In 1957, a young actress named Dolores Hart, just eighteen, was cast opposite Elvis in his film Loving You. The script called for a kiss, which meant she had the job of giving Elvis Presley his very first on-screen kiss.
It did not go smoothly, in the sweetest possible way. By her own telling, the director yelled cut because she was blushing so hard her ears had gone bright red. They reset for another take. This time the director cut again, because now it was Elvis who had turned red.
Off camera, the two of them got on well, though not the way the gossip pages might have hoped. During a break in filming, Elvis opened a Bible with her and asked what the verses meant to her. She would go on to make two films with him.
The documentary about Dolores Hart’s life
Then, right at the height of a rising career, she did something almost nobody in Hollywood could understand. In 1963, at twenty four, she left acting altogether.
She didn’t leave for a rival studio or a richer contract. She entered a Benedictine abbey in Connecticut and became a nun, trading the film sets and the red carpets for a quiet life of faith behind the convent walls.
Dolores Hart on leaving Hollywood for the abbey
The young woman who gave Elvis his first movie kiss gave up fame itself not long after. Of all the lives that brushed up against his over the years, hers may have taken the most surprising turn of all.