Dolly Parton Had Strong Feelings About People Who Thought Porter Wagoner Gave Her a ‘Sex Image’
Dolly Parton’s personal style is uniquely her own, but early in her career, some wondered if Porter Wagoner had something to do with it. She gained widespread attention when she joined his television show, and he took a measure of credit for the success of her career. She pushed back against any claims that Wagoner was the architect of her “sex image.”
Dolly Parton bristled against people who said Porter Wagoner created her public image
For years, Parton’s look has featured tight clothing, tall hair, and ample cleavage. Some believed the look was a deliberate way to grab attention.
“I don’t think anybody molded Dolly’s sex symbol image except Dolly,” Bob Beckham, Parton’s former boss at Combine Music, told Alanna Nash in the book Dolly: The Biography. “I think she knew what she had and she knew what the hell she was gonna do with it, and she did it. And I’m sure that Porter must have given her some pointers along the way.”
Parton said that Wagoner did no such thing. Her look was of her own creation.
“I don’t know what people mean about Porter creatin’ my sex image,” Parton said. “All he did for me was put me on television, and I just showed it off. He didn’t try to mold me into any kind of image. He just happened to like me as a person and the way I was.”
She added that Wagoner seemed to know better than to tell her how to dress. His only contribution to her look was paying her a salary that allowed her to dress as she pleased.
“Plus he happened to know I was stubborn, and I dressed as I wanted to,” she said. “But anyway, I guess because of him, I got to makin’ enough money where I could buy the things.”
Porter Wagoner said his ideas lifted Dolly Parton to success
After Parton and Wagoner stopped working together, she wondered if he took a little too much credit for the success of her solo career. He, on the other hand, believed he deserved more appreciation from her.
“It’s awful easy, believe me, and I say this with no resentment from Dolly’s career, but it is awful easy when you have something that’s successful for you to convince yourself, ‘I’m doing this, I’m the only one can do it, there ain’t nobody involved in this but me,’” he said. “It’s easy to convince yourself of that. But ideas are only ideas unless they are developed, and Dolly had a lot of ideas and still does, I’m sure — a mind full of ’em — but they are only ideas unless you’re able to develop ’em.”
While he acknowledged that she was a talented writer, he didn’t think that was all it took to make it.
“What I did in her career, the production of her records, was develop ideas that came out of my own mind, with extra insertions from her mind, of different things and different other people,” he said. “To me that’s what it’s about; that’s the only way you can make it. Because you can be the greatest writer in all the world, and unless someone will be interested in what you have and work with you on it to help get it exposed to the public, all you can do is run around saying, ‘I’m the greatest writer in the world.’ So it takes more than ideas.”
Those who knew her described her as modest
While Parton wore eye-popping outfits in public, she was reportedly quite modest behind the scenes.
“She’s V-E-R-Y modest, yes sir!” her seamstress, Judy Hunt, said. “I mean she’ll turn that back! Go off in another room! You’re not gonna see her with no clothes on. Now, you can see her in her pantyhose, but not in just her underpants or without a bra. She won’t even walk around in a bra. That’s kind of unusual.”
Once she had her clothing on, though, she wanted it as tight as possible.
“If she could reach down and pick it up, it was too loose,” her designer, Lucy Adams, said. “If she’d left it up to me, I wouldn’t have done that. Sometimes I’d make things and think they fit real nice, but she’d say they were too big, for me to take them up more. It looked like it would be uncomfortable, but I’d just push her in and zip her up. That’s the way she wanted it.”
