Name: Dolly Parton on Letterman, April 1, 1987
Uploaded: 2016-10-04T19:01:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dolly Parton on Letterman, April 1, 1987' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-10-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dolly Parton on Letterman, April 1, 1987' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-10-04. Transcript available.

Big ceramic monkey back there.
And you gave it away, too, for free.
Gave what away? The ceramic monkey. That's right.
It's going right out to Anne in Beverly Hills.
I know!
Everyone's doing this to me, like,
trying to start a plane to get Lindy off the ground to go to France.
My first guest has won the three Grammys.
She's a member of Nashville's Songwriters Hall of Fame.
She is a motion picture star
and her only guest ever to have a theme park named after her.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dolly Parton.
I think we look good together.
Well, I think we do, too.
You think we look nice together?
Yeah, we do.
We should work together. We'll go out and do shows together.
Here's your hat. You might even look better if you put that on.
Oh, great. A Dollywood hat.
It says Dollywood.
Yeah, Dollywood. And it's a corduroy hat.
So that'll be nice about August.
I know she wears them.
I know she'll wear hats on occasion.
Yeah, I like it. I like it.
Hi, folks.
How are you?
Boy, you smell great.
I do. I should. I put a cord of it on.
What is it?
Oh, it's a mixture of two or three things.
Things that you put together yourself?
Yeah, some Mary Kay and some Tova and some Chloe.
Well, anyway, I'm glad you noticed that.
Yeah, well, it's very nice.
Now, tell us about this Dollywood deal.
Well, Dollywood is a theme park that I've started in East Tennessee up where I
live.
As a little girl, when you were growing up, was it always a dream of yours to
have your own theme park?
Well, it actually has been.
To be honest, it has been a dream of mine for many, many years because I was
always fascinated with the county fair.
When I was a kid, that was the big thing when we used to get to go to the fair.
So I was always thrilled with that.
And for many years, about the last 14, 15 years, I have tried to pull it all
together where I could go back home to the Smoky Mountains, where I was born
and raised, and take something back to my people.
And that's a great part of the country.
And the folks up there are great, and it's really providing a lot of good jobs
for everybody.
And it's hopefully a good business move, too.
Is it right in the Smoky Mountains?
It's up in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
It's 30 miles northeast of Knoxville.
Is it anywhere near Chattanooga?
That's close, but it's closer to Knoxville.
It's about 30 miles from there.
How much does it cost to get into this place?
Like 50 bucks to get in?
No, actually it's $13.50 for grown-ups.
That'll get the entire carload of kids in.
That's everything.
That's all they're at.
That's everything but food.
And for children, 4 to 12, it's $9.95.
And it's a great thing.
If you want to come and spend a week there, can you do that?
Yeah, they have at least, well, they have about 600 motel, hotel rooms.
And, you know, it was 1,000, I should say.
Now, are you ever there?
Yeah, I am.
In fact, last year was our first year.
And we opened again on May 2nd.
And I was there every month, and I would just go in, get up on stage.
A lot of my family were singing there at the park, and I would get up with my
guitar and go sing.
And people never knew when I was coming, so it made it, you know, kind of
special to them.
It was special to me to be able to drop in.
So I'm very active.
I didn't just put my name on something and then walk away from it.
Oh, sure you did.
Sure you did.
Well, I did, yeah.
I did put my name on something.
Just one of those tax deals.
You're never there.
But I'm really involved in it.
I'm very active.
How big is it?
How many acres are we talking about here?
It's sitting on 700 acres at the moment.
100 acres.
700 acres?
We had a million and a half people visit the park last season.
Where does that rank with attendance at theme parks?
I guess like Disneyland would be, is that number one?
That's the biggest one.
And we were, I think we were third.
Third, that's for your second.
I know last year we were the fastest growing theme park in the United States,
which was good.
And it was a good year.
And it was new, of course.
We're hoping to keep that up this year.
But it's in the great, five miles from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
They're beautiful.
The mountains are beautiful.
It's great.
And it's the most visited national park in the United States.
What is the elevation of the highest peak in the Smokies?
You've asked me a question I don't really know, and I feel stupid.
I'd say about no more than 6,000.
No more than 6,000 would be a high mountain in the Smokies.
Very tall.
Clingman's Dome is the highest place there.
At least I know the name of it, but I'm not sure.
Yeah.
But I want you to come down sometime.
Because I know you do fun stuff on your show.
I watch you a lot.
So that would be a good place for you to come and act stupid.
And have fun doing it.
Well, I didn't mean it bad.
That's all right.
I meant fun stuff.
Please, please marry me.
Please.
Will you consider it?
