she says, “I was thinking about going back to Regina Laudis… (to have) true communion with God.  And, eternal love is the mystery that I found here.”

Poignant testimony from the others, including Sr. John Mary—once a powerful executive in politics then advertising who coped by using alcohol and drugs—helps complete the picture and explain the mystery of eternal love.

“Someone described a monastery as a powerhouse of prayer,” she says. “We’re carrying a lot for people and you make a decision here to surrender your life to God…This is the only place I could see myself being because this is where it’s at.” Said like the advertising pro she is.

It’s also a bed of roses—complete with thorns. 

After entering the Abbey in June 1963, wearing a wedding gown, Mother Dolores thought it would be nirvana. Instead, “The first night I felt like I had jumped off a 20-story building and landed flat on my butt. I had no idea it was going to mean singing seven times a day, working in the garden, 10 people in one bathroom, the sternness.”

It didn’t help that the other nuns didn’t give “the actress” a month.  But, the actress fought back, apparently with salty words.  As her former fiancé notes, “She wanted to be married to God.”

“In monastic life,” notes Sister John Mary, “there is no way out... Mother Prioress describes it as being skinned alive.”

But, as the film portrays, she deploys plenty of wisdom and inventiveness to ease the way, as two touching vignettes—one involving a Llama, another, a heart-to-heart talk—reveal.  She has also artfully involved the community, as more clips show, helping each discover their own unique calling. 

And, now, through this well-done HBO documentary, she’s involving Hollywood, to which she returned this year for the Oscars.  If she helped lead the late great Patricia Neal, in her darkest days, to God (a story the film omits), it’s a good bet more miracles will follow.  After 49 years of loving God, she’s certainly stored up the requisite spiritual wealth for that production.

__________

*All HBO playdates and times: April 5 (8-8:40 p.m.) 8 (4 p.m.) 10 (11:15 a.m.), 13 (4:30 p.m.), 14 (9:45 a.m.) and 19 (2:45 p.m.)

Note: The Abbey of Regina Laudis is currently  conducting a capital fundraising campaign. If you wish to contribute, 
see http://www.abbeyofreginalaudis.com.

What Whitney Houston's Death Tells Us About Female Stars of Yesteryear

By Mary Claire Kendall

Whitney Houston performs at the O2 Arena on April 25, 2010 in London, England. 

(Photo by Samir Hussein/Getty Images) 

Whitney Houston seemingly had it all—beauty, poise, charm and most of all that voice penetrating the depths of one’s soul—America’s soul.

Why is it, then, that this alpha female with epic talent lost it all at such a young age?

It will take months, even years, to wrap our minds around this tragedy. But, by putting her life and death into the historical context of stars going back to Hollywood’s inception, the picture becomes a little clearer.

Women of the “Golden Age of Film” (1912-1962) maintained an inner strength that stars like Houston in the late 20th/early 21st century lost because our culture is ailing. While claiming to uphold and reaffirm women, it ends up destroying that very something that’s the source of a woman’s strength. Losing that essence, Houston was seemingly reaching for a chemical substitute.

Of course, substance abuse has always plagued Hollywood. Often, the greater the artistry the more susceptible the artist to the chemical siren call. Whitney had high anxiety—never thought she was good enough—and alcohol and drugs helped alleviate this stress.

The habit intensified after she filmed The Bodyguard, conspiring, along with cigarettes, to destroy her voice. Similarly, Judy Garland, dead at age 47, suffered anxiety—didn’t think her voice was that good either—and sought refuge in alcohol and drugs. (Admittedly, MGM shares some credit, feeding her drugs to stay thin, sleep, wake up, stay energized.)

Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Sullavan, too, both died too young—at ages 36 and 50, respectively—of drug overdoses. And, Mabel Normand—who made films with Mack Sennett (famous for The Keystone Cops), directing a young Charlie Chaplin—became addicted to Roaring 20s all-night partying drenched with alcohol and cocaine. Her world came crashing down along with the stock market; she was dead at age 34.

Still, there’s a palpable difference in the lives of Hollywood women, now and then.

Mary Pickford, who dominated the silent film era, for whom the term “star” was coined, had her own studio at Paramount Pictures, co-founded Universal Pictures and practically invented the business framework under which Hollywood still operates.

Pickford started working at age 6 after her father’s untimely death plunged the family into poverty. She never thought of herself as a woman or a man, just as a competent individual, trying to survive, working to be her best—in a cultural milieu that from today’s perspective almost seems like a Garden of Eden.

But, even in the Garden of Eden, there was the battle of the sexes. In Hollywood it’s as fierce as ever. Though women were foundational to Hollywood’s establishment, when the business became so glamorous and financially rewarding, the men simply took over.

Pickford suffered a double blow given the difficult transition from silent film, a heart-rending reality brilliantly captured in this year’s critical favorite The Artist. “… (J)ust as she was the first great star to be created by film, she was the first great ‘has been’ to be created by film. And everyone watched it.

