It’s not the worst thing that went wrong while filming that movie, actually.
Of course, Dolly Parton starred in The Best Little W****house in Texas in 1982 alongside movie star Burt Reynolds, and the film was co-written, produced and directed by Colin Higgins and was his final film as director. The movie was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and Dolly was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
Dolly played Miss Mona, and she of course co-starred in the film alongside Burt Reynolds, who played Ed Earl, and Dolly and Burt became good friends off the set during the process of filming. The pair were often accused of having an affair, though Dolly has always denied those rumors. She has talked openly about their friendship, as they were both at low points in their lives when they met, and in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, Dolly addressed it, joking that they were “too much alike” to have ever been romantically involved:
“There were the inevitable rumors that Burt and I were romantically involved, and one day, in an interview, somebody asked me if it was true. ‘Shoot, no!’ I said, ‘Burt and I are too much alike to be involved. We both wear wigs and high heels, and we both have a roll around the middle.’”
But when she publicly denied the rumors back when the movie was first coming out, Burt was not too happy because he told her it would “destroy” the magic of the movie and people’s imaginations that they might’ve been more than friends in real life, too.
Dolly said he was actually upset with her about it for a little while:
“Well, Burt got wind of this quote and proceeded to give me a few of his own. ‘You’re destroying the magic,’ he said to me. ‘How are people going to think of us as an item for the sake of this movie if we go around bad-mouthing each other?’ Well, I hadn’t thought of it as bad-mouthing, and I told him so. I was just trying to make a joke.”
In the book Dolly on Dolly, she called her relationship with him “sweeter than a love affair,” and eventually, he got over her joking that they were never in a romantic relationship, and used a similar joke on a talk show:
“I know that Burt is a good sport, and looking back on it, I’m sure he was just a little extra sensitive at the time. He must have gotten over it because a year or so later on a talk show I heard him use the same joke.”
She’s shared tons of great stories about their time together on that movie before, like how he ended up having to have a double hernia operation due to lifting her in the final scene, which they shot several times to make sure they had it right.
But during that same end of the movie, the two share a kiss right before Dolly sings “I Will Always Love You” to him, and as it turns out, they had a bit of a mishap filming that part too. During an appearance on Des O’Connor Tonight in 1998, Dolly explained that Reynolds was getting some grey in his beard, so he had to die it black for the movie.
But somehow it didn’t all get washed off, because Dolly revealed that it got all over her mouth the first time, and when they pulled back after the scene, the crew burst into laughter and she couldn’t figure out why…
“One of the funniest things that happened on that movie, he was beginning to turn gray, he played the sheriff, I don’t know if you saw the movie. But he had to put black in his mustache, because when he grew his own mustache, he had some grey in it.
And when we did our first big kiss on that ‘I Will Always Love You’ song, and when they pulled back the first time, they had to do it again because my mouth was just all black. And I couldn’t figure out what it was! And it was like, all of a sudden, everybody on the set just started laughing. It just looked like I had been sucking a sow, just so dirty, but it was pretty funny.”
I’m sure Reynolds wasn’t mad that they had to do that part again…
@partonnews Dolly Parton talks about filming The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds on Des O’Connor Tonight in 1998. #DollyParton #Dolly #BurtReynolds #Dollywood #CountryMusic ♬ original sound – Dolly Parton News
“I Will Always Love You”
