Francis of Assisi is a 1961 DeLuxe CinemaScope movie directed by Michael Curtiz, based on the 1958 novel The Joyful Beggar by Louis de Wohl. It was shot entirely in Italy. The film was a box-office loss. It starred Bradford Dillman in one of his few sympathetic leading film roles (he usually played a villainous character onscreen). Two years after the release of Francis of Assisi, Dolores Hart, the 24-year-old actress who plays St. Clare in the film, became a Roman Catholic nun at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.