Dolly Parton, who died on 25 August at the age of 80, had a film career that included a big hit with 9 to 5, a sizable flop with 1992's Straight Talk, and a few minor postscripts in later years. Within a modest filmography of just half a dozen leading roles in theatrical releases, she showed more genuine screen presence than countless other multihyphenates.
Early Success with 9 to 5
Parton introduced herself on screen in a non-musical role: the 1980 workplace comedy 9 to 5, where she starred alongside Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. The movie yielded a number one charting theme song, the Oscar-nominated tune of the same name. Parton plays an office secretary whose piggish boss (Dabney Coleman) lusts after her and whose co-workers suspect, incorrectly, that she has given in to his desires.
The trio of Tomlin, Fonda and Parton bond over their horrible boss and eventually kidnap him, with crowd-pleasing results. While 9 to 5 is quite funny, it takes Parton's character seriously because her performance has such immediate, innate sweetness and sincerity. She also performs fine comic teamwork with Tomlin and Fonda, and her work fuses her well-known public persona with the particular character in a convincing way.
Steel Magnolias and Other Roles
Parton ended the decade with another non-musical hit: the 1989 comedy-drama Steel Magnolias, which placed her in an all-star cast including Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah, and a young Julia Roberts. Parton rose to meet the level of her more experienced co-stars.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas followed 9 to 5, sharing director Colin Higgins. Parton described the making of the film, which teamed her with Burt Reynolds, as a "miserable, spirit-numbing ordeal" in one of her books. She contributed two of her own songs to the movie version of the musical: the duet Sneakin' Around, performed with Reynolds, and a new version of her classic I Will Always Love You, which became a signature movie song when Whitney Houston's cover was a smash hit from The Bodyguard in 1992.
Later Career and Legacy
Parton's best musical film came much later: the 2012 film Joyful Noise, where she was matched with Queen Latifah, another musician-turned-actor. Latifah plays a new choir director who reluctantly teams with the pastor's recent widow (Parton) to kick their singers' Christian-themed competitive singing up a notch. The film was Parton's first lead in 20 years and her last to be released in theaters, though she had a Netflix movie, Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square, in 2020.
From its inclusive version of Christian values to its playful jokes about her character's plastic surgery, Joyful Noise represents Parton well even as it allows her space to play a character distinctive from those in 9 to 5 or Steel Magnolias. As a movie star, she had a preferred character type, but the end result, in movies good and bad, was pure Dolly: impossible to imitate, easy to love.
