Farewell to Dolly Parton

Special edition

A brilliant light has gone out in this world. Dolly Parton has left the planet.

I had the great privilege of working with her on “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” when I was an Assistant Director Trainee in 1981. She was such an intelligent woman, a talented artist, a consummate professional, and a caring woman who was wickedly funny.

When I was assigned to “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, I was overjoyed. It was a major feature film of a musical based on a Broadway show. The director was one of my Hollywood heroes, screenwriter Colin Higgins. He had written one of my favorite films, the sweet and startlingly original “Harold and Maude.” “Whorehouse” wasn’t his first directorial effort. He’d also directed the ebullient “9 to 5” and “Foul Play”, both of which he also wrote. I was relieved to be back with gentlemanly Burt Reynolds, and I was about to find out how lucky I was to get a chance to work with country music star Dolly Parton.

Principal photography would begin in Austin, Texas. After the exterior shots were completed, we’d return to the Universal lot in Los Angeles to shoot the interiors. I was excited to embark on my first “distant location” where I would stay in a hotel with the cast and crew, including 22 male dancers, 18 female dancers, a choreographer, and dance captains.

Our headquarters was the Austin Airport Hilton. The whorehouse set was a Victorian mansion in the small town of Pflugerville, a little more than 10 miles outside of Austin. The plan was that all the cast and crew would travel by van from the hotel to the set every day. We set up offices in the hotel. When the dancers and choreographer arrived, dance rehearsals began in a school gym near the hotel. Texas was a long way from creative, open-minded Hollywood, both culturally and geographically. Male dancers prancing off to rehearsal in hot pink legwarmers did not sit well with local rednecks.

On a distant location, all vehicles are driven by members of the Teamsters union. The transportation captain, also a Teamster, had come from Los Angeles. He would oversee the whole movie to keep consistency between the work in LA and the work in Austin. However, he was hiring local Teamsters from Texas for the work in Austin to save money on hotels and airfare.

A couple of days before principal photography was to begin, the transportation captain informed the production manager and the First AD that we had a problem. The local Texas Teamsters had told him, “We ain’t drivin’ no faggots in our vans.” In 1981, in Austin, the most liberal city in Texas, the drivers refused to transport the male dancers because they assumed the dancers were gay. Just for the record, 18 of them were gay, and four were not. Also, for the record, the director was gay, but the drivers never figured that out.

Indeed, it was a big problem. The company had no way to get 22 key employees to the job site. We had a potential publicity disaster if news of this homophobic bigotry leaked out. We needed to head off potential legal action, strike, or rebellion by the dancers who were, in fact, being discriminated against. The situation was complicated and serious. The solution devised by the production team was to hand the problem to their least experienced, least qualified member, a person with absolutely no authority…me!

The Key Second AD said, “Marsha, solve this problem.”

In the script, the dancers were supposed to be a college football team that patronized the whorehouse. This team traveled to games and to the whorehouse in a funky, old school bus. We had a bus to be photographed. Normally, picture vehicles (those vehicles that will be photographed as part of the story) are not used for anything else, for good reason. The script is shot out of order, and the vehicle has to look the same in every scene. If the vehicle was damaged, it would not match the previously photographed scenes. I asked the production manager and the transportation captain, “Can I use the picture bus?” They put their heads together and decided that in this emergency situation, I could, since the bus was beat up anyway.

So far, so good. I had a vehicle that could transport all the dancers. I just needed a driver.

I asked the transportation captain if I could interview drivers. He steered me toward some likely candidates. I found one who agreed to drive the bus. This brave soul was a teacher who was just driving as a summer job, so breaking ranks would not affect his primary source of income. He was a lovely, open-minded Texan.

Once I had secured a vehicle and a driver, the problem was solved as long as the dancers agreed to do everything together. At this point, the Key Second AD put me in charge of the male dancers. I was to go everywhere with them and take responsibility for getting them all where they needed to go when they needed to be there. I was honest about the situation with the dancers. They understood that this was what we needed to do to get the job done. They didn’t love it, but they were willing to cooperate and make the best of it.

