Today's Out Spotlight lived a life of with both a higher calling and a number one hit. Today's Out Spotlight is Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, who is also known as Luc Dominique, or Soeur Sourire (Sister Smile), or Sister Adele, with many remembering her just as The Singing Nun.
Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, was born on October 17, 1933 in Brussels, Belgium. The daughter of a baker, she grew up in a loveless family. Grown, she left home to pursue studying art in Paris. She entered the Dominican Fichermont convent in Waterloo, Belgium in 1959 at the age of 25 after a breakdown caused by a broken engagement. When joining the convent, she said for the first time she felt part of a family. She took the name Sister Luc Gabriel.
Having written her own songs from an early age, she was allowed to keep her guitar and soon was entertaining the locals with fellow musical nuns. She wrote, sang and performed her own songs, which were were so well received by the order and at retreats that the monastery decided to let her record an album, which visitors and retreatists would be able to purchase.
The album was recorded in Brussels at Philips recording studios in 1963. The single "Dominique" became an international hit. In the wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination many radio stations in the U.S. played it and other softer music. Overnight at the age of 30, she became an international celebrity with the stage name of Sœur Sourire (Sister Smile).
Singing, and giving concerts based on her successful single, she found herself appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show on January 5, 1964. The Sullivan Show broadcast from Fichermont convent was the first of its kind, introducing the public to the elusive world of cloistered nuns. The world only knew the smiling nun in the white habit who sweetly strummed her guitar, as Sister Adele. Her real name and face were not revealed to the public.
"Dominique" is the only Belgian song that has ever been a number one hit single in the United States for four consecutive weeks. The song beat The Beatles and Elvis, garnered a Grammy award and has been reinterpreted over 100 times.
In 1966, a movie called The Singing Nun was made about her, starring Debbie Reynolds ithe title role. She rejected the film as "fiction". Her sophomore album, "Her Joys, Her Songs," did not get much attention and quickly faded almost as soon as it was released. Most of her earnings from her recording career were in fact taken by Philips, her producer, and the rest would go to the convent.
Like many new celebrities she found the exposure hard to bear, particularly after she appeared on US television. “I was afraid I would have a breakdown,” she wrote. “I could not stand being pestered and importuned by handsome men. I received bouquets from admirers and some of the notes they sent were too explicit for a girl who lived in a convent.” She also received an award from a US music magazine and was seen throwing her hands up in horror. “They might as well have awarded me a bomb,” she later said.
She yearned for the seclusion of her convent but the cloister she returned to was not the same as the one she had left coming back to jealousy and backbiting over her success. Meanwhile her exposure to the outside world had changed her more than she realized and she found it hard to adjust back to the restrictions of cloistered religious life.
She became increasingly critical of Catholic doctrines and eventually became a public advocate for contraception. She also agreed with John Lennon's statements about Jesus in 1966.
She enrolled for a course at university, where she wore lipstick and was even spotted smoking. More dramatically, she fell in love with a novice nun she met there: French-born Anna Pécher, who was 11 years her junior.
Scandalous to the convent, Deckers left the convent in 1967, so they could live together. Despite the outrage they had caused to strict Catholic morality the two lovers remained deeply religious, building an altar in their flat and taking communion together.
She then continued her musical career under the name Luc Dominique. She could not keep her initial name "Sœur Sourire", as Philips owned the rights. She released an album called "I Am Not a Star in Heaven." She recorded a song entitled "Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill" — a paean to artificial birth control under the name Luc Dominique. It was a commercial failure.
Her repertoire consisted of religious songs and songs for children. Despite her renewed musical emphasis, she gradually faded into obscurity, possibly because of her own disdain for fame. She struggle and was never able to duplicate the success of her one hit wonder.
In the late 1970s, the Belgian government claimed that she owed approximately $63,000 in back taxes. She countered that the royalties from her recording were given to the convent and therefore she was not liable for payment of any personal income taxes. But without any receipts to prove her donations to the convent and her religious order, it turned into heavy financial problems.
Her musical career over, she opened a school for autistic children in Belgium with her partner Pécher. She continued to play music for children and small groups as well.
In 1982, she tried, once again as Soeur Sourire, to score a hit with a disco version of "Dominique", but this last attempt to resume her singing career failed. She struggled with the fame she had experience but never looked for, and the life she found herself living after fame, the growing financial pressure and the resolution of her faith vs her sexuality. She soon was in a slide of depression being fueled with alcohol and barbiturates.
Citing their financial difficulties in a note, she and Pécher committed suicide by an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol on March 29, 1985. She was 51.
In 1996, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun premiered Off-Broadway at The Grove Street Playhouse. The play, which was written and directed by Blair Fell, was loosely based on the events in Deckers' life. It was called by the critics as tasteless in it's mockery of her life. The Catholic League spoke out publicly against the production.
In 2009, Sœur Sourire, a Franco-Belgian biopic starring Cécile de France as Deckers, was released in cinemas. De France described Deckers as a rebel trouble maker and a “punk before her time” who was also a fragile egotist full of “repressed aggression and savage brutality”.
Happy Hanukkah!
