Remembering the great Dolly Parton (1946-2026)
We could have shown you Rhinestone, her country-music comedy with Sylvester Stallone, but if you’re going to honor Dolly cinematically, only 9 to 5 will do. The plot is basic: three female employees working for a horrible, sexist boss come up with an elaborate plan to turn the tables. Lily Tomlin is excellent as the de facto leader of the trio, and Dabney Coleman played this same villain role in every film for about 10 years, and he’s great at it. But this is the Dolly Parton show, start to finish. I’ll let Roger Ebert explain in his almost-uncomfortably adoring review:
“9 to 5 is a good-hearted, simple-minded comedy that will win a place in film history primarily because it contains the movie debut of Dolly Parton. She is, on the basis of this one film, a natural-born movie star, a performer who holds our attention so easily that it’s hard to believe it’s her first film. There have been other debuts this unmistakable; you could name Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John Travolta. And what you’d be talking about in each case would not necessarily be a great dramatic performance in an important movie. You’d be talking about a quality of presence, a personal life force that seems to take over the screen. Dolly Parton contains so much energy, so much life and unstudied natural exuberance that watching her do anything in this movie is a pleasure… She is a center of life on the screen.”