Arnold Schwarzenegger Said Dolly Parton Was the ‘Nicest Weight’ He Ever Lifted
Dolly Parton and Arnold Schwarzenegger posed together in a 1977 photo shoot. In the pictures, Schwarzenegger wore limited clothing and lifted Parton in his arms. She said she enjoyed taking the photos, even if she was a bit surprised by Schwarzenegger’s styling. He shared how he felt about posing with Parton.
Arnold Schwarzenegger said he enjoyed a photo shoot with Dolly Parton
In 1977, Annie Leibovitz photographed Parton and Schwarzenegger for Rolling Stone. When discussing it with TV personality Huell Howser, Howser jokingly mentioned that Parton was “smilin’ awful big” in Schwarzenegger’s arms. “He was too!” Parton insisted, per the book Dolly by Alanna Nash.
Schwarzenegger admitted he enjoyed the photoshoot as much as his smile conveyed.
“[She was] the nicest weight I have lifted in a long time,” he said. “I did a one-arm curl with her. She was about 110 pounds, good resistance. My biceps felt very good after that. So did I.”
Dolly Parton laughed when she talked about the photo shoot with Arnold Schwarzenegger
Parton traveled to New York to take the photos, and she had no idea what to expect from the shoot.
“I just thought I was just gonna take regular pictures,” she told Howser. “But when I got there, this girl, it’s a real popular photographer, Annie Leibovitz, she’s really, really sharp, and she comes up with some real good ideas. But when I walked in, here was this naked man.”
Parton could hardly talk about Schwarzenegger’s outfit — or lack thereof — without laughing.
“Almost naked — had on these little skin-tight, uh, shorts, and all this . . . body, and it was just … I just almost fell over. [Laughter],” she said. “And I said [she gets a mischievous glint in her eye], ‘What are me and him gonna do together?’ [She squeals on the last syllable, and then begins giggling so hard she almost can’t tell the story. Howser can hardly contain himself.] And the idea she had was the male and female body. And it turned out really neat. It’s got a lot of … attention, yeah, and they made some posters up of ‘em. And he was such a nice guy to know. We had a fun day takin’ the pictures, but, like I say, it was new to me.”
She found another photoshoot more shocking
While Parton found Schwarzenegger’s appearance a bit shocking, another photoshoot pushed her boundaries even further. In 1978, she posed for the cover of Playboy.
“The wildest thing I guess I’ve ever done in the line of publicity is in October, if I approve the picture, I’m gonna be on the cover of Playboy magazine,” she said. “But it’s only because there’s a real lengthy article in there that I’m quite proud of. So they wanted me to do the cover, and I said no for a long time. I wouldn’t even do the article for a long time. So if I like the pictures, I’m gonna be on the cover. If I don’t, I’ll still have the article in the magazine.”
Years later, Parton recreated the cover for her husband’s birthday.
