Dollywood

Tuesday

Stephen Arnell

10 films featuring Dolly Parton

After the publication of Sarah Smarsh’s She Come By It Natural, the latest biography of the beloved songstress, here’s a look at Dolly Parton’s career in the movies. Admittedly, Parton’s filmography can be described as patchy (at best), but there are enough hits, curiosities, and why-on-earth-did-she-do-it? duds to merit a retrospective. And who knows – some of those movies previously deemed as clunkers may be worth a second look. Possibly. Before launching into my film rundown, it’s worth mentioning the frequent use of Dolly’s songs in movies other than hers, often used in a contrapuntal fashion. We’ve had 9 to 5 featured in Deadpool 2 (2018), Islands in the Stream in HBO’s Watchmen

Thursday

Philip Hensher

Dolly Parton represents all that’s best about America

After the storming of Congress last week, numerous American commentators looked at the Proud Boys, the QAnon Shaman and Trump himself and said, in so many words: ‘This is not who we are.’ Undoubtedly true. It raises, however, an interesting supplementary question: who, in fact, are you? Looking through the ranks of those who might represent the best values of America, we arrive quite quickly at Dolly Parton. She came from a family in rural Tennessee of both grinding poverty and honest, decent aspiration. Sacrifices on their part, and a 30-hour bus journey to Louisiana, let her make her first recording in 1959, at 13. Her first LP, in 1967,