There was no privacy there,” Eileen Whitfield, author of Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood, told American Experience. More than the loss of her career, she was publicly humiliated when her beloved husband DouglasFairbanks, Jr. fled, landing in the arms of a woman twelve years her junior. “When a man finds himself sliding downhill,” Fairbanks said, “he should do everything to reach bottom in a hurry and pass out of the picture.”

Like her Hennessy ancestors, Mary initially sought solace in intoxicating spirits.

But, she survived—personally, marrying Buddy Rogers, and dying at age 87. 

So too did Betty Hutton, the fifth anniversary of whose death at age 86 falls on March 11—one month after Houston’s death.

Hutton’s descent from the pinnacle of her career—epitomized by her starring role in Annie Get Your Gun (1950)—was as dramatic as Houston’s. As she toldAP, twenty years after foolishly tearing up her Paramount contract, “Uppers, downers, inners, outers, I took everything I could get my hands on.” Then one night she collapsed on stage at a dinner theater outside Boston where she was reprising her Annie Oakley role.  Not exactly Broadway. She was down to 85 pounds.

Miraculously, she met this saintly priest, Fr. Peter Maguire, who just happened to be checking in his cook at the same rehab center where Hutton was recuperating.  Fr. Maguire understood all her pain—and helped her cherish just “being Betty” and discover, as she told Turner Classic Movie’s Robert Osbourne, “Christ is my heart.”

Perhaps Whitney, who also knew Christ was her heart, never found that someone who understood her pain.

But, isn’t about time, that as a culture, we try and understand that, as Hemingway told his friend A.E. Hotchner, “The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is… Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do—and what you do makes you what you are—is to back up into the grave.” – Papa Hemingway

And, for a woman, that includes just “being” who you are.

Mary Claire Kendall writes about stars of Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” with a special focus on their stories of recovery.

Originally published in Forbes 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/23/what-whitney-houstons-death-tells-us-about-female-stars-of-yesteryear/

“The Way”—Journey of the Heart... and Soul

By Mary Claire Kendall 

A good friend of my father has seen Emilio Estevez’s film The Way three times.  The Way is about a father who travels to France to recover the body of his estranged son, who died in the Pyrenees during a violent storm—just one day into his journey along  “El camino de Santiago,” also known as “The Way of St. James.”

My father’s friend is about to see it a fourth time.  Now that I’ve seen the film, I know why. 

Not only does Martin Sheen, who portrays the father, give a brilliant performance; but the screenplay by Estevez, who plays the son, is masterful; the direction, also by Estevez, production values and cinematography, superb.

Quite simply, this film, which has Oscar written all over it, is a beautiful, mesmerizing film, with layer after layer of meaning—achieved without any 3-D technology or special effects extravaganza. 

Its secret is the subtle yet rich, multi-dimensional portrayal of humanity and spirituality.  Nothing hits you over the head, except, of course, the sudden death of Daniel (the son) at the outset; the magnificent vistas along “The Way” as Tom (the father) relives and honors his son’s memory; and, at the end, when the four travelers, Wizard of Oz-like, arrive at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella in Galicia in northwestern Spain in a stunning denouement.

Tom, an American opthamologist, initially had no plan other than to bring the remains of his son home to California. Then, he begins to learn about the 800-kilometer-long “El camino” leading to the Cathedral, where, tradition has it, the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried. 

In 40 or 41 A.D., Our Lady traveled with angels to see St. James in Zaragoza in northeastern Spain, and tell him Jesus wished him to return to Jerusalem, where he would be martyred.  St. Augustine writes about the episode in The City of God, revealed through an apparition to a nun, the only such apparition before Our Lady’s Assumption. Our Lady was carried by angels at night on a cloud to Zaragoza. During the trip, the angels built a pillar of marble and a miniature image of Our Lady. When they all arrived, Our Lady delivered Jesus’ message to St. James, and also asked that a church be built on the site of the apparition. The main altar, she said, would feature the pillar and image and special protective graces would flow to the people of Zaragoza for their devotion to Mary and Jesus.

Legend has it that St. James’ remains were transported by boat from Jerusalem to northwestern Spain. When his burial site was discovered over 1000 years ago during medieval times, “The Way” began attracting numerous pilgrims and became one of the most popular pilgrimages, together with those to Rome (Via Francigena) and Jerusalem. However, the Black Death, Protestant Reformation and 16th century political unrest diminished travel along “The Way,” down to just a few pilgrims by 1980. Then interest surged, whereupon travel steadily rose to nearly 5,000 pilgrims in 1990 and over 272,000 twenty years later.

That’s the awe-inspiring backdrop of the film.

While, Tom, a non-practicing Catholic, initially has just one purpose when he arrives, he soon feels impelled by some mystical force to join the pilgrims along “The Way”—putatively, solely to honor his son’s memory.

