Before She Became A Global Superstar, Dolly Parton Arrived In New York With Big Hair, Little Money And A Story She Would Still Be Laughing About Decades Later
Long before Dolly Parton became one of the most recognizable women in the world, there was a young country singer arriving in New York City with her childhood friend Judy Ogle, eager to see the place she had heard so much about. Dolly recalled the story during her 14 October 2005 appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and it remains one of those wonderfully unexpected stories that could only belong to her. She explained that her first visit came sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when she was only beginning to establish herself in country music. She and Judy did not have much money, so they shared a hotel room. But when they returned after spending the day exploring the city, they discovered that their luggage had been taken out of the room and left in the hallway. The hotel had locked them out because staff believed the two women were prostitutes.
Dolly told the story with the kind of self deprecating humor that became one of her greatest gifts. Looking back at her appearance at the time, she joked that she “looked cheaper then, than I even do now,” while Judy apparently did not look much different. The remark is pure Dolly because she was able to laugh at the image that had once caused other people to make assumptions about her. Her enormous hair, heavy makeup, high heels and striking clothes had already begun to form the unmistakable style that would eventually become her trademark. But at that stage, the woman wearing that look was still a young performer from Tennessee trying to make her way in the music business. New York did not know who she was yet. To the hotel staff, she was simply two young women who looked suspiciously out of place.
The irony is that Dolly’s appearance had always been deliberate. Growing up in the Great Smoky Mountains, she had been fascinated by a glamorous woman in her hometown whose exaggerated look seemed completely different from the women Dolly saw around her. Dolly later explained that this woman inspired the image she wanted for herself. Her mother did not particularly approve, but Dolly had already decided that she wanted to look glamorous, feminine and unmistakable. Years later, that same visual identity would become one of the most recognizable images in entertainment. Yet during that early trip to New York, before the world understood Dolly’s carefully constructed persona, the look simply caused trouble. The woman who would eventually be photographed by millions could not even keep a hotel room.
The adventure did not end at the hotel. After being locked out, Dolly and Judy had to figure out what to do next. They eventually found themselves out in the city, and Dolly recalled another bizarre encounter involving a man who apparently assumed that she was soliciting. The incident became even more dramatic when Dolly, who was carrying a gun in her purse, pulled it out to make the man back away. She later connected the experience to one of the famous lines associated with the 1980 film 9 to 5. It sounds almost too outrageous to be true, yet Dolly herself told the story with such casual humor that the absurdity becomes part of the charm.
There is something particularly revealing about this story because it captures Dolly before the mythology. By the time she sat across from Conan in 2005, she was already an international icon. She had written “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” starred in 9 to 5, built Dollywood, received countless awards and become one of the most successful songwriters in American music. Yet when Conan asked about New York, she did not tell a glamorous story about arriving as a star. She went straight back to the time when she and Judy had barely enough money for a room and ended up with their luggage sitting in a hotel hallway. The distance between that young woman and the Dolly sitting on the television stage was enormous, and that is precisely what makes the memory so funny and so touching.
There was also a wonderful sense of perspective in the way Dolly talked about the city. Despite that humiliating first experience, she made it clear that she eventually came to love New York. In fact, her relationship with the city eventually became almost the complete opposite of that first visit. Dolly later recalled that when she returned years afterward, she received a much warmer welcome, including being given the Key to New York City in 1978 by Mayor Ed Koch. The woman who had once been thrown out of a New York hotel had eventually become an honored guest in the same city.
That transformation says something essential about Dolly Parton. She has always understood how to turn embarrassment into a story, hardship into a song and rejection into something she could laugh about later. She never needed to pretend that her journey had been effortless. In fact, some of the most memorable stories from her life come from the moments when things went completely wrong. The hotel incident became funny because Dolly survived it, remembered it and eventually turned it into part of the mythology surrounding her career.
And perhaps that is why the 2005 Conan interview remains so enjoyable. Sitting beside Conan O’Brien, Dolly was already a legend, but she spoke about that young woman in New York as though she could still see her clearly. The big hair, the cheap hotel room, the luggage in the hallway, the confusion and the sheer ridiculousness of it all were still part of her. Before New York welcomed Dolly Parton, New York threw her out. Before the world knew the woman in the rhinestones, she was simply a young Tennessee girl trying to find her way in a strange city. Decades later, she could finally look back at that first disastrous visit and laugh, because the girl who was once mistaken for someone she was not had gone on to become something far more unforgettable: Dolly Parton.