Reel Texas: The Film That Made Dolly Parton an Honorary Texan
Say what you will about Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds’ The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but consider this: I am hard-pressed to find any other movie that so perfectly mashes together so much of our state’s culture: the proud rural identity, UT vs. A&M football, state politics and the governor, big-city television personalities, even bigger hair, country sheriffs, sex, love, showoffs, and scoundrels.
Released in 1982, the musical comedy stars Parton as Miss Mona, the no-nonsense owner of the famous Chicken Ranch—inspired by the real-life La Grange brothel—who happens to have been in love with Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd, played by Reynolds, since she was 16. Parton sings and dances and has at least 18 fabulous wardrobe changes over the course of the story as Miss Mona and Dodd enjoy a quiet romance on the side.
Life is good in the small town of Gilbert—a stand-in for La Grange itself—until a ratings-chasing television reporter from Houston named Melvin P. Thorpe, played with good humor by Dom DeLuise, crusades into town to shut it all down. Dodd dismisses the hubbub by soberly pointing out the facts: The Chicken Ranch is “older than rocks and dirt”—a secret known only to every single person in the county. But television loves nothing more than moral outrage, and when the cameras roll and fisticuffs ensue, the future of the Chicken Ranch ultimately lands on the desk of the Governor, played with delightful cornpone charm by Charles Durning.
Of course, what is most unbelievable about the whole affair is that it kinda, sorta, pretty much happened that way.
REEL TEXAS
We’re revisiting the classic films that shaped the mythos around the Lone Star State