It’s a heartwarming journey full of colorful scenic and cultural vignettes and unforgettable, all-too-human characters, searching for more meaning in their lives. This is especially true in the case of the three characters Tom ends up traveling with, whom, as he plays off of them, inject humor as well as pathos as the layers of their lives are peeled away—revealing their loss, brokenness and pain. 

The film has a touching scene upholding life’s sacredness from conception.  However, the cremation of Daniel and related details could render Tom’s choice problematic given his initial weak faith. “The Church permits cremation,” the official Catechism says, “provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body.”  And, while his choice is clearly cinematic—albeit Daniel’s appearances along the way are equally if not more compelling—it’s important to note, cremation is “permitted,” not “recommended.”

This is the seventh time father and son, Sheen and Estevez, have worked together.

Interestingly, in an LA radio interview on “The Busted Halo Show with Father Dave,” Estevez revealed the film’s inspiration was none other than a pilgrimage Sheen and grandson Taylor made a few years earlier on “The Way,” where Estevez’s son, then only 19, met and fell in love with his future wife, soon moving to Spain, where his great-grandfather, to whom the film is devoted, was born.

Truly, it’s a family affair—and not just for Sheen and his family but for many other families, as well.

Published in The Wanderer, December 15, 2011

“Hugo”: Broken Machines and Broken People

By Mary Claire Kendall 

Asa Butterfield, left, and Chloe Moretz in a scene from "Hugo."
 (Jaap Buitendijk / Paramount Pictures)

Hugo is one of Hollywood’s best offerings this Christmas season.

It’s Martin Scorsese’s homage to motion picture pioneer Georges Méliès, inventor of special effects, born 150 years ago on December 8, in Paris; and like Scorsese, a Catholic.  It’s a magical film, not just because, ironically, of its own deft utilization of 3-D special effects, but because of its uplifting message.

Based on the novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, far from cheapening human love, Hugo enriches it—love of one’s art, of husband and wife, father and son, and of friends—in this case, the protagonist, an orphan named Hugo Cabret, played by Asa Butterfield, and Isabelle, living with Méliès and his wife, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, who helps Hugo solve a mystery that unlocks not only the film’s mystery—why Méliès, played by Ben Kingsley, is so crabby; but the mystery of life.

Through the persistence and bravery of Hugo, Méliès finally, after much resistance, realizes “the story’s not over yet.” 

Known for such masterpieces as A Trip to the Moon (1902), Méliès built the first movie studio and produced some 500 short films, but was forced into bankruptcy in 1913.  With the outbreak of World War I, the French Army melted down most of his films to make boot heels for the Army, ending his filmmaking career.

While it is true audiences gradually tired of Méliès’ special effects, given how they overshadowed a story; another factor in his demise was Thomas A. Edison, Inc.’s distribution of A Trip to the Moon without paying Méliès royalties—ironic, given Edison’s own aggressive campaign of enforcement against copyright infringement vis-à-vis his properties.

“He [Méliès] lost basically most of his financing,” Scorsese explained to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, “when the bigger companies came in… What happened (is)…  [Thomas Edison and his associates] were just taking the films and making dupes of them. So that was one of the reasons why he [Méliès] was finished financially, ultimately.”

But, then God always brings good out of evil.

With the help of other filmmakers, Méliès became a toy salesman at the Gare Montparnasse station, made famous by Claude Monet, which is where the film imaginatively brings his story to life.

His nemesis, Hugo, lives behind the walls and above the station, where he ensures the station’s many clocks run on time. It’s a family enterprise; or, at least, was. His father, played by Jude Law, recently deceased, appears in flashbacks; and his Uncle Claude, an inebriate, is soon out of the picture, leaving Hugo to fend for himself.

Hugo comes to Méliès’ shop to steal items for his work and in his quest to repair the automaton his father found at the museum where he worked.  As his father showed him, it’s the missing key that will bring it back to life. Méliès is a stern taskmaster and has little patience for the ruffian who comes to his shop.

Hugo nimbly survives—stealing food; fending off the rigid, buffoonish station inspector, played by Sacha Baron Cohen; observing the lives of visitors to the station; slipping into the nearby theater to watch silent film classics; and maneuvering the station’s labyrinthine passageways.

One day, Méliès gives him the chance to show his skill at repairing toys and, duly impressed, gives him a job.  That’s how Hugo meets the beguiling Isabelle who “lives” at the station—in the book store, whereupon the mysteries begin to unfold.

The story is particularly poignant for the way it mirrors Scorsese’s own early life, trapped in a world apart from other children in New York’s Little Italy when he suffered from asthma, finding solace in film. He was fascinated by 1950s 3-D films and later helped rescue filmmakers, who like Méliès, had seen better days.

