There's no denying that Dolly Parton is an American institution and a country music legend.
But despite her distinguished career as a singer, writer, actor and director, Dolly
has endured an incredible number of challenges and tragedies throughout her life.
From her humble beginnings to her early struggles to her darkest moments, here's the tragic
real-life story of Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton was born in 1946 in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, the fourth
child of an illiterate sharecropper and a housewife who birthed 12 kids before the age
of 35.
Life wasn't exactly easy for the Parton family.
The nights were excruciatingly cold, she shared a bed with her younger siblings and the children
often had to wash in a river using soap they made themselves.
But Parton isn't bitter about her hard-scrabble roots.
In fact, she told People magazine that she's grateful for the lessons her parents taught
her in thrift and financial responsibility.
She said:
"No matter how much money I make, I'll always count my blessings quicker and more often
than I count my money."
Luckily, Parton's wild and free-ranging childhood in the Appalachian Mountains has provided
endless songwriting inspiration.
One of her first big hits, "Coat of Many Colors," tells the story of a coat a mother lovingly
sews for her daughter out of donated rags.
The coat draws mockery from the girl's schoolmates, but she knows that, while her family might
be short of money, they're at least rich with love.
It's no surprise that story has its roots in Parton's own childhood.
Parton learned to love music thanks to her mother's side of the family, and much of her
knowledge of gospel, country, and bluegrass came courtesy of her maternal grandfather,
a Pentecostal preacher.
"My mother's people were very musical, so music was not rare in our family.
There were always instruments around, everybody played some sort of a musical instrument."
Parton started writing songs at the age of seven, got her first guitar at eight, and
began performing on television at 10.
The day after she graduated high school, she left her home in the Appalachian Mountains
for Nashville in the hopes of finding fame in the country music capital of the world.
The road to success rarely runs smooth, however, and Parton, who wanted to record country songs,
was shoe-horned by her label into the pop genre because executives thought her looks
and voice were ill-suited to country.
It took some time, but she was eventually allowed to make the kind of music she wanted
to, and her debut country single, "Dumb Blonde," made it to Number 24 in the charts.
After that, the hits kept on coming, and, in 1967, Monument Records released Hello,
I'm Dolly, the album that made it clear once and for all that Parton was always destined
for bluegrass - and not bubblegum.
In 1967, following the release of Hello, I'm Dolly, Parton was hand-picked by Nashville
legend Porter Wagoner to appear on his road show and television variety program.
Wagoner was immediately bewitched by the 20-year-old Parton's beauty, brains, and talent.
She found it more difficult to win over his fans, however, who were more used to seeing
a songstress named Norma Jean by his side.
But Norma Jean had bowed out of the show in order to get married.
Parton, meanwhile, didn't exactly get a warm welcome during her first few appearances on
the show.
A number of audience members even greeted her by chanting Norma Jean's name.
But it didn't take long for Parton to win over Wagoner's most loyal watchers, and it
was with her help that The Porter Wagoner Show rocketed to the top of the television
ratings.
At the height of their fame, Parton and Wagoner were drawing a weekly viewership of 3.5 million,
and their duets are considered some of the best coed efforts of the country music genre.
This may come as a surprise to fans of Dolly Parton - and Whitney Houston - but the tear-jerking
ballad, "I Will Always Love You," isn't really about a romantic love affair at all, it's
about a professional partnership that had run its course.
In 1974, Parton was 28-years-old and intent upon pursuing a solo career, but that meant
breaking up with her long-time mentor, collaborator, and friend, Porter Wagoner.
She'd been appearing on his television show for seven years and, for Parton, who had only
planned to stay on the show for five years, it was long past time to go out on her own.
Parton believed she had paid her dues, but Wagoner disagreed.
In fact, he was distraught over her decision to leave and tried to talk her out of it.
So Parton tackled the situation the best way she knew how - by writing a song.
After confronting Wagoner, she went home and wrote "I Will Always Love You."
The next day, she performed it for him, and, deeply touched, Wagoner agreed to let her
go.
Although that seems like a nice enough ending for this story, things didn't stay so rosy
between the two.
In fact, Wagoner went on to sue Parton for breach of contract, and the two feuded for
years afterwards before finally calling a truce and ending up friends.
True to the spirit of the song, Parton was by Wagoner's side when he died in 2007.
Growing up in a large, impoverished family, Parton often mothered her siblings.
Later, when she moved to Nashville to pursue a singing and songwriting career, she even
brought a number of her brothers and sisters and their children to live with her.
And when she married her husband Carl Thomas Dean in 1966, the two lovebirds talked about
having children.
According to an interview with Parton in The Guardian, she and her husband wondered what
their kids would be like, threw names around and dreamed of becoming parents.
But nothing happened.
Parton's child-bearing years came and went and she and Dean eventually faced the fact
that they would never have children of their own.
Parton is very much accepting of her childlessness.
In fact, she celebrates it.
If she'd become a mother, she's not sure she would have been able to tour as she has, or
become the star she was probably always meant to be.
