A Brief History of Dolly Parton in New York City
Dolly Parton’s first visit to New York City was a nightmare. Early in her career, when she was still best known in country music circles, she decided to escape to the city with her best friend, Judy Ogle. “I looked cheaper than I even do now, and Judy didn’t look any better,” she once told Conan O’Brien. “So we checked into this hotel, and they thought we were hookers.” (The hotel ended up locking them out of their rooms.) Later, while walking along 42nd Street trying to figure out how to get home, a man made the same assumption and tried to make a move. Dolly ended up pulling a gun on him. “It was a different time, I had a gun in my purse,” she recalled. “My friend Judy started laughing, because she thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.”
Luckily, the girl from the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee didn’t hold a grudge against city folk, and returned to NYC often. In the 1980s, she even owned an apartment on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Throughout that decade, she could be found popping up at nightclubs and hobnobbing with socialites, art stars, club kids, and jocks, all while retaining her signature Dolly glam.
Although Dolly was a country girl through and through, it’s not hard to see why the city was so fond of her. Parton and denizens of the Big Apple share a few things in common: a celebration of others’ differences, a non-stop work ethic, and the belief that you can be whoever you want to be, with the help of the right fashion.
Here, Parton holds court with Andy Warhol at a 1977 dinner at Windows on the World (the restaurant that once sat atop the World Trade Center). The night was to celebrate Parton’s performance in the city, but it wasn’t the first time the pair met. In her 2023 memoir Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, Parton said she often joined Warhol on the couch at Studio 54 to partake in their joint interest of people-watching. “Andy and I would mostly just sit on the couch and watch all these crazy people out there doing their thing. We really got to know each other, just sitting on that couch." Warhol, of course, also chose Parton as a subject for one of his famous silkscreen paintings.
That same night, she’d meet Saturday Night Live and Blues Brothers star Jim Belushi.
Parton was no stranger to Studio 54. The legendary club even held the after party for one of her concerts in 1978. It was one of the few times the club brought in a live white horse.
Later, she took to the dance floor with the club’s co-owner, Steve Rubell.
Back in 1985, Parton signed a new record deal with CBS, and met Grace Jones at an event to celebrate in Harlem.
In 1985, Parton was the main entertainment at a charity ball held to benefit the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. She held her own with the city’s swankiest black-tie crowd.
In 1980, paparazzi caught Parton and best friend Ogle heading into Nirvana, a swanky lounge that once operated in Times Square.
In 1987, Parton was spotted leaving Ms Magazine's Women of the Year ceremony at the Roseland Ballroom.
In 1984, the unlikely pair of Parton and Sylvester Stallone co-starred in the NYC-set rom-com Rhinestone. Parton plays a country girl forced to perform at a sleazy Manhattan country bar. Through a rather unlikely series of events, she ends up falling in love with a taxi driver played by Stallone. Here, the pair celebrates at the film’s premiere party.
Currently, New York City is caught up in Knicks mania, but back in 1987, the city was infatuated with the Super Bowl-winning Giants. Parton helped celebrate by posing with members of the team at a restaurant.
Parton at the New York City premiere of 9 to 5 with co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.
Parton poses with Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Norio Ohga, and Billy Joel at an event at Lincoln Center in 1993.
Later that night, she’d be seated next to Tony Bennett.
She accepted adoration from Cyndi Lauper at the grand opening of the Sony Music Recording Arts Complex in 1993.
One of Parton’s rare appearances during fashion week came when she sat front row at a Calvin Klein show in 1994, alongside Diane von Furstenberg and Fran Lebowitz. Although Lebowitz may seem like the cultural anthesis to Parton (a New York City cynic to Parton’s country angel), Lebowitz adored her.
“Who doesn’t love Dolly Parton? I personally am certain that she is the most popular person in the country,” the writer once quipped. “People who hate each other love Dolly Parton. I have never heard anyone say they didn’t, and they don’t even like her, they love her.”
After the show, Parton posed with the designer himself.
Parton meets Manhattan tycoon Barry Diller at a Ziegfeld Theater party for Shining Through in 1993.
In 2000, Parton was spotted checking out of a Midtown hotel, doing her version of the city’s (almost) all-black uniform.
Twenty-nine years after the film, Parton reunited with her 9 to 5 co-stars for the premiere of the Broadway adaptation. Parton wrote the music and lyrics for the play.
In 2019, she walked the red carpet with New York disco legend Nile Rodgers at the We Are Family Foundation honors.
On the night of her death, New York City’s Empire State Building lit up in bright pink to honor her legacy. Parton’s mark on the city isn’t over yet. Next year, her musical DOLLY: A True Original Musical will premiere on Broadway.