Yeah, I will consider it.
Think about it.
Carefully.
Are you married now?
Yeah, I've been married for...
You're married now, but yet you're going to consider marrying me.
I'll consider it.
I said I can marry you.
Well, you don't expect to treat me that way if we get married.
Well, if we last 20 years, it might not be so bad.
How long have you been married?
20 years?
Mm-hmm.
Well, what's your husband do?
He's selling corn dogs in the theme park, isn't he?
No, he should be.
But actually, my husband's not involved in the show business in my life.
He made his living in asphalt paving early on, and he does mostly real estate
now.
He buys property and resells, and so that's mostly...
Did he ever, when you were first married, ever try and talk you out of show
business
and come into the asphalt paving world?
No, he never did.
That's always why we got along, I think, because we had different worlds,
and he would tell me about all the driveways he'd paved,
and I'd tell him about all the songs I'd been singing.
But it's a happy, wonderful union, isn't it?
Yeah, we're good friends.
We really are.
Now, what does that mean?
Well, we're good friends.
I think it's real important that you be friends with the person you're married
to.
I think that's why it's lasted as long as it has.
And we're together enough to enjoy the quality time,
and we're part enough to keep it interesting.
So you haven't seen him in a year, is what you're saying?
Actually, I just came from there yesterday.
Yeah, well, that's good.
So I was home for a while.
Because this is an impossible business in which to maintain a reasonable
relationship, isn't it?
It really is.
It's very hard, but I think it's easier when you're in separate businesses.
I find it harder when two people...
There's no competition, no conflicting egos, no friction.
He's proud of me, and I'm proud of him, and we're happy.
Well, good for you.
But I will consider it.
Well, thank you very much.
We have to do a commercial here, and then we'll be right back with Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton is here.
Dolly Parton is here.
Dolly Parton is here.
Dolly Parton is here.
I see Clingman's Dome right here on the map.
Yeah, does it say how many?
No, it doesn't give the elevation of it, but we can find out before the end of
the evening.
I'll find out next time, I promise.
But they're beautiful mountains.
Lovely mountains.
Oh, it's just beautiful.
They have some of the most beautiful flowers and trees in the Smoky Mountains,
and we're really proud of it.
Dollywood is a theme park.
It's centered in the 1800s, and it's to preserve the old Smoky Mountain
heritage.
Was that your idea?
Well, this is what I've always wanted to do.
I went in business with the Hurston family, which are people that have been in
the amusement park business for many years.
And they had parks in Missouri and East Tennessee called Silver Dollar City.
So we went in together, and we combined our ideas and just added more things to
it.
But they really know how to make the park run well, and I'm very excited.
Is it clean?
Very clean, because that's very important.
I think that's the most.
We have a lot of great food.
We have a lot of arts and crafts, candle-making, baskets, weaving.
We have the blacksmiths.
And, of course, we have a lot of amazing guys.
There's a lot of other attractions around there.
We have this brochure here about your theme park there, Dollywood.
And then here's an attraction here located, I guess, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Is that near your park?
Yeah, that is.
It is in Pigeon Forge.
It's this, when you're done there, you can, after Dollywood's,
Walk Tall with Buford Tusser, Carbone's Smoky Mountain Police Museum.
Now, there are a lot of things in and around Dollywood.
That's a very tourist part of the government.
Plan an extra day for this one.
Now, I've never been in that.
That's not part of Dollywood.
But there are many things to see and do up there.
Including, yeah, including the 1974 Corvette.
That, oh, well, it gets a little ugly.
Oh, that's a police museum.
It's a police museum, not a theme park.
But there are many things outside the park.
It's really, because the Smoky Mountains are so popular for campers, you know,
there's
about 1,600 campsites there in Pigeon Forge and in Sevierville, which, that's
my hometown.
It's your hometown.
And then up in the park, you know, they have another thousand, you know, spots
for campers.
You mentioned your hometown.
You know what we got here is a copy.
We've done this from time to time.
We had Willie Nelson's high school yearbook.
And we have yours.
You graduated just a year before I did.
In 1964.
Yeah, yeah.
And we have you.
You were a knockout in high school.
Like, I guess we couldn't have guessed that.
Well, I really wasn't a knockout.
But thank you.
We'll let the folks judge for that, judge for themselves.
Here we are.
This is your senior class picture?
Yeah.
This is, there she is.
Look at that hairdo.
I might add, too, that was not a wig.
No.
That was before I started wearing this.
What's the deal on this guy up here, though?
Do you stay in touch with any of these people?
Well, I do see different people.
Oh, that's great.
He'll be so happy.
Yeah, that's Robert.
