-Welcome back. I'm here with our pal Dolly Parton.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Thank you. Thank you.
-Dolly, you're one of the most adored people on the planet.
And there's so many stories about you, about your career
on the Internet, and I thought maybe tonight
we can clear up a few rumors or truths
and just see what's real and what's not.
-Okay. -Alright, good.
Okay.
In honor of our song and your special,
let's start with a Christmas one.
During the holidays, you have a Christmas tree
in every room of your house and you dress up as Santa
to give out gifts to your family.
-I do. That's true.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Well, see I-I'm very big in my family,
all my little nieces and nephews
and now my little grand-nieces and nephews.
And so I go pick them up, after I got the money to do it,
in a limousine, but it's like our sleigh.
So I go get them in my Santa suit,
pick them up, they come to my house for a day and a night.
And then I have an elevator in my house
that I've had painted like a chimney down under.
And so I come down the elevator in my Santa suit with my bag
and they're all down in the basement.
-Is that right? You brought us a photo.
You brought a photo. -Oh, yeah. Oh, you have that?
Yeah. They had asked me about it.
But this is like -- Over here --
-[ Audience awws ] -Oh my gosh.
-There's fire there. -How cool is this?
-That's tons of them. That's just one of the little pictures.
Hey, and this little fella plays the elf
in our "Magic Mountain Christmas."
-Does he really? -Yeah.
-Look out for the elf, okay?
-But anyway -- So I dress up and take them around.
They spend the night with me.
We do cookies and that fun stuff.
-Of course you do that. Do you think
of all the ideas for Dollywood, by the way?
Because every second is thought of.
Every corner is thought of. I loved it so much.
You were probably like, "Jimmy, stop talking about Dollywood."
-Well, you can. I'm very proud of it.
But, no, I have so many wonderful creative people.
But, yeah, I'm very involved in what goes on at Dollywood.
-I loved it. I loved every second of that place.
Go to Dollywood. By the way, that roller coaster.
I didn't get a chance to tell you. It scared me so much.
I almost died on the roller coaster, from scared.
I got on this roller coaster.
Normally it goes like -- [ Ticking ]
And you get scared. You're like, "Oh, it's gonna be good."
Now, this thing -- I think it's called the Lightning Rod.
It goes -- Zzhhooo!
And I thought it was broken. I thought it was broken.
I'm like -- [ Screams ]
I scream louder than anyone.
This kid's telling me to calm down behind me
like, "Calm down, buddy." I went, "Ohh."
Anyway, it was --
-Molly loves the roller coasters, too.
She was late for the show
'cause she wants to ride them all.
-It's the greatest thing.
-We talk about that in the show with her.
-Okay. How about this? You once entered
a Dolly Parton look-alike contest and lost.
-Yeah. I thought it'd be fun.
They give you free drinks. You don't really win anything.
So, some friends of ours, we thought it'd be funny,
so I just overexaggerated,
put a bigger beauty mark, bigger hair,
bigger, you know, everything.
And I walked across the stage,
and I got a little trickle of applause.
So I lost the contest,
but we had a big time because of it.
They didn't even consider me.
[ Sad tuba plays ]
-Weren't even on the list. -It was Halloween. You know?
Everybody was out.
-You sleep in your makeup in case
you ever need to evacuate the house
in the middle of the night. That's not true.
-That is true.
[ Laughter ]
It's true when I'm in L.A.,
because they have so many earthquakes
and I'm always scared to death, you know,
that there's gonna be one in the middle of the night.
And I don't want to be out in the street, you know,
with stuff coming around and the TV cameras out there.
So I leave my makeup on out there
and I leave my wig on a nightstand or, you know --
Or either I fix my hair a little bit
to make sure I'm not gonna look too bad.
So that's true. -So you always look like
a million bucks. Wow. -I don't know that.
That's how much it's cost me to look like this.
[ Laughter ]
-This one seems interesting to me.
You bought your family's first TV
after winning a greasy-pole climbing contest.
-Well, I was 10 years old, and I started --
When I was singing. -Wow.
-On a local radio and television show.
And I was a little ol' tomboy
because I grew up with all them brothers.
You know, there's 12 of us kids,
and we were all just wild little mountain kids.
So, anyway, I knew how to climb a tree,
and this show that I was on,
they had a show that I was singing on down in Sevierville.
and they had a greasy pole
at this theater where we were singing,
and at the top of the pole -- They had it stripped down.
And if you climbed it -- And there's $100
or a few hundred dollars, whatever it was --
I don't remember now -- at the top of the pole,
and nobody could climb it.
So I was on a little break and I kind of rolled around
in the dirt, a little gravel,
and got a little bit of dirt on me,
and I climbed up that pole and I got that money.
And they were mad -- because I was an entertainer --
that it was rigged somehow.
And the guy that ran the show said,
"How in the hell can you rig a greasy pole?"
And so he says, "She's getting the money."
So, I was singing already on TV, and we didn't even have a TV.
So I paid down on the TV.
We got a TV in our house. And nobody in our area had a TV.
And my daddy worked hard.
So all these neighbors would come to our house
to watch "Wagon Train" and "Woody Woodpecker,"
all those shows back then.
My daddy said, "We got to get rid of this damn television."
But they would stay there, and there were not late shows then.
But the show would just go, you know, just snow on it.
So they'd stay there and watch the late snow and...
[ Laughter ]
-Just watching late snow. -My daddy said,
"We got to get rid of this TV because I got to work."
The people would just come,
and you didn't want to hurt their feelings.
-There's got to be some truth to this thing.
-Now, that is the truth. I swear on that one.
That didn't have one of those "Get Jimmy" buttons on it.
-No, yeah, yeah. [ Laughs ]
This one says --
And I have a feeling this is real, but I don't know.
'Cause you're very cool.
You have a secret song locked away in Dollywood
that will be released in 2045.
-That's the truth.
No, seriously.
When we -- We do a lot of things at Dollywood,
and one year we thought about that.
They asked me if I would write a song
that nobody would ever hear -- I'll be dead and gone.
Well, I might not be 'cause I'll be 99.
You know me. I might still be hopping around.
--Yeah, you'll be -- Yeah. I think --
You'll be there.
-Anyway, I wrote a song,
and I put it in the box to be opened, and I even put --
Like, at that time there was a CD player
and the ways in saying what we were doing
with our music at that time.
Left all the instructions and here's how you can play this.
-No. -I swear.
And so I don't know what they'll do with it.
But I have regretted that.
Because it was a really good song.
[ Laughter ] No, I'm serious.
-You could have released that song.
-I keep wanting them to let me dig it up
and put something else in it that's not as good.
-Yeah. 2045. We'll see the song.
-If any of you are around when they open that box,
well, I hope you enjoy my song.
-There you go. We will. Dolly Parton, everybody.
Check out "Dolly Parton's Mountain Magic Christmas"
tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. on NBC.
We'll be right back with Claire Foy.
Stick around. No. I love you.