These last few days, social media has been full of individual posts about Dolly and how she affected the lives of so many. It turns out that Dolly didn’t just entertain us in a variety of ways over the years, but she had a role to play in the actual lives of people she never met. She presented herself in the world and to the world as she chose to, making her authenticity a major part of her huge professional and personal success.
When I heard the news, a flood of memories unremembered for years began to unfurl without my conscious mind recalling them. Saturday nights as a child, the only night of the week Daddy would or could stay up to watch television, when Channel 11 out of Dallas was still an independent station broadcasting back-to-back country music. Over the years, many country artists had shows in that lineup, from Buck Owens and Ernest Tubb to the Wilburn Brothers, who featured Loretta Lynn each week. There was the Grand Ole Opry and the “Cowtown Jamboree,” broadcast live from Panther Hall in Fort Worth. And, of course, Porter Wagoner.
I think we were all watching when “pretty Miss Dolly Parton” made her debut on that show on September 5, 1967. Mother and Daddy were there, as was Mommie, my maternal grandmother who lived with us. She had less than a month to live. Although Daddy clearly liked Dolly, it is distinct in my memory because Mother liked her. She was not a big fan of country music, more a Frank Sinatra and Mills Brothers kind of person, and she tended to save most of her most barbed criticism for the distaff country artists.
Mother had no affection, much less appreciation, for the drinkin’ and cheatin’ songs that compromised so much of the repertoire of singers like Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. It was also the cowgirl fringe outfits and dresses that looked like they were made from a Simplicity pattern that they so often wore.
So when Dolly showed up singing “Dumb Blonde” on that show with lyrics that pushed back hard on the man she is singing to, Mother liked the defiant tone of that female voice. That it was coming out of a beautiful blonde wearing a sleeveless sheath dress of tone-on-tone brocade in a muted red with a jeweled brooch made it all that much better. Dolly had made Mother a fan.
When Porter Wagoner and his show came to play at the Mayfair in Tyler, Dolly was there with them. Of course, we went. It was the first time I went to see anything like that. Years before I got to see Bette or Barbra, Liza or Cher, or call her Miss Ross, I got to see Dolly. And she autographed her latest album for me, which I still have.
Over the years, Dolly continues to pop in my memories. When I moved out of the dormitory at the beginning of my junior year of college, I had a poster of Dolly from the Here You Come Again album on the wall. She had just successfully moved into mainstream pop.
In short order, Dolly was in the movies with 9 to 5. Roger Ebert called her “a natural-born movie star.” Gene Siskel said, “With this one film, [Dolly] establishes herself as a thoroughly engaging movie star.”
Daddy rarely went to movies, but he went to see Dolly. He died not too long after he and Mother went to see her in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. One of our last conversations included him gushing about Dolly in that movie. Yes, it’s true. Dolly turned Daddy into a fanboy.
All these years, Dolly has just been around, being Dolly, doing Dolly. Much of what has been said about her in all sorts of media this week has been about her music, songwriting, and philanthropy. But there hasn’t been much said about Dolly in the movies, so I’ll a take a crack at filling that gap.
In 9 to 5, Dolly co-starred with two major talents in her screen debut. The brilliant comedian Lily Tomlin holds up the comedy with Dolly’s able assistance. No offense to Jane Fonda, an actress I consider among the best in movie history, but all she needed to do was stay out of the way while Lily and Dolly did the rest. The American Film Institute named it as one of the 100 funniest movies of all time. The movie’s theme song, for which Dolly was Oscar-nominated for writing, is included on the AFI’s list of top 100 songs in American cinema.
In The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Dolly co-stars with Burt Reynolds, who was arguably the biggest movie star in the world at that time. He was in the fifth consecutive year of being named the most bankable movie star, yet his scenes without Dolly always left me wanting the camera to get back to her. Apart from the five minutes when Charles Durning does “The Sidestep,” Dolly pretty much owns this movie.
Of course, Steel Magnolias is my favorite movie with Dolly, and I know I’m not alone in that. But there’s no music here for Dolly to stand on while the camera is turning. She’s right there with three Oscar-winning actresses and one who will win that award a few years later. Dolly is completely equal to the ensemble. What her co-stars provided in acting chops, Dolly gives with simple authenticity. Behind all that hair and all that makeup, she’s real. Dolly might never have heard the great Spencer Tracy’s advice about acting, which was simply, “Know your lines, and don’t bump into the furniture.” I suppose one can either be real or act real. In movies, it kind of adds up to the same thing.
Acting in this movie gives an anecdote that is my personal favorite about Dolly. According to both Sally Field and Shirley MacLaine, the director Herbert Ross was often abusive to his cast. He told Dolly she needed acting lessons as she couldn’t act. It seemed that he did that one time too many. Dolly spelled it out for Ross. “I’m not an actress. I’m Dolly Parton. I’m a personality who has been hired to do this movie. You’re the director. It’s your job to make me look like I’m acting.”
Dolly knew who she was, why she was there, and what she was supposed to do. Unfortunately for the director, she also knew who he was, why he was there, and what he was supposed to do. Match point to Dolly.
We can take that story from the movie set one step further to know that Dolly knew who she was and why she was here. And she did what she was supposed to do.
Life may be some unending class in which many of us muddle through with varying degrees of success. But if that’s the case, I think it’s fair to say that Dolly, more than just about anybody I can think of, understood the assignment.
