During the sixties, radio listeners eardrums were assaulted by an annoying guitar playing nun who sung about a “Dominique” who was insufferably pious. Happily, she turned out to be lesbian and left the church. Unhappily, she developed a heroin habit, and later died. This is not her story.

Who was Jeanine-Paul Marie Deckers (1933-1985), the “Singing Nun?” Born in Paris in 1933, Jeanine studied and later taught art to children, before taking holy orders in 1959, as Sister Luc Gabriel. She composed her hit “Dominique” in 1959 to celebrate her Reverend Mothers All Saints Day, before releasing the song as a record in 1962. Indicative of barely post-fifties America, she zoomed up the charts and won an Emmy Award in 1964. She relinquished her stardom, but later left the convent in the wake of Vatican II.

In 1966, she moved in with Anne Pecher, who would be her lover for the next nineteen years, but found that her next few recording efforts flopped. By now, she’d become a liberal Catholic, and believed in artificial contraception, which made it difficult to maintain her ties to her old institution. Her career hit the skids, and she played at a strip club in Quebec at one point.

In 1968, the Belgian government hit her with a tax bill for her alleged earnings on “Dominique,” which had all gone to her previous convent, and the case dragged on for fourteen years. She and Anne opened a school for autistic children, and Jeannine tried to revive her singing career, but to no avail.

To deal with the stress and strain of their lives, Jeanine and Anne started taking heroin, and were soon addicted. In 1982, she tried to launch a disco version of Dominique, which sadly flopped. Anne and Jeanine had to close the school, and despairing of her bleak existence, the couple committed suicide through a heroin overdose. They’re buried together in Wavre, Belgium.

So, why dig up the past? Because an enterprising gay man discovered that the nunnish early life and career skids were worth black comedic retelling, which is what happened last year, complete with a traumatised Sister Jeanine, an obligatory interloper “Maria” who’s snuck in from That Other Nun Movie, The Sound of Music, and an institutionalised drag queen narrator.

So, is this misogynist crap? Well, no. Sure, Jeanine’s later life was tragic and horrible, but much of it can be attributed to trying to stay Catholic while living a closeted lesbian life with Anne for over twenty years. We aren’t laughing at Jeanine, but at her church baggage, and what it put her through. And let’s face it, conservative Catholicism is fairly tragic and horrible, as one can see from the prune-faced elderly anti-abortion bigots that haunt the gates of New Zealand abortion clinics, to say nothing of Pat Bartlett and Connie Purdue from the seventies and dour old Bernard Moran at Investigate today.

Speaking of which, sadly, there’s no release date for New Zealand yet, although the New York details and some of the music can be sampled below.

Check Out:

http://www.singingnunthemusical.com

The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun