Dolly Parton's TV-movies

When her big screen film career began to falter in the mid-'80s (Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone), Dolly Parton made an attempt to overtake the small screen, beginning with the 1986 instant holiday classic A Smoky Mountain Christmas. The running gag in her films is that she always seems to play an extension of her own persona...

A Smoky Mountain Christmas is a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Parton in the lead role as Lorna Davis, a singer who's fed up with the hustle and bustle of civilization, so she retreats to a cabin in the woods for Christmas. But once she arrives, she stumbles onto a gaggle of orphans who are squatting in the cabin... as well as a hunky mountain man (Lee Majors), a literal witch (Anita Morris) who's jealous of Lorna's beauty, and a hick sheriff who wants to send the kids back to the tyrannical biddies who run the town orphanage.

Jeez, how narcissistic is Dolly to rewrite Snow White and cast herself as the lead? Directed by Henry Winkler (Fonzie from "Happy Days") and featuring John Ritter in a minor role as a judge, A Smoky Mountain Christmas aired endlessly on TV during the holiday season for many years, though in recent years it's barely been seen (like most great TV movies that have fallen into total oblivion). It was released on VHS in the '80s, and that tape seems to be the source of countless bootleg DVDs. It'd be nice if they'd officially release a special edition, complete with commentary and deleted scenes (a clip that doesn't appear in the film, featuring Lorna waking up and getting her first glimpse of the kids, was shown on Entertainment Tonight before the movie debuted), but I'm not holding my breath. Smoky Mountain Christmas was followed in 1987 by Dolly, a multimillion dollar variety show for ABC that barely lasted a season (though the show was contracted for two seasons).

In 1991, Dolly played a "shocking" role in the made for TV movie Wild Texas Wind of country swing band singer Thiola Rayfield, aka "T," frontwoman for Big T and the Texas Wheel. The shocking part wasn't that she starred opposite Gary Busey (talk about the odd couple!) or that she appeared scantily clad in the promotional photos, but that she played a battered woman.

The tabloids had a field day when photos were released featuring a bruised and bloody Dolly (those pictures would surface endlessly in the National Enquirer and the like, with captions like "Dolly Parton's Plastic Surgery Nightmare!"), and because of the parallels of the country singer and the overbearing manager, it was claimed that the film was autobiographical, based on Parton's relationship with former singing partner Porter Wagoner, who had a rep for being a bit hotheaded.

Also co-starring in Wild Texas Wind was Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson (playing Thiola's unimaginitively named singing partner Ben Rayson) and Willie Nelson had a small role as himself. Nelson was recovering from his own nightmares with the Internal Revenue Service at the time, and the film marked the beginning of his comeback (wait... has he done anything notable since?). Dolly wrote a variety of infectious tunes for the film (though the title song was penned by Carl Perkins), Willie Nelson's rendition of "Songbird" scored a scene, and a variety of other songs were heard in the background (probably performed by her siblings, but they're not prominently heard). It's a travesty that no soundtrack was issued -- of the 15+ songs in the film, only the briefly-heard "Speakin' of the Devil" was ever released (a different recording of the song appeared on Parton's 1995 album "Something Special"), though Emmylou Harris released a pretty well known rendition of Nelson's "Songbird."

Wild Texas Wind was heavily promoted for its two airings on NBC, and it received generally positive reviews, but the film was never released on video in America (though it was briefly available for rental in Canada, the UK and Australia -- those tapes are next to impossible to find today), and it languished in relative obscurity until 1999, when Lifetime acquired rerun rights. It's subsequently also aired on CMT -- but the syndication prints are missing a minor two-minute scene that was originally included near the end of the film.

Since I'm partially chronicling Dolly's TV career here... Following her original Dollywood film Heartsong, Dolly tried her hand at starring in sitcoms. Six episodes of "Heavens to Betsy" were filmed but never aired; several other pilots were also shot which never went anywhere. In late 1996, she guest-starred on "The Magic Schoolbus" with 9 to 5 co-star Lily Tomlin, she filmed a TV special to coincide with the release of her album Treasures, and she returned to fluffy holiday fare with another TV movie titled Unlikely Angel.

This time, Parton played Ruby Diamond, a self-involved bar singer who made the spur of the moment decision to end her life to keep from plowing down a deer. When Ruby arrives at the pearly gates, St. Peter (the great Roddy McDowall, in one of his final roles) informs her that she has to earn her wings, so she's sent back to earth to play Maria Von Trapp to two bratty children who are still coping with the death of their mother. Although there's definitely a Sound of Music inspired plot (which is humorously self-referenced), Ruby's dead, so she can't let herself fall in love with their father... not that that stops her from lusting after him. Unlikely Angel, like A Smoky Mountain Christmas a decade earlier, became an instant Christmas classic and has received endless airings on TV and several video and DVD releases. Strangely for a Christmas flick with Dolly, there's a minimal amount of original music in the movie, though the beautiful title song (which is a variation of "More That I Can Say" from her '87 album "Rainbow" with different lyrics) is quite beloved, and mp3s of it have been circulating for years.

In 1999, Dolly donned a red wig (the first time she'd ever been seen without her trademark blonde locks) and starred in Blue Valley Songbird for Lifetime. This time she portrayed struggling singer Leanna Taylor, a woman haunted by ghosts of the past, who found herself having to choose between her manager boyfriend (John Terry, Lost) and her singing partner (Billy Dean).

Based on the song of the same name from her 1998 album "Hungry Again," "Blue Valley Songbird" was the last major role Dolly's played in a film (though she had a cameo as herself in the same year's cult mockumentary Jackie's Back! Portrait of a Diva and she took a minor role as the mother of the titular character in the barely-seen Ace Ventura rip-off Frank McClusky C.I.). Although it's hard not to see parallels to Wild Texas Wind, by comparison, Blue Valley Songbird is rather lacking in music. Aside from the title tune and "Wildflowers" (which she'd also previously released), Parton and Billy Dean duet on the original song "We Might Be in Love" (numerous times!) and "Runaway Feeling" (which she released solo on her '91 album "Eagle When She Flies").