While the 3-D artistry in highlighting mechanical and architectural wonders is enchanting, the real artistry lies in how Scorsese touches hearts.

As Professor Ian Christie of London’s Birkbeck College said, “To look at (Scorsese’s) films without an awareness of their spiritual dimension is to miss an important part of what makes Scorsese one of today’s great artists.”

Ultimately, the film is not about broken machines but broken people, who, with the help of others, can come back to life; and how, in life, as with a clock’s intricate parts, each of us has a unique role to play.

That Hugo is delighting audiences of all ages is testament to its cinematic workmanship, unfolding mystery, and uplifting message.  Not only that, it is delighting critics— winning both Best Picture and Best Director from the National Board of Review, and Best Director from the Washington and Boston film critics associations—and promises more not only at the Oscars but in how it shapes the landscape of filmmaking for years to come.

Published in The Wanderer, January 5, 2012.

Hollywood as a Precursor to Faith

The stories of Jane Wyman and Betty Hutton — and an entrance into the Church on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

BY MARY CLAIRE KENDALL

| Posted 12/8/11 at 9:15 PM

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/hollywood-as-a-precursor-to-faith/  See below for feature, as originally written by author.

Jane Wyman (left) and Betty Hutton
                        - Register photo illustration
                                    by Melissa Hartog

Hollywood, amazingly, has served as a precursor to faith — as in the case of Jane Wyman and Betty Hutton, who were as different as night and day.

From childhood, Wyman was quiet and reserved.  After her parents divorced and father died, she was adopted at age 4. In contrast, Betty Hutton was age 3 when she became an entertainer, already belting out songs, accompanied by a warm smile and energetic moves.

The two stars’ paths crossed in 1951 as Hutton’s star was fading and Wyman’s was rising.

At the time, Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer had written In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening expressly for Hutton. But Paramount Pictures used the Oscar-winning song in a different film, Here Comes the Groom, starring Bing Crosby and Wyman.

Wyman’s next film, The Blue Veil (1951), set in and around St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, longtime friend Virginia Zamboni confided, was her “favorite” — and the catalyst for her conversion.

Though Protestant, Wyman had begun attending mass with Loretta Young.  In the wake of her divorce from Ronald Reagan in 1948, she continued to grieve over the death of her newborn, Christina, in 1947, A favorite destination was the Dominican sisters’ Monastery of the Angels. 

While filming The Blue Veil, premised on the loss of the protagonist’s newborn son, the teachings of the Catholic faith, especially the redemptive meaning of suffering, “hit” Wyman “in the face,” Zamboni recalled. Wyman developed a strong devotion to Mary; three years later, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, she was received into the Catholic Church. 

In 1969, her film career over, she tucked away her Oscars and focused on the present.

Since 1994, Wyman attended Sacred Heart Church in Palm Desert, Calif. Father Howard Lincoln, the pastor, observed that “whenever our parish or our diocese rang the doorbell of Jane Wyman’s heart, she always answered.” 

He had never seen a $100,000 check, he said, until she wrote one for the church.

In 2007, Jane Wyman died at age 90.  A Third Order Dominican, she was buried in her habit in a pine coffin. At her funeral, Father Lincoln described the former star as “the antithesis of Sunset Boulevard and Norma Desmond” — the has-been silent-film star in Billy Wilder’s classic film who craved a “return.”

Her faith, Zamboni said, “meant everything” to Wyman.

While Wyman’s path to the faith was neat and orderly, Hutton’s was long and circuitous.

Hutton’s early childhood was a hardscrabble existence. She was 2 years old when her father abandoned the family. The following year her singing debut was prompted by a drunken man who threatened to beat her mother up in her speakeasy. Decades later, she described the frightening scene for TCM’s Robert Osbourne in a July 2000 interview.

During the Great Depression, Hutton sang on street corners to help keep food on the family table. Then, when her mother — a “total alcoholic” but the “most brilliant, wonderful woman,” Hutton told Osbourne — took her to see a Charlie Chaplin film, she vowed: “I’m gonna be a star, and my mother will stop drinking.” (corrected)

She quickly began getting one break after another, until the Broadway producer Buddy DeSylva became the production head at Paramount and brought her to Hollywood.

From her first film in 1941, Hutton consistently wowed audiences. But she could never escape the wounds of her childhood, especially the lack of a father figure. 

In January 1950, she divorced her husband of five years. Three months later, she landed the role of a lifetime in Annie Get Your Gun.  But despite her professional success, her life unraveled in 1952. Hutton injured her arm while filming The Greatest Show on Earth and became addicted to prescription pills. That same year, she tore up her Paramount contract.

By 1971, two years after good friend Judy Garland died of a drug overdose, Hutton feared she was destined for a similar end. She confronted a legacy of four shattered marriages and a wrecked career. “I almost didn’t care anymore. I didn’t want to go on,” she told Osbourne.

Then, while recuperating from her addiction to prescription pills, something miraculous happened.

