Dolly Parton’s TV specials showed her sparkle was universal

Funnily enough, when Dolly Parton made her debut on “The Porter Wagoner Show,” she wasn’t wearing any rhinestones. Faux jewels, sequins and shiny baubles were Parton’s signature once she became a household name. But in that 1967 episode, when she was still an unknown, the only glimmer to behold was embroidered on the host’s jacket. 

“Here’s a little gal that I know you’re going to really learn to love,” Wagoner told his audience, calling Parton a fine singer and “one of the finest little gals that I’ve ever met” as he introduced her to perform “Dumb Blonde.”

“She ain’t no dumb blonde, though,” Wagoner tossed off, almost as a merry aside, in a small moment some might call prophetic. Wagoner’s viewers didn’t initially take a shine to Parton, the 21-year-old replacement to his longtime co-star, Norma Jean Beasler. But Parton’s golden charisma shone ever brighter over the 218 episodes she appeared in until her departure in 1974.

Parton’s time on “The Porter Wagoner Show” laid the foundation for an extraordinary career bridging pop and country music, fueled by the star’s one-of-a-kind showmanship. She wrote thousands of songs, but it was television that made her most popular ones, and her, accessible to the masses. From her solo launch until her death on Tuesday at 80, Parton made more than 400 appearances on TV, many of them on variety shows where she was either a featured guest or, with her short-lived show “Dolly,” the main event.

Since she was bigger than life and a broader performer than many of her mainstream contemporaries, the live TV format suited her – making her synonymous with sparkling laughter, big hair, a bigger bosom and bejeweled dazzle. Her refusal to de-emphasize her Tennessee accent or downplay her assets endeared her to a wide audience, along with her unsinkable pride in her country roots.

During her first appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1977, the host got huge guffaws from his studio audience by inviting Parton to “Sit down and take a load off your feet.”

“That’s an old country expression, right?” he added, albeit with a puckish smirk, before following it up with questions about her “healthy” figure.

While Barbara Walters also scrutinized Parton’s looks in a 1977 interview, she began by haughtily asking, “Dolly, where I come from would I have called you a hillbilly?” Parton, never dropping her megawatt smile, replied, “If you had’ve, it would have been something very natural. But I would have probably kicked your shins or something.”

Parton’s unique star quality took Hollywood’s establishment by surprise in those days. But her open-hearted grace and ability to take such slights in stride resonated with everyday folks otherwise overlooked by upper-crust tastemakers. Her demonstrable character helped her transcend race and class in ways that few artists can claim.

A big part of that was her willingness to laugh at herself and the many punchlines seemingly made at her expense.

“All these years the people, you know, have thought the joke was on me,” she told Walters in that same interview. “But it’s actually been on the public. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it at any time.”

Shortly after that, Parton became one of America’s most cherished stars and the queen of holiday specials long before Mariah Carey laid claim to Christmas. Starting in the late 1970s, few broadcast specials worth remembering went without her presence.

Parton shared billing with Cher, Carol Burnett and fellow country singer Mac Davis. Following the success of her Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping hit with Kenny Rogers, 1983’s “Islands in the Stream,” the pair co-hosted “Kenny & Dolly: A Christmas to Remember” in 1984. The duo followed up on their single’s success in 1985 with “Real Love,” giving them their second No. 1 hit together – along with another prime-time TV special, “Kenny & Dolly: Real Love.”

But it was 1986’s “A Smoky Mountain Christmas,” Parton’s down-home festive fable, that cemented her as a seasonal favorite. Directed by Henry Winkler and co-starring Lee Majors as Mountain Dan, it may be one of the earliest precursors to the Hallmark holiday-style movies.

Many years later, in 2015, Parton scored a bigger hit with NBC’s “Coat of Many Colors,” a drama named for one of her signature songs, which she described as an anti-bullying message.

“That’s one of the reasons I thought it would also be great to play it on television for families,” she told reporters during a summertime press conference. “. . . I’ve had so many people tell me through the years that that song itself has had a healing effect on them, whether it was about their race, their nationality, or whether they’re overweight or whether they were crippled, whatever.  It’s just, people identify to it.”

When it debuted months later, at a time when the made-for-TV movie genre was thought to be all but dead, it earned the highest viewership for any broadcast TV or miniseries that had aired on a major network since 2012. Its follow-up, “Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love,” received an Emmy nomination and netted a hit for country singer Jennifer Nettles, who plays Parton’s mother in the films. Nettles recorded a version of the Parton-penned “Circle of Love” for her 2016 album “To Celebrate Christmas.”

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.Sign up here

Parton sprinkled her magic on other networks several times afterward, including Netflix’s 2019 anthology series “Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings,” which arrived in time for Thanksgiving; “A Holly Dolly Christmas” for CBS in 2020; and 2022’s “Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas” on NBC. Her 2020 made-for-Netflix musical, “Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square,” won her an Emmy in 2021 for outstanding television movie.  

Parton plays an angel tasked with changing the mind and heart of a wealthy woman set on selling her humble hometown to a mall developer. Perhaps appropriately, this was also Parton’s final film appearance — and in its story, like much of her life, love wins out.