He was really a nice guy.
We had some great kids in school.
I enjoy shop class.
Hey, now, don't make fun of my friends here.
No, I know, because...
I have to live there.
My high school picture is the goofiest ever,
so I don't mean to be casting...
That actually happens to turn out pretty good to me,
but I got some pretty stupid ones in there.
But they actually look like a pretty nice group of kids there.
And they were great.
I get a chance to see all of them.
It's amazing, because one of the kids I went to school with
is the mayor now of Sevier County, Jerry Wade.
He was a little sweetheart of mine.
Were you active?
Were you in musical productions and Glee Club
and that kind of thing?
No, I was the most popular girl in school,
but for the wrong reason.
Oh, really?
I never was the cheerleader.
I never really got voted for anything.
I wore a lot of makeup.
I wore real tight clothes,
and I wore my hair all, you know, a mile high.
That was...
Well, those don't sound like the wrong reasons, Dolly.
Well, but I'm just saying...
I look like...
Sounds like the right reasons.
I look like the real trash that a lot of the girls were.
I mean, I...
Oh-ho!
Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!
Oh-ho!
Well, let's see if we can name some of that real trash.
You're going to give me a big trouble.
Now, don't, please don't.
Was it Suzette Redlich?
No, it wasn't Suzette.
All right.
Well, let's see.
We got...
What about Mary Helen Sims?
Could it have been...
Let's see.
Yeah!
Get over there in the O's.
I'll show you.
Oh, in the O's.
All right.
Wait a minute.
I'm out of the...
My best friend, Judy.
Okay.
She was...
Can you find her in there?
She's actually back here in the green room now.
In fact, she was trying to call through to bid on that jewelry for me.
All right.
Well, I can't...
While you're looking at them, we have the mountain is...
Clingman's Dome is 6,600 feet.
Yeah.
That's the highest peak in this country.
Oh, good.
Well, I can't find the trash.
I guess she dropped out of school.
More of these pictures.
No.
We have Maxine Parton and Patsy Parton.
Maxine is a cousin.
They're cousins.
And Roy Parton.
Yeah.
That's my cousin.
And you still want to touch a little...
There's a lot of Partons up there.
They really were some great kids.
But getting back to what we were talking about, I was pretty...
A lot of the people thought I was a bad influence on their daughters because I
told...
I told jokes and I wore a lot of makeup.
And actually, I was pretty good.
I just had a real outgoing personality.
Some...
You know, like I say, some of the girls I was hanging around with were really
doing it
and I was getting all the credit for it.
Could it have been Dorothy Hodge?
No.
No, she was...
She was...
Oh, there's a...
I tell you, I don't know how they're going to feel.
They'll be proud, I think, that you singled them out.
Because they're great.
Could be some apologies tomorrow night, too.
Yeah, really.
Good night.
Listen, it's always great to see you.
And you're just terrific.
I'm really fond of you.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a nice thing to say.
I'm fond of you, too.
You're welcome there anytime.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.

Dolly Parton on Letterman, April 1, 1987

Big ceramic monkey back there.
And you gave it away, too, for free.
Gave what away? The ceramic monkey. That's right.
It's going right out to Anne in Beverly Hills.
I know!
Everyone's doing this to me, like,
trying to start a plane to get Lindy off the ground to go to France.
My first guest has won the three Grammys.
She's a member of Nashville's Songwriters Hall of Fame.
She is a motion picture star
and her only guest ever to have a theme park named after her.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dolly Parton.
I think we look good together.
Well, I think we do, too.
You think we look nice together?
Yeah, we do.
We should work together. We'll go out and do shows together.
Here's your hat. You might even look better if you put that on.
Oh, great. A Dollywood hat.
It says Dollywood.
Yeah, Dollywood. And it's a corduroy hat.
So that'll be nice about August.
I know she wears them.
I know she'll wear hats on occasion.
Yeah, I like it. I like it.
Hi, folks.
How are you?
Boy, you smell great.
I do. I should. I put a cord of it on.
What is it?
Oh, it's a mixture of two or three things.
Things that you put together yourself?
Yeah, some Mary Kay and some Tova and some Chloe.
Well, anyway, I'm glad you noticed that.
Yeah, well, it's very nice.
Now, tell us about this Dollywood deal.
Well, Dollywood is a theme park that I've started in East Tennessee up where I
live.
As a little girl, when you were growing up, was it always a dream of yours to
have your own theme park?
Well, it actually has been.
To be honest, it has been a dream of mine for many, many years because I was
always fascinated with the county fair.
When I was a kid, that was the big thing when we used to get to go to the fair.
So I was always thrilled with that.