As Father Peter Maguire of St. Anthony’s Church in Portsmouth, R.I., checked his cook into the same rehabilitation center where Hutton sought treatment, the star saw a very special priest calmly showing affection and respect for his ailing employee.

And, she thought, I’m going to meet that man. He’s going to save my life.

Hutton later asked the cook about Father Maguire and was told, “Betty, he helps everybody.”  One thing led to another, and soon Betty was at the rectory cooking and cleaning.

When she met Father Maguire, Hutton said, “My life just turned around.”

“I never found me until Father Maquire,” she told Osbourne. The priest “had the heart to understand me. ”

And, for the first time ever, she said, she didn’t have to pretend she wasn’t upset. 

“Betty, you’re just a very hurt child,” Hutton said he told her. “Let’s start from the word go.” 

“And that’s how I became a Catholic,” she recalled. “It was so great — because as I walked down the aisle and I know I’m going to receive Christ, I would sob so, because this brought something out of me I never knew was in there. That’s my heart. Christ is my heart. But I didn’t know him. I did not know God.”

Hutton also had a great devotion to Our Lady, explaining, “I don’t move anywhere without my rosary.”

After completing high-school studies under Father Maguire’s tutelage, Hutton attended Salve Regina College in Newport, R.I., earning a master’s degree in liberal studies in 1986. She taught drama there, as well as at Emerson College in Boston.

In March 1997, she moved back to California, where she lived in Palm Springs until her death at age 86, in 2007.

So it is that God enveloped Wyman and Hutton in his love — by way of Hollywood.


Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based journalist and screenwriter.

Copyright © 2011 Circle Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

AS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN:

Hollywood as Precursor to Faith: 
The Stories of Jane Wyman and Betty Hutton

By Mary Claire Kendall

Hollywood, amazingly, often serves as a precursor to faith—as in the case of Jane Wyman and Betty Hutton, different as night and day.

From childhood, Wyman, adopted in 1921 at age 4 after her parent divorced and father died, was quiet and reserved. Betty Hutton, the consummate entertainer, starting in 1924 at age 3, belted out songs with her warm smile and energetic moves. 

The two stars’ paths crossed in 1951 as Hutton’s star was fading, Wyman’s rising.

Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer had written “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” expressly for Hutton but Paramount Pictures used the Oscar-winning song instead in Here Comes the Groom, starring Bing Crosby and Wyman.

Wyman’s next film, The Blue Veil (1951), set in and around St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, long-time friend Virginia Zamboni confided, was her “favorite,” and the catalyst for her conversion.

Though Protestant, in the wake of her divorce from Ronald Reagan in 1948, Wyman, still grieving over the death of her newborn, Christina, in 1947, began attending mass with Loretta Young.  She particularly liked going to the Dominican sisters’ Monastery of the Angels.  

While filming The Blue Veil, ironically premised on the loss of the protagonist’s newborn son, the faith—especially the meaning of suffering—Zamboni said, “hit (her) in the face.”  Wyman was very devoted to Mary and, three years later, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, she was received into the Catholic Church. 

In 1969, her film career over, she tucked away her Oscars and focused on the present.

Father Howard Lincoln, Pastor of Sacred Heart in Palm Desert, Wyman’s parish since 1994, said, “Whenever our parish or our diocese rang the doorbell of Jane Wyman’s heart, she always answered.”  He had never seen a $100,000 check, he said, until she wrote one for the church.

Jane Wyman died at age 90 on September 10, 2007.  A Third Order Dominican, she was buried in habit in a pine coffin.  Wyman, Fr. Lincoln said at her funeral, “was the antithesis of Sunset Boulevard and Norma Desmond”—the “has been” silent film star in Billy Wilder’s classic film, who craved a “return.”

Her faith, Zamboni said, “meant everything really” to Wyman.

While Wyman’s path to the faith was neat and orderly, Hutton’s was long and circuitous.

Unlike Wyman’s early life—materially comfortable, albeit emotionally wanting—Hutton’s was hardscrabble from age 2, after her father abandoned the family. 

Her singing debut at age 3 was prompted by a drunken man who threatened to beat her mother up in her speakeasy—a frightening scene, she told TCM’s Robert Osbourne in a July 2000 interview, she remembered “like it was yesterday.”

Hutton sang on street corners to help keep food on the family table during the Great Depression.  Then, when her mother—a “total alcoholic” but the “most brilliant, wonderful woman,” Hutton told Osbourne—took her to see a Charlie Chaplin film, she thought “I’m gonna be a star and my mother will stop drinking.”

She did—getting one break after another, until Broadway producer Buddy DeSylva became production head at Paramount and brought her to Hollywood.

From her first film in 1941, she consistently wowed audiences, but could never escape the wounds of childhood, especially the lack of a father figure. 

