Dolly Parton was bigger than country music. She was a philanthropist whose generosity touched everything from childhood literacy to disaster relief and medical research, a symbol of self-empowerment and that rare celebrity who was larger than life without ever seeming above anyone.

She became one of the few public figures capable of bringing people together in a polarized world, but Parton did not always occupy such a broad cultural stage. For much of the 1970s, her fame was rooted largely in country music. But everything changed in 1980 when she was cast as Doralee Rhodes in the movie 9 to 5 .

Dolly Parton Was Already Looking Beyond Country Music

By 1980, Parton had been a major Nashville star for years. Landmark songs like “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “ I Will Always Love You” were already behind her. She had successfully separated professionally from Porter Wagoner and established herself as a solo artist and songwriter.

She had already started engineering a crossover beyond country music, too. The pop song “Here You Come Again” (written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil) was released in 1977 and reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album of the same name went platinum.

By the end of the decade, she was appearing in mainstream publications and deliberately reaching for a larger audience.

Jane Fonda Wanted Dolly Parton in ‘9 to 5’

While Dolly Parton was expanding her musical reach, Jane Fonda was developing a movie about the experiences of female office workers, inspired in part by the 9to5 organization that had begun organizing clerical workers in Boston.

Fonda and the filmmakers talked with working women about sexism, unequal pay and the indignities they experienced at work. Fonda wanted to make the political and social ideas entertaining rather than preachy. So, she decided that the movie 9 to 5 would need to be a comedy .

Fonda had already decided to cast Lily Tomlin. Then, while driving home after seeing Tomlin’s one-woman show, she heard Parton’s “Two Doors Down” on the radio. Fonda later described her reaction as essentially instantaneous: she pictured Parton sitting at a typewriter . She thought Parton would be perfect for a movie that, among other subjects, addressed sexual harassment. Parton later recalled that Fonda wanted to reach Southern audiences, something Parton could help the film do.

The character of Doralee is sexually objectified because of how she looks. Her boss lies about having an affair with her. Other women misjudge her because of her appearance. Underneath the exaggerated femininity is an intelligent, capable woman who refuses to let other people define her. It’s difficult to imagine a more natural role for the public persona Dolly Parton had already created.

Dolly Parton Brought Her Songwriting With Her

When Fonda offered her the movie, Parton responded that she would do it if she could write the theme song. In a recent account, Parton remembered her “ business brain ” kicking in. She knew she was entering unfamiliar territory with two established stars and saw the opportunity to bring her strongest asset, songwriting, with her.

Parton had never acted in a movie. She arrived extraordinarily prepared. She reportedly memorized the entire script, including everyone else’s lines, before discovering that filmmaking involved enormous stretches of waiting around.

During that downtime, she started clicking her long acrylic fingernails together. They sounded like a typewriter. That became the rhythmic foundation of “9 to 5.” She wrote the song while making the movie and eventually played it for the cast and crew on set.

Audiences Discovered A Movie Star

9 to 5 opened December 19, 1980. Critical reaction was more mixed than its later reputation might suggest. But even critics who had reservations about the movie recognized Parton’s star power.

Roger Ebert thought the movie itself was only a fairly successful comedy. Parton was another matter. He called her a “ natural-born movie star ” and compared the unmistakable quality of her debut to the emergence of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and John Travolta. Ebert was especially struck by what happened when Parton wasn’t speaking. Watch her in the background, he advised readers: She remained in character, reacting to everything around her and generating enormous energy.

Not every critic was convinced. Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail thought Parton was more confident singing the theme song than acting . But audiences rendered their own verdict. 9 to 5 eventually grossed about $103 million domestically , finishing behind only The Empire Strikes Back among American releases that year.

Parton received Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and New Star of the Year, while “9 to 5” was nominated for Best Original Song. Jane Fonda had seen something in Dolly Parton that much of America had not. Now America could see it too.

The movie would have expanded Parton’s audience without the song. The song multiplied the effect. “9 to 5” went to No. 1 on the country, pop and adult contemporary charts. It became Parton’s first No. 1 pop single. It earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and three Grammy nominations. Parton won Grammys for Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

“9 to 5” also joined a tradition of songs about work and class that included John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero,” although Parton’s song reached a vastly larger popular audience. The genius of it then and now is that you don’t have to know Doralee, Violet, Judy or Franklin Hart to understand it. Anyone who feels underpaid, underappreciated or trapped by a boss can find themselves in the song.

Parton expressed those themes throughout the album 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs , released one month before the movie. More than a vehicle for a hit single, the album was a loose portrait of working-class life, encompassing office workers, miners, migrant farm workers, working women and families struggling to get by. Parton combined her own songs, including “9 to 5,” “Working Girl” and “Poor Folks Town,” with material such as Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon” and Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” Cash Box called the album a “ hymn to the working class ,” while a review in High Fidelity praised its focus on labor and class and the compassion Parton brought to the people depicted in its songs.

The album reached No. 1 on the country album chart, stayed there for 10 weeks, reached No. 11 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum. For the rapidly expanding audience discovering Parton through 9 to 5 , it also offered a deeper introduction to the artist behind Doralee. Parton had been writing about poverty, family and dignity for years. “Coat of Many Colors,” for example, drew on her childhood poverty to tell a story about a coat her mother made from scraps, the humiliation of being mocked for wearing it and the love that made the coat precious to her. The High Fidelity review saw “Poor Folks Town” as a return to the qualities that had distinguished Parton’s earlier work. Listeners drawn to her by 9 to 5 could find another reason to embrace her in these songs. She had not lost her identification with people who struggled to get by.