And now she's also become a mother figure to thousands of children all over the world
who have the privilege of reading her children's books, enjoying her songs meant for young
listeners, and benefiting from her charity, Imagination Library, which has donated more
than 100 million free books to kids.
Maybe it's because her first big hit was "Dumb Blonde," but for years people dismissed Dolly
Parton as something of a small-brained ditz, enslaved to plastic surgery and obsessed with
the spotlight.
Even renowned feminist Barbara Walters was pretty harsh towards Parton in a 1977 interview.
"You don't have to look like this.
You’re very beautiful.
You don’t have to wear the blonde wig, you don’t have to wear the extreme clothes,
right?"
Walters even went so far as to suggest that Parton was little more than a joke.
"But do you ever feel that you’re a joke, that people make fun of you?"
But the thing about Dolly is that she's really damn smart.
Not only is she funny and brilliant and quick on her feet, but she also clearly knows how
to build an empire from pretty much nothing - hence her estimated net worth of $500 million.
Of course, Parton would be the first to say that money isn't everything, which is true.
And it's also true that she never thought of herself as a pretty girl, so she piles
on the makeup and the high hair and pours herself into high heels to try to enhance
what God gave her.
But you also can't argue with the kind of success she's achieved, or with her colorful
comeback to Barbra Walters' wrong-headed condescension:
"I can afford to piddle around and doo-diddle around with makeups and clothes and stuff,
because I am secure with myself."
For a long time, Parton Parton was infamously apolitical.
She and the very liberal Jane Fonda even made sure to stay far away from discussing politics
while on the set of 9 to 5 in order to keep the peace.
Over time, though, Parton has had politics thrust upon her, namely in the area of gay
rights.
Ever since the 80s and 90s, she has been a gay icon and a go-to for drag queens around
the world.
Since then, Parton has embraced the gay community in a myriad of ways, including devoting a
special day to the LGBTQ community at her Dollywood Theme Park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
That move invited the ire of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members have protested
Dollywood's so-called "Gay Day" and periodically rattle the singer with threats against her
life.
Obviously, however, Parton isn't one to be intimidated by hate groups.
She later told the New York Daily News:
"If I was gay, I would have come out of the closet just a-flying."
Having lived for over eight decades, Dolly Parton has experienced her fair share of loss.
But Perhaps one of the most tragic losses in a long line of them has been that of her
niece, Tever Parton, who died of a drug overdose at age 36.
Dolly had been trying to help Tever overcome her problems with addiction, and even paid
to send her to rehab, but, in the end, the mother of two succumbed to her substance abuse.
Just a month prior to Tever's death in April of 2017, Parton saw the passing of her manager,
Don Warden, whom she met in 1967 on the set of The Porter Wagoner Show.
Warden died at age 87 of natural causes.
Parton responded to Warden's death with the perfect line, which, of course, she wrote
herself:
"I will always love you."
When Dolly Parton opened her country-western theme park, Dollywood, she did so with history
firmly in mind.
The land the park stands on has a storied past, having served as an attraction in the
Pigeon Forge area since 1961 when it was the Rebel Railroad.
Parton bought the property in 1986, added a number of new attractions, and since then
Dollywood has become one of America's most popular theme parks.
But it has also seen a spate of serious injuries, leading to a number of lawsuits and plenty
of bad press.
The most recent of these lawsuits was brought by a mother of two who claims that her experience
on the RiverRush water coaster ended with partial paralyzation.
According to TMZ, the woman was propelled off her seat and stuck her spine on a hard
surface.
As of 2019, she's suing Parton for $2 million.
Another such case put the spotlight on Dollywood's safety record in 2014.
A woman fell and struck her head on the pavement while exiting one of the park's swing rides.
She suffered spinal and neck injuries, as well as a broken jaw, and sued for $475,000.
The two parties settled out of court.
Dolly Parton has always been an optimist.
And hey, anyone who's lived her kind of rags-to-riches story would be.
But being an optimist doesn't mean your life or your mental health are in perfect condition,
and there was a time when she got so low she contemplated ending it all.
This dark period came back in the early eighties when she had what she later called "an affair
of the heart."
Parton has been married to her husband Carl Dean since 1966, and the emotional cheating
she felt she had committed sent her into a deep depression.
According to People magazine, the fall-out from the affair led her to binge eating, which
gave rise to a number of health issues.
She was also juggling family drama at the time, had been receiving random threats against
her life, and had just finished a nightmarishly difficult ordeal on a film project.
She even canceled a spate of performances and bowed out of the entertainment business
for two years.
At her lowest point, she found herself weighing up whether or not to take her own life.
Then her dog, Popeye, came running up the stairs, and the pitter-patter of his nails
shocked her back to reality.
She considers Popeye's appearance at that pivotal time as a message from God and credits
her own brush with rock bottom with helping her understand the often desperate plights
of others.
"I've done something good.
I’ve done plenty of bad I’m sure.
But I just hope that I’ll be remembered well."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).