Emotionally brittle, in January 1950, she divorced her husband of five years—three months later landing the role of a lifetime in Annie Get Your Gun.  Seemingly on top of the world, her life unraveled in 1952 after DeSylva died and she injured her arm while filming The Greatest Show on Earth, becoming addicted to prescription pills. That same year she tore up her Paramount contract.

By 1971, two years after good friend Judy Garland died of a drug overdose at age 47, Hutton—age 50, surveying four shattered marriages and a wrecked career—was on track for the same fate.  “I almost didn’t care anymore. I didn’t want to go on,” she told Osbourne.

Then, while recuperating from addiction to prescription pills—“uppers, downers, inners, outers, I took everything I could get my hands on” (AP, 1980)—something miraculous happened.

Rev. Peter J. Maguire from St. Anthony’s in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, was checking his cook into the same rehab center and Hutton saw a very special priest calmly showing affection and respect for his ailing employee.

And, she thought, “I’m going to meet that man.  He’s going to save my life.”

When the cook got better, she asked her about Fr. Maguire, who told her, “Betty, he helps everybody.”  One thing led to another and soon Betty was at the rectory cooking and cleaning.

When she met Fr. Maguire, Hutton said, “My life just turned around.”

“I never found me until Fr. Maquire,” she told Osbourne.

“Fr. Maquire,” she said, “had the heart to understand me… ” And, for the first time ever, she said, she didn’t have to pretend she wasn’t upset. 

“Betty, you’re just a very hurt child,” Hutton said he told her.  “Let’s start from the word go.” 

“And, that’s how I became a Catholic,” she said.

“When I became a Catholic,” she continued, “it was so great because as I walked down the aisle and I know I’m going to receive Christ, I would sob so because this brought something out of me I never knew was in there.  That’s my heart.  Christ is my heart.  But, I didn’t know him.  I did not know God.”

Hutton also had a great devotion to Our Lady, explaining “I don’t move anywhere without my rosary…”

After completing high school studies under Fr. Maguire’s tutelage, Hutton attended Salve Regina College in Newport, from which she graduated in May 1986, earning a Masters of Liberal Studies.  She taught drama there and at Emerson in Boston. In March 1997, she moved back to California, where she lived in Palm Springs until her death at age 86 on March 11, 2007.

So it is that God enveloped Wyman and Hutton in his love—by way of Hollywood.

December 7, 2011

Bob Hope and His Ladies of Hope

His mother, wife and Our Lady of Hope made all the difference in his life.
BY MARY CLAIRE KENDALL

Posted 10/19/11 at 1:30 PM

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/bob-hope-and-his-ladies-of-hope/

Bob Hope — “the most honored entertainer” ever, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, for his achievements in theater, radio, film, TV, philanthropy and business, and an extraordinary record of service to country, with 199 USO shows around the globe — won the biggest prize of all in the waning days of his life when he converted to Catholicism.

Bob and Dolores Hope in 1999. -Getty Images

Born Leslie Townes Hope on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England, he was the fifth of seven boys.

Leslie’s mother, Avis, was very devoted and loving. His father, William Henry “Harry,” a stonecutter, “had only one fault,” as Hope recalled in his memoir, Have Tux, Will Travel: Bob Hope’s Own Story: “It was his theory that, as a result of his occupation, stone dust collected in his throat. He stopped off at the pubs to sluice it off.”

While initially prosperous, Harry’s trade gradually proved financially inadequate, as bricks displaced stone masonry — forcing the family to keep moving into smaller homes, with Harry increasingly turning to alcohol and women to feel like a real man and bury his feelings of inadequacy.

When the family immigrated to Cleveland seeking brighter prospects, Avis had to intervene to shore up the family finances, renting ever more spacious and seemingly unaffordable homes to take in boarders. The children contributed too, taking part-time jobs. But Avis made sure they had at least a modicum of religious formation. “Mom,” he wrote, “after making sure we were clean and uncomfortably dressed … sent us off to Sunday school at the Euclid Avenue Presbyterian — a church dad had helped build” (Have Tux Will Travel).

As a child, Hope was rescued by his brother, when he got pinned under a pier and nearly drowned, and managed to survive his father’s brutal beatings — physically, if not entirely psychologically.

But he was ultimately saved by his mother, who, a singer herself, encouraged her young son’s theatrical talent early on. After winning a Charlie Chaplin contest in 1914, Leslie set his cap — later his trademark brown derby hat — for the theater, convinced that being “on stage” was his true calling.

He started in vaudeville as “Lester,” scandal-tainted Fatty Arbuckle intervening in 1925 to get him and his partner steady work in Hurley’s Jolly Follies. “I was making $40 a week and sending $20 home to my mother to help out,” he recalled.

