Part 3
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That’s the difference between a star and a legend. A star does what the machine tells them. A legend builds their own machine. And Dolly was already sketching out the blueprints for hers.
She tells Barbara about Dollywood USA—not the theme park that exists today, but the dream she was pitching back then. A Smoky Mountain fairyland in East Tennessee. Like Disneyland, but with mountain music and moonshine and her own brand of sparkle. She wanted rides, shows, a whole world built around her story. And she wanted it in her backyard, where she came from.
But that’s not all. She’s got plans for a cosmetics line. A clothing line. And not for the Neiman Marcus crowd—for the Kmart shoppers. The women who work double shifts and still want to feel pretty. The ones who grew up like she did, in houses with hand-me-down clothes and hand-me-down dreams. She wants to give them a little bit of Dolly. A little bit of that floozie magic.
Now, you might be thinking, That sounds like a lot. And you’d be right. But this is the same woman who wrote “9 to 5” while clacking her acrylic nails on a typewriter to keep the rhythm. The same woman who walked onto the set of her first movie—9 to 5, 1980, directed by Colin Higgins, 109 minutes—and held her own against Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. She didn’t just survive that movie. She stole it. And she did it by being exactly who she is.
Her second film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982, directed by Colin Higgins again, 114 minutes), was a different beast. It was based on a Broadway musical. It had a moral dilemma at its core—a religious girl from a religious family playing a madam. Dolly admits to Barbara that the whole thing was draining. Stressful. She questioned whether she should do it. And the reviews? Not great. But she says something that tells you everything about her work ethic: “I felt the performance was as good as I could do. And anytime I feel good about something I’ve done, then I can live with that.”
That’s not ego. That’s self-respect. She’s not waiting for a critic to tell her if she’s good. She knows when she’s done the work. And that’s why she wants to produce. Because she’s tired of handing her fate to someone else’s editing room.
So let’s go back to the wig. The 350 wigs she keeps in a room in her house. The 2,000 pairs of shoes. The jewelry. She calls shoes and jewelry her two weaknesses. But here’s the truth: those aren’t weaknesses. They’re tools. They’re armor. They’re the reason a girl from a one-room cabin in the Smokies could walk into a Hollywood boardroom and command attention. She built the Dolly character because the world wasn’t ready for the real Dolly. And then she made the real Dolly and the character the same person, so nobody could ever use one against the other.
That’s the genius of Dolly Parton. She’s not a dumb blonde. She’s not a country bumpkin. She’s not a joke. She’s a CEO in a rhinestone suit. And she’s been playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers.
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When Barbara asks if she’s changed after her illness, Dolly says she wants to enjoy the simple things more. She wants to take better care of herself. But she’s not backing down from the dream. She’s just re-prioritizing. She’s still going to build Dollywood. She’s still going to launch that cosmetics line. She’s still going to produce her own movies. She’s just going to do it on her own terms, in her own time, with her own wig firmly in place.
And if you think that’s just talk, remember: by the time this interview aired, she’d already crossed over from country to pop, already starred in two hit movies, already written songs that would be covered by everyone from Whitney Houston to Miley Cyrus. She wasn’t dreaming. She was planning.
So the next time someone tells you Dolly Parton is just a pretty face with a big wig, you tell them what she told Barbara Walters: there’s brains beneath the wig and a heart beneath the boobs. And there’s a business plan in the purse.
That’s the Dolly character. And she’s been in control the whole time.
Carl, Marriage, and the Truth About Flirting
You’ve heard about the wig, the boobs, the tight belts. But who’s the man behind the woman? His name is Carl Dean, and he’s been Dolly Parton’s husband since 1966. That’s over five decades of marriage in a business where relationships expire faster than a carton of milk. Yet most people couldn’t pick Carl out of a lineup. He’s famously camera-shy, rarely gives interviews, and has been photographed with Dolly maybe a handful of times. He’s not a star. He’s not a musician. He runs an asphalt paving business in Nashville. And he built their home with his own two hands.
That’s right. The house Dolly retreats to, the one she calls her sanctuary, wasn’t designed by some celebrity architect. Carl built it 12 years before this 1982 interview. They’d looked at colonial homes all over the South, but nothing felt right. So Carl said, “I’ll build you one.” And he did. It’s a small mansion on a hill outside Nashville, with a living room Dolly calls the prettiest room in the house because it reminds her of the elegance she dreamed about as a little girl flipping through magazines. There’s a dining room that seats 12 but is hardly ever used. Four bedrooms. The master suite is their private escape, complete with a sunken tub and its own kitchenette. Dolly has two full rooms just for her clothes—she’s saving them for a museum she plans to build someday. And yes, she keeps some of her 350 wigs there, along with more than 2,000 pairs of shoes. Shoes and jewelry, she says, are her two weaknesses.