As we boarded our funky bus after wrap on the first day of principal photography, Colin Higgins, the director, climbed aboard.

“Gentlemen, I want to thank you for a great day’s work. I know this is not an ideal situation for you, and I really appreciate your professionalism and cooperation under these circumstances. Thank you for making my job easier and putting the production first. You’re all fabulous!”

The dancers gave him a round of applause. He waved goodbye and exited the bus. Everyone was in a buoyant mood on the drive back to the hotel.

The next day after work, Burt Reynolds got on the bus.

“Hey guys! You’re doing a fantastic job. It’s a pleasure to have such a professional group on the team. Thanks for having such a great attitude. It’s gonna be a great show!”

The dancers answered with whoops and hollers. Burt departed and headed to his luxury dressing room bus. The guys were in good spirits on the ride back to the hotel.

The next day, Dolly Parton, wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, came on board. She put her hands on her hips as she scanned the wildly cheering dancers.

“Well, I have never seen so many handsome men in one place in my life! Can I ride this bus?”

The dancers shouted their approval. Dolly rode the bus all the way to the hotel. She sat on each dancer’s lap, asked him his name and where he was from. She felt biceps, caressed cheeks, tousled hair, and inquired, “How’s your mama?” The guys loved it.

From that day on, our funky bus was the coolest place to be on the whole set. Everyone wanted to ride the bus. All the actors took a turn. Dom DeLuise was a frequent, rowdy passenger who chased dancers down the hotel hallways. My guys made me laugh. Our rides became rolling parties.

Dolly magically changed the energy and brilliantly turned a difficult situation on its head with caring and connection. Empathy was her superpower.

About five years later, one of those dancers turned up as an actor on a show I was working on. We talked about that experience. He said, “I know it was a terrible situation. I know we were discriminated against, but when I think back on it, I only have happy memories.” I said, “I feel the same.”

When we went back to the studio to shoot the interiors, I was given the job of getting breakfast for Dolly and her makeup and hair crew. Her elaborate look took time, so they were usually the first on set. I would greet them and make sure everyone on the team had arrived. I’d take their breakfast orders, call them into the commissary, pick them up when they were ready, and deliver them to her huge motorhome dressing room.

Dolly and her crew were always pleasant in the early morning hours, which I deeply appreciated since it is not always the case with diva actresses. They never complained and were always on time. What was really unusual was that I never saw Dolly without makeup. She would arrive with the basics already applied. By that time in my career, I was used to seeing beautiful women arrive bare-faced and looking quite ordinary. After three hours of hard labor by a team of two or three, they looked like movie stars. Dolly, however, arrived gorgeous and became even more so.

One day, I was switched to another assignment in the early morning hours. That afternoon, I was working on paperwork at a makeshift desk I had set up on stage behind the scenery. Dolly came looking for me.

“There you are! Are you OK?”

I was surprised to see her in my dark corner.

“Yeah. I’m fine. What can I do for you?”

“Nothin’. I was just checking to be sure you’re OK.”

“That’s so nice, but why?”

“Well, you bring me my breakfast every morning, and this morning you didn’t. I thought something might be wrong.”

“Nope. They just gave me another job, but how sweet of you to miss me.”

“Glad you’re fine. See you tomorrow?”

Remember, I was the lowest person in the production hierarchy.

Dolly never mentioned her Christian faith at work, but she lived it. She embodied the teachings of Jesus Christ every day. She was love. As the years passed and I followed Dolly’s life, I saw that love expressed in her philanthropy. She shared her wealth with her community and her family. Her Imagination Library sent books to 300 million at-risk children. She financially supported medical research. She invested the royalties from Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” in the Black community in Nashville. She wielded the power of her fame and fortune to improve the world for its most vulnerable people.

On top of that, she made people laugh. Here’s my favorite Dolly joke, imagine her sweet Southern drawl saying:

“Do you know what you get when you rub two little green balls together?”

“No. What?”

“Kermit’s complete attention.”

I know her sparking energy will hover over us above the clouds forever.

I will always love her.