In New Castle, Pa., Hope got his solo break and, at the conclusion of a three-day engagement, telling well-received Scotch jokes, became a “single” and soon headed for mob-ruled Chicago to make it on his own without his partner. But, after running up a $400 tab for donuts and coffee—and perhaps some medicinal spirits—he wasn’t making it. On the verge of giving up, by chance, he bumped into a Cleveland pal, who introduced him to a theater booker friend, who gave him a Decoration Day (i.e., Memorial Day) gig. “Would $25 be all right?’ (the booker asked)… I just managed to say, ‘I’ll take it,’ without bursting into tears…” (Have Tux, Will Travel)

By 1929, now renamed “Bob Hope,” he was becoming a well-known and liked comedian and landing more small parts on Broadway, leading up to a large Broadway role in Jerome Kerns’ hit Roberta (November 1933 to July 1934). From there, his career took off — soon including radio, film, and eventually TV, his first special debuting Easter Sunday 1950.

Pivotal Roberta would transform his life in another important way.

Early on, his co-star George Murphy took him to the Vogue Club on 57th Street to introduce him to a beautiful singer named Dolores Reade.

Father Benedict Groeschel, of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a good friend of the Hopes’ — introduced by the Gallo family — fondly reminisced that Dolores’ Italian-American father was a well-known “singing waiter” on bustling 149th Street in the Bronx and that her mother was Irish-American.

She was irresistible.

Bob fell in love with Dolores when she sang in her “low, husky voice … soft and sweet …Only a Paper Moon and Did You Ever See a Dream Walking? They wed a few months later — “The smartest thing Bob Hope ever did,” Lucille Ball once quipped.

Their 69-year marriage, rare in the annals of Hollywood, gradually welcomed four adopted children: Linda, Anthony, Eleanora Avis “Nora” and Kelly.

Starting in World War II, Hope began donating entertainment hours to cheer up the troops, soon expanding his charity work to other causes. First, there was cerebral palsy; then the Eisenhower Medical Center — donating land in Palm Springs and raising millions through his Annual Hope Golf Classic — followed by myriad other causes, especially Catholic charitable institutions that helped children and the poor.

By the mid-point of his life — as one his former writers, Arthur Marx, son of Groucho, wrote in The Secret Life of Bob Hope — he was “no longer just a comedian or film star. He was big business … (also including) oil, real estate, frozen orange juice, charity fundraising, golf, wholesale meat, personal appearances on both sides of the Atlantic … Major League baseball (i.e., Cleveland Indians). … He was also part owner of several radio and TV stations.”

His success was accompanied, and made possible, by a fiercely competitive spirit, combined with a penny-pinching nature — a remnant of his struggle just to survive as a child and in vaudeville. Whereas he had a heart of gold when it came to the troops and special friends like his agent Jack Saphier — paying all his medical expenses when he was terminally ill — he drove particularly hard bargains with others, including his writers, who made Bob Hope. But it wasn’t personal.

Marx reminisced how, after a typically long writing session, he would ask Sherwood Schwartz, later of Gilligan’s Island fame, to go buy him a pineapple sundae. When he returned with it, Hope would enjoy it without offering any to his hungry writers. Later, when Schwartz was posted with Armed Forces Radio in New York, he showed up at Hope’s Pepsodent Show rehearsal with a pineapple sundae, and told Marx, “I sneaked up behind Hope and without telling him who I was, said, ‘Here’s our sundae, Mr. Hope’ and put it in his hand. Without turning around, and without missing a beat, Hope took the sundae from me and snapped, ‘What kept you so long, kid?’”

All through his life, he was also a prodigious womanizer — often leaving Dolores in tears. “I’m no angel. I’ve known very few angels,” Hope wrote in Have Tux, Will Travel. As Marx summed it up, he had more women than Errol Flynn, Chico Marx and his good friend Bing Crosby combined, which once brought the couple to the brink of divorce.

The irony is: Bob Hope’s signature song, “Thanks for the Memory,” is about a couple who is contemplating divorce, and then they begin to reminisce about the wonderful times they’ve had, and decide to stay together.

Dolores toughed it out, knowing infidelity was Bob’s weakness — albeit, like his good qualities, it played out in extreme ways.

Agent of Conversion
“Dolores,” Father Groeschel said, “faithfully, prayerfully, patiently and with a certain amount of suffering” endured these trials. “She was a devout Christian wife, and she did what she was supposed to do.” Quite simply, the reason she was able to persevere, as he summed it up, is that “Dolores Hope was a great Christian.”

Through it all, she was praying him into the Church.

“Basically, the agent of his conversion was his wife,” observed Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington, who got to know Hope through Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York (whose cause for beatification is now in Rome), when he served as his secretary.

She was a daily communicant and was particularly devoted to Our Lady, and she prayed for him with a deep faith — and asked others to pray for him as well.

Also — and this is not to be underestimated —“she took very good care of him,” longtime friend Virginia Zamboni said.

Father Groeschel observed the conversion process up close.

