Ferdinand Ekechukwu
As celebrations continue to mark the death of Dolly Parton, the parade of tributes to the late country icon will march on this weekend into movie theatres when AMC Theatres revives two of the Queen of Country’s most beloved big-screen appearances.
AMC CEO Adam Aron announced that the chain will be screening the raunchy 1982 musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as well as 1989 classic dramedy Steel Magnolias at the AMT Broadway theatre in NYC.
While Parton was a well-established, cross-genre music star by the 1980s, her appearance in Whorehouse — which was based on the 1978 stage musical — found her co-starring with then box office giant Burt Reynolds in a cast that also included The Andy Griffith Show star Jim Nabors, Golden Globe-winning Dog Day Afternoon actor Charles Durning and frequent Reynolds sidekick and comedy great Dom DeLuise.
The movie tells the story of Parton’s beloved Chicken Ranch madame Mona Stangely and the shake-up in her secret relationship with local sheriff Ed Earl Dodd (Reynolds) when TV reporter Melvin P. Thorpe (DeLuise) comes to town intending to do an exposé on the brothel. The film was a box office success and it was nominated for two Golden Globes, with Parton earning a nod for Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Durning getting an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his role as Texas governor.
While the film featured some of the songs from Broadway score, along with two originals from Parton, the Parton-Reynolds duet “Sneakin’ Around” and a revamped version of her most iconic song, “I Will Always Love You,” that was released as a single in 1982 and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in October of that year, eight years after the original version had topped that same chart.
Steel Magnolias was also adapted from a play of the same name about the lives of a group of six women in a small Louisiana town, with Parton playing the role of Truvy Jones, a hairdresser who works out of her home salon. The stacked cast included star Sally Field as Southern mother hen Mary Lynn “M’Lynn” Eatenton, as well as Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, Julia Roberts, Tom Skerritt, Sam Shepard and Dylan McDermott.
The movie was another box office success for Parton and it garnered a number of awards and nominations, including a Best Supporting Actress win for Roberts at the Golden Globes — she was nominated in the same category for that year’s Oscars — as well as a Best Supporting Actress Globe nomination for Field.
The pair were among the dozen films Parton appeared in over her career, a list that includes her 1980 break-out role in 9 to 5, as well as appearances in 1984’s Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone and the 1992 talk radio comedy Straight Talk.
Dolly Parton was many things: A country star, actor, philanthropist, entrepreneur, theme park enthusiast, Christian who centred acceptance in her personal theology and so much more. But for many, her death Tuesday has served as a reminder that at the heart of her legacy is her role as a songwriter. And around the world, people are streaming her songs accordingly.
Worldwide, her streams jumped 1,280 per cent, from 2.5 million on Monday to 35 million Tuesday. In the U.S., 10 songs led the charge, including “Jolene” which grew from over 196.2K streams to 2.7 million, “9 to 5” jumped from 208.6K to 2.3 million, “Islands in the Stream,” her duet with the late Kenny Rogers, climbed from 165.9K to 1.8 million, and “I Will Always Love You,” Parton’s performance of her own classic, a song that was later made famous by Whitney Houston’s rendition, rose from 64.9K streams to 1.7 million, “Here You Come Again” followed, moving from 48.7K streams to 1.3 million, among the top five.