And for many years, about the last 14, 15 years, I have tried to pull it all
together where I could go back home to the Smoky Mountains, where I was born
and raised, and take something back to my people.
And that's a great part of the country.
And the folks up there are great, and it's really providing a lot of good jobs
for everybody.
And it's hopefully a good business move, too.
Is it right in the Smoky Mountains?
It's up in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
It's 30 miles northeast of Knoxville.
Is it anywhere near Chattanooga?
That's close, but it's closer to Knoxville.
It's about 30 miles from there.
How much does it cost to get into this place?
Like 50 bucks to get in?
No, actually it's $13.50 for grown-ups.
That'll get the entire carload of kids in.
That's everything.
That's all they're at.
That's everything but food.
And for children, 4 to 12, it's $9.95.
And it's a great thing.
If you want to come and spend a week there, can you do that?
Yeah, they have at least, well, they have about 600 motel, hotel rooms.
And, you know, it was 1,000, I should say.
Now, are you ever there?
Yeah, I am.
In fact, last year was our first year.
And we opened again on May 2nd.
And I was there every month, and I would just go in, get up on stage.
A lot of my family were singing there at the park, and I would get up with my
guitar and go sing.
And people never knew when I was coming, so it made it, you know, kind of
special to them.
It was special to me to be able to drop in.
So I'm very active.
I didn't just put my name on something and then walk away from it.
Oh, sure you did.
Sure you did.
Well, I did, yeah.
I did put my name on something.
Just one of those tax deals.
You're never there.
But I'm really involved in it.
I'm very active.
How big is it?
How many acres are we talking about here?
It's sitting on 700 acres at the moment.
100 acres.
700 acres?
We had a million and a half people visit the park last season.
Where does that rank with attendance at theme parks?
I guess like Disneyland would be, is that number one?
That's the biggest one.
And we were, I think we were third.
Third, that's for your second.
I know last year we were the fastest growing theme park in the United States,
which was good.
And it was a good year.
And it was new, of course.
We're hoping to keep that up this year.
But it's in the great, five miles from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
They're beautiful.
The mountains are beautiful.
It's great.
And it's the most visited national park in the United States.
What is the elevation of the highest peak in the Smokies?
You've asked me a question I don't really know, and I feel stupid.
I'd say about no more than 6,000.
No more than 6,000 would be a high mountain in the Smokies.
Very tall.
Clingman's Dome is the highest place there.
At least I know the name of it, but I'm not sure.
Yeah.
But I want you to come down sometime.
Because I know you do fun stuff on your show.
I watch you a lot.
So that would be a good place for you to come and act stupid.
And have fun doing it.
Well, I didn't mean it bad.
That's all right.
I meant fun stuff.
Please, please marry me.
Please.
Will you consider it?
Yeah, I will consider it.
Think about it.
Carefully.
Are you married now?
Yeah, I've been married for...
You're married now, but yet you're going to consider marrying me.
I'll consider it.
I said I can marry you.
Well, you don't expect to treat me that way if we get married.
Well, if we last 20 years, it might not be so bad.
How long have you been married?
20 years?
Mm-hmm.
Well, what's your husband do?
He's selling corn dogs in the theme park, isn't he?
No, he should be.
But actually, my husband's not involved in the show business in my life.
He made his living in asphalt paving early on, and he does mostly real estate
now.
He buys property and resells, and so that's mostly...
Did he ever, when you were first married, ever try and talk you out of show
business
and come into the asphalt paving world?
No, he never did.
That's always why we got along, I think, because we had different worlds,
and he would tell me about all the driveways he'd paved,
and I'd tell him about all the songs I'd been singing.
But it's a happy, wonderful union, isn't it?
Yeah, we're good friends.
We really are.
Now, what does that mean?
Well, we're good friends.
I think it's real important that you be friends with the person you're married
to.
I think that's why it's lasted as long as it has.
And we're together enough to enjoy the quality time,
and we're part enough to keep it interesting.
So you haven't seen him in a year, is what you're saying?
Actually, I just came from there yesterday.
Yeah, well, that's good.
So I was home for a while.
Because this is an impossible business in which to maintain a reasonable
relationship, isn't it?
It really is.
It's very hard, but I think it's easier when you're in separate businesses.
I find it harder when two people...
There's no competition, no conflicting egos, no friction.
He's proud of me, and I'm proud of him, and we're happy.
Well, good for you.
But I will consider it.
Well, thank you very much.
We have to do a commercial here, and then we'll be right back with Dolly Parton.
Dolly Parton is here.
Dolly Parton is here.
Dolly Parton is here.
Dolly Parton is here.
