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New film tells tragic story of the Singing Nun
Like Susan Boyle, bespectacled nun Jeannine Deckers found unexpected fame. But a new biopic charts the darker side of the singer’s rise and fall
She was the Sixties equivalent of singing sensation Susan Boyle - a bespectacled, somewhat plain looking nun who took the world by storm when she beat the Beatles to the top of the US charts. Now the tragic story of Jeannine Deckers, a naive young convent intern who become a Grammy award-winning superstar and eventually took her own life, has been reclaimed by her native Belgium and made into a film.
Her 1963 single Dominique - inspired by the 13th-century saint who founded her order and released to raise money for a church mission in the Congo - sold millions of copies and was America's number one for four weeks - holding off the Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand from the top spot. Her success led to concerts worldwide and an appearance on the famous Ed Sullivan Show.
Released tomorrow, Soeur Sourire - or Sister Smile - documents the rise and fall of the woman who was known as Belgium's 'Elvis Presley in a habit'. Her story has already inspired several stage and screen adaptations including an Oscar-nominated Hollywood version of her life story starring Debbie Reynolds. Made in 1966, three years after Dominique stormed the charts, The Singing Nun was a more saccharine version of real-life events with no inkling of what was to come.
Following her success, Deckers left her convent to pursue her musical career. But in 1967 she released an ode to contraception, Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill, which was a commercial failure and the start of her downfall. The Belgian tax authorities pursued her: she claimed she had donated all the proceeds from Dominique to her convent but could not find the documents to prove it.
In 1985, 22 years after her hit, a depressed and destitute Deckers killed herself alongside her partner of 10 years Anne Pecher, with an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol.
Despite being the only Belgian ever to have a Number One record in the US, Belgium has been ambivalent about Deckers. The film's director Stijn Coninx spent almost 10 years getting funding for his project, which was finally made as a French co-production.
The film's star, Belgian actress Cecile de France, says the one-hit wonder was full of repressed aggression and savage brutality - a "punk before her time". ·