Parton had created two crossover vehicles simultaneously: a blockbuster movie and a No. 1 pop record whose social undercurrent extended far beyond Hollywood and Nashville. The movie made her larger than life, but the music helped make her relatable to everyday people.

Dolly Parton’s World Got Much Bigger

Before 9 to 5 , people outside country music might know about Dolly Parton’s songs. After 9 to 5 , they knew Dolly Parton. The film revealed her comic timing, self-awareness, warmth, humor, vulnerability and extraordinary camera presence.

The years after 9 to 5 put Parton in front of audiences that extended far beyond country radio. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , opposite Burt Reynolds, followed in 1982. A year later, “Islands in the Stream,” her duet with Kenny Rogers, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The pairing grew into something larger than a hit single. Parton and Rogers recorded more music together, appeared in television specials and toured together, putting Parton in front of another enormous mainstream audience.

Movies made Parton a star on the screen, but television made her a regular presence in American homes. In an era before the internet, appearances on programs like The Tonight Show could introduce Parton’s humor, warmth and self-awareness to millions of viewers who knew little or nothing about her music. She could tell stories, joke about her extravagant appearance and spar with Johnny Carson in a way that allowed audiences to encounter Dolly Parton the personality.

By 1987, ABC was willing to build a prime-time variety series around her. Dolly brought together music, comedy and celebrity guests, with Parton herself at the center. The show did not last, but its very existence reflected how far her fame had traveled. A national television network believed Dolly Parton was enough of an attraction to carry an hour of prime-time television under her first name.

At the same time, her music kept carrying her into new corners of the mainstream. In 1987, Parton joined Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris for Trio , an album that reached the Top 10 on the Billboard 200. Parton could now move among country, pop, movies and television without seeming like a visitor to any of them.

Her movie career had setbacks, including the poorly received Rhinestone in 1984, but by the end of the decade she was part of the celebrated ensemble cast of Steel Magnolias , alongside Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis and Julia Roberts. By then, nobody needed an explanation for why a country singer was appearing alongside some of Hollywood’s most prominent actresses.

Across those appearances and collaborations, Dolly Parton herself became as recognizable as any particular song or movie role. The blond hair, rhinestones, Tennessee accent and self-deprecating jokes about her appearance were instantly identifiable. Different audiences could find different things to love about her without requiring her to shed the qualities that had made her distinctive in the first place.

Her growing fame also gave her the means to build something beyond records, movies and television. In 1986, Parton partnered with the owners of Silver Dollar City Tennessee, an amusement park near her hometown in the Great Smoky Mountains, to transform it into Dollywood. She could use the wealth and celebrity she had accumulated to create jobs, attract visitors and celebrate the culture of East Tennessee, where she had grown up in a poor farming family. Attendance surged from roughly 700,000 at Silver Dollar City in 1985 to more than 1.2 million during Dollywood’s first year.

Dolly Parton Became A Superstar

Entering the 1990s, Parton no longer needed a current hit to remain culturally prominent. Her name and image had become cultural currency of their own. Older work could suddenly reach enormous new audiences, too.

For eample, in 1992, when Whitney Houston’s recording of “I Will Always Love You” for The Bodyguard spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Millions of listeners who had never heard Parton’s 1974 recording discovered that she had written the song nearly two decades earlier.

Parton increasingly used her fame and financial success to help people in her native East Tennessee. She had established the Dollywood Foundation in 1988 to support education in Sevier County, a place that had inspired her art. In 1995, the foundation launched the Imagination Library, initially providing free books to young children in her home county. The program would eventually become one of the defining achievements of her life.

The result was a public identity that no longer fit neatly into any single category. People encountered her through country music, pop radio, movies, television, Dollywood and philanthropy. They knew the hair and rhinestones, but they also knew the humor, the humble Tennessee upbringing, the songwriting and the generosity.

9 to 5 didn’t create Dolly Parton’s ambition, business instincts, generosity or ability to connect with people. Those qualities were already there. The popularity of the movie and the song brought them to a much larger audience, and the decades that followed kept giving that audience new ways to know her.

Why Dolly Parton Succeeded

The story of 9 to 5 reveals a lot about the type of person Dolly Parton was and why she became a global superstar.

Dolly Parton Took Ownership Of The Opportunity

Parton brought credibility with an audience Fonda wanted the movie to reach, while the movie gave Parton access to Fonda’s and Tomlin’s audiences. Each side brought something the other lacked. Jane Fonda recognized qualities in Parton that country audiences already understood and put them into a medium where millions of other people could discover them.

But Parton wasn’t content merely to appear in somebody else’s movie. She wanted to contribute something she knew she did exceptionally well. The result was a song she wrote, performed and owned as intellectual property.

Dolly Parton Crossed Over Without Abandoning Her Identity

A lesser crossover strategy might have involved sanding away everything that made Dolly Parton country. Instead, she arrived in Hollywood looking and sounding unmistakably like Dolly Parton.

Dolly Parton Was Prepared When Luck Arrived

Jane Fonda hearing “Two Doors Down” while driving home was luck. What Parton did with the opportunity wasn’t. She approached her first movie with the same ambition and business instincts that had already made her a country music star, then used its success as a springboard into movies, pop music, television and business.

Dolly Parton had already built her stage. 9 to 5 made that stage bigger. And she never looked back.