Dolly Parton Shared the Crude Joke She’s Grateful the Media Wasn’t Around to Witness: ‘Thank God’
Dolly Parton has a sparkling, self-deprecating sense of humor that comes through clearly in every joke she makes in interviews. The musician often pokes fun at her physical appearance, both in public and in her personal life. During a dinner with her manager, Sandy Gallin, Parton cracked a crude joke. While she recounted it in her memoir, she was grateful that nobody in the press captured the moment.
Dolly Parton cracked a crude joke to her manager
Parton and Gallin, her longtime manager, were close friends. She noted that they had a similar sense of humor and often tried to crack jokes that would shock the other person.
“Sandy Gallin and I have a history of doing some pretty wild things to try to shock, embarrass, or amuse each other,” she wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.
On one occasion, the pair were at a restaurant together, and Parton decided to employ a bit of physical humor. She set her breasts on a silver platter in front of Gallin. Thankfully, no one was there to photograph the moment.
“Once in a restaurant at a fairly private table, I took out my famous pair and put them on a platter on the edge of the table,” she wrote. “‘Here you go, Sandy,’ I said, ‘I’m laying ’em out for you.’ That platter was cold, but I’ll do anything for a good joke on Sandy. Thank God the press wasn’t there for that one.”
She shared how grateful she was that she had a similar sense of humor as her manager
Part of the reason Parton and Gallin worked so well together was because they had similar senses of humor.
“One thing that makes my relationship with Sandy so special is that each of us is able to accept, or I should say put up with, a lot from the other that would drive most normal people crazy,” she wrote. “A lot of people are put off by Sandy’s manners, if he has any.”
While they worked together, their shared sense of humor allowed them to be close friends, too. Parton said he was an incredibly important person in her life.
“I love Sandy. We become closer all the time,” she told Playgirl, per the book Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters With Dolly Parton. “He was just a God-given person to me. When you know something’s right, it never goes wrong. When I feel that confident about a person, it can only get bigger and better. He’s amazing. When I’m around people that I feel are psychic or spiritual, like Sandy, it just seems to make life real special. He’s a true friend of mine. I have told him things that I ain’t told anybody. That’s just the way I am with Sandy.”
This isn’t the first time Dolly Parton has made a joke like this
Gallin wasn’t the only person to whom Parton made jokes like this, though. As it turned out, she was a big fan of physical humor. After grabbing drinks with a few friends, the group split up and drove off in separate cars. Parton’s best friend, Judy Ogle, was in the other car.
“Well, Judy started doin’ silly little things – they started givin’ me the finger or something,” Parton told Rolling Stone. “Then it got to where we were trying to top each other. Judy thought she was gonna flash me; she started unbuttoning her blouse.”
Parton didn’t want her friend to one-up her, so she responded in kind.
“Anyhow, I just pulled up my shirt and I flashed them with one of them,” she said. “Well, they just about wrecked; they just about died because they thought it was so funny. So anyhow, they did something else, and the next time around, I mooned them!”