I see Clingman's Dome right here on the map.
Yeah, does it say how many?
No, it doesn't give the elevation of it, but we can find out before the end of
the evening.
I'll find out next time, I promise.
But they're beautiful mountains.
Lovely mountains.
Oh, it's just beautiful.
They have some of the most beautiful flowers and trees in the Smoky Mountains,
and we're really proud of it.
Dollywood is a theme park.
It's centered in the 1800s, and it's to preserve the old Smoky Mountain
heritage.
Was that your idea?
Well, this is what I've always wanted to do.
I went in business with the Hurston family, which are people that have been in
the amusement park business for many years.
And they had parks in Missouri and East Tennessee called Silver Dollar City.
So we went in together, and we combined our ideas and just added more things to
it.
But they really know how to make the park run well, and I'm very excited.
Is it clean?
Very clean, because that's very important.
I think that's the most.
We have a lot of great food.
We have a lot of arts and crafts, candle-making, baskets, weaving.
We have the blacksmiths.
And, of course, we have a lot of amazing guys.
There's a lot of other attractions around there.
We have this brochure here about your theme park there, Dollywood.
And then here's an attraction here located, I guess, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Is that near your park?
Yeah, that is.
It is in Pigeon Forge.
It's this, when you're done there, you can, after Dollywood's,
Walk Tall with Buford Tusser, Carbone's Smoky Mountain Police Museum.
Now, there are a lot of things in and around Dollywood.
That's a very tourist part of the government.
Plan an extra day for this one.
Now, I've never been in that.
That's not part of Dollywood.
But there are many things to see and do up there.
Including, yeah, including the 1974 Corvette.
That, oh, well, it gets a little ugly.
Oh, that's a police museum.
It's a police museum, not a theme park.
But there are many things outside the park.
It's really, because the Smoky Mountains are so popular for campers, you know,
there's
about 1,600 campsites there in Pigeon Forge and in Sevierville, which, that's
my hometown.
It's your hometown.
And then up in the park, you know, they have another thousand, you know, spots
for campers.
You mentioned your hometown.
You know what we got here is a copy.
We've done this from time to time.
We had Willie Nelson's high school yearbook.
And we have yours.
You graduated just a year before I did.
In 1964.
Yeah, yeah.
And we have you.
You were a knockout in high school.
Like, I guess we couldn't have guessed that.
Well, I really wasn't a knockout.
But thank you.
We'll let the folks judge for that, judge for themselves.
Here we are.
This is your senior class picture?
Yeah.
This is, there she is.
Look at that hairdo.
I might add, too, that was not a wig.
No.
That was before I started wearing this.
What's the deal on this guy up here, though?
Do you stay in touch with any of these people?
Well, I do see different people.
Oh, that's great.
He'll be so happy.
Yeah, that's Robert.
He was really a nice guy.
We had some great kids in school.
I enjoy shop class.
Hey, now, don't make fun of my friends here.
No, I know, because...
I have to live there.
My high school picture is the goofiest ever,
so I don't mean to be casting...
That actually happens to turn out pretty good to me,
but I got some pretty stupid ones in there.
But they actually look like a pretty nice group of kids there.
And they were great.
I get a chance to see all of them.
It's amazing, because one of the kids I went to school with
is the mayor now of Sevier County, Jerry Wade.
He was a little sweetheart of mine.
Were you active?
Were you in musical productions and Glee Club
and that kind of thing?
No, I was the most popular girl in school,
but for the wrong reason.
Oh, really?
I never was the cheerleader.
I never really got voted for anything.
I wore a lot of makeup.
I wore real tight clothes,
and I wore my hair all, you know, a mile high.
That was...
Well, those don't sound like the wrong reasons, Dolly.
Well, but I'm just saying...
I look like...
Sounds like the right reasons.
I look like the real trash that a lot of the girls were.
I mean, I...
Oh-ho!
Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!
Oh-ho!
Well, let's see if we can name some of that real trash.
You're going to give me a big trouble.
Now, don't, please don't.
Was it Suzette Redlich?
No, it wasn't Suzette.
All right.
Well, let's see.
We got...
What about Mary Helen Sims?
Could it have been...
Let's see.
Yeah!
Get over there in the O's.
I'll show you.
Oh, in the O's.
All right.
Wait a minute.
I'm out of the...
My best friend, Judy.
Okay.
She was...
Can you find her in there?
She's actually back here in the green room now.
In fact, she was trying to call through to bid on that jewelry for me.
All right.
Well, I can't...
While you're looking at them, we have the mountain is...
Clingman's Dome is 6,600 feet.
Yeah.
That's the highest peak i