Having attended Catholic school during my youth (which meant having numerous nuns serve as teachers and religious mentors growing up), nuns have always been sort of a fascination of mine. That may explain some of my appreciation for The Sound of Music, as much as it does my interest in the story of Dolores Hart, a woman who walked away from a budding career in Hollywood, to answer the calling to serve God full time.
Among the Academy Award nominated Documentary Short films in this year’s Oscar race was God is the Bigger Elvis, a 37-minute film directed by Rebecca Cammisa that tells the story of Delores Hart, whose life before becoming a nun included starring alongside Elvis Presley in the 1958 film King Creole. She now goes by Mother Prioress at a convent in Connecticut. For those with an interest in learning more about her story and what life is like for her now, God is the Bigger Elvis is set to premiere on HBO on Thursday, April 5th at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT.
Here’s HBO’s synopsis for the documentary...
"God Is The Bigger Elvis" is the story of a remarkable place in Bethlehem, Connecticut and a woman whose unlikely story opens the door to a world seldom seen by outsiders. Dolores Hart was a rising star in Hollywood. Recipient of Elvis Presley's first on camera kiss, starring with Montgomery Clift and Anna Magnini, engaged to be married, she left Hollywood behind to enter the Abbey of Regina Laudis at the age of 23.Mother Prioress, as she is now called, introduces us to the mysterious world of life inside the Abbey where the 36 cloistered Benedictine nuns chant in Latin, pray seven times a day, and wear traditional black habits. Outsiders are almost never permitted inside the enclosed Abbey. Mother Prioress introduces us to what it means to live a cloistered Benedictine life, where meals eaten in silence, visitors remain outside a grille, prayers begin at 1:50am. Meanwhile, she photographs Abbey life on her ipad and adeptly sends emails to friends on her iphone. Though her love of God tore her away from her fiance Don Robinson, Don continues to visit her once a year. It has been 47 years.
And if you’re really interested in learning more about Hart’s life and work, Entertainment Weekly wrote a great, fairly in depth piece on her last year that digs into her work in Hollywood, her decision to become a nun, and life at the convent, which still includes a bit of Hollywood for her as she still screens movies and votes for the Oscars.