“They were both very friendly people,” he said. Years before he converted, they would open their “large” yet “comfortable” home — but not mansion-like — to guests from time to time. “Bob,” he said, “was very pleasant and easy to get on with” — not at all “on stage.”

He loved to tell a story to priests who visited, sometimes for retreats Dolores hosted, about a “big Catholic” event he attended where “the priest who was introducing him told eight jokes.” Father Groeschel recalled that “Bob got up, looked at the crowd,” as if warming up to tell his own set of jokes, “and said, ‘Let us pray.’

“That,” said Father Groeschel, “is real Bob Hope!”

In the midst of the mirth, Father Groeschel emphasized, he was “extremely respectful to a priest. Practically every word or sentence, he would call me ‘Father.’”

Of course, it’s quite comical to imagine Bob Hope — this man who was so firmly planted in the here and now, not missing a beat when it came to human nature — reacting to all of the reminders of eternity around him.

Sometimes, the two intersected, as when Dolores wrote to Father George Rutler on Dec. 9, 1991: “One of the times I was watching you on EWTN you told a wonderful story about St. Philip Neri, who died with a Bible and a joke book along side of him. … I told Bob about this, and he asked if there really was such a joke book. Is it possible that anything like this can be traced?”

They shared more than laughs.

“They were very generous in every way,” said Cardinal McCarrick. “The many benefactions are legion.”

For example, in May 1994, Our Lady of Hope Chapel, endowed by the Hopes in memory of Bob’s mother Avis, was dedicated at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

And Father Groeschel noted, “They supported many works of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.”

God was generous, too — with his grace.

Arc of Conversion
The gradual arc of Bob Hope’s conversion is apparent in his last book, My Life in Jokes, divided into 10 decades. Introducing his fourth decade, when he started entertaining the troops, he wrote: “I was offering time and laughs — the men and women fighting the war were offering up their lives. They taught me what sacrifice was all about.”

It was during World War II, according to Cardinal McCarrick, that Bob became “very close” to New York Cardinal Francis Spellman. “They made all those rounds visiting the troops. And I really think that Bob was impressed by the faith of the Catholic men and women in the service that he met and by their enthusiasm to greet Cardinal Spellman. He often said, ‘He got a bigger hand than I did.’”

“For many years,” Cardinal McCarrick said, “we had been chatting with him about the Church.”

God began, gradually, to wake him up to spiritual horizons.

For instance, Hope had lots of trouble with his eyes (first left, and then even right, would hemorrhage) and often had to rest in a dark room after surgery — once for three weeks. For the peripatetic Hope, that must have been misery, but also a time for badly needed reflection.

In his late 80s, at age 89, Bob Hope got the ultimate wake-up call.

It was at the festivities surrounding the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Nov. 4, 1991.

As Marx describes Hope’s reaction to his reduced status, “He couldn’t believe it. ‘I’m Bob Hope,’ he complained to the people in charge. … ‘I’m sure I’m on the limo list.’”

But he wasn’t.

This world-class comedian and philanthropist, who had journeyed the world many times over, “flying a few million miles,” since World War II, entertaining “his boys”; this friend of presidents and royalty since the ’40s — who had “known most of the great personalities of our time, in politics, sports and show business,” as he wrote in Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me —was now being shunted aside to make small talk on an open-air tram with Lou Wasserman and Michael Eisner on the way to celebrating Reagan’s immortalization at his brand-new library.

After all these years of self-indulgence — interlaced with great generosity — God was tapping Bob on the shoulder to give him a spiritual pineapple ice-cream sundae.

In his last 10 years, according to Marx, he finally settled down and began enjoying life with Dolores, attending church regularly with her at St. Charles Borromeo in North Hollywood.

“Dolores,” Cardinal McCarrick said, “always was anxious that he become a Catholic. I think he had been close to the Church in faith for many years … and she was the one who kept bringing it up to him as a possibility. She would never force anyone. She was always very thoughtful and considerate. But she was persistent in saying ‘One of these days; one of these days.’ And, finally, he said, ‘Okay, it’s time.’”

Father Groeschel said that while Bob Hope was advanced in age (i.e., 93) when he converted, “He was very clear” and lucid and “could talk.”

Msgr. Thomas Kiefer, the former pastor at St. Charles Borromeo, 1984-2000, “was the one who ultimately brought him into the Church” 15 years ago, said Cardinal McCarrick. Msgr. Kiefer, “a dear friend of both of them,” died on Oct. 30, 2006.

Bob Hope died in 2003; Dolores followed him on Sept. 19, at age 102.

Late this summer, when Dolores was still “quite conscious,” Father Groeschel stopped by to see her.

“Dolores, I hope you’re living comfortably,” he said.

She responded with a quip, “I’m ready to get out of here comfortably.”

Knowing she was instrumental in helping her husband win the biggest prize of all must have been great comfort, indeed.

Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based journalist and screenwriter.


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