FOR 53 years her marriage has been the most rock solid in all of showbiz, yet the world’s greatest living country star Dolly Parton remains dogged by rumours about her sexuality.
The theory that won’t go away suggests that her lifetime best friend Judy Ogle is actually her partner, even though she renewed her wedding vows with low-profile husband Carl Dean, 76, to mark their fifth decade together.
It’s a frustration for the 9 To 5 singer, 73, who for six decades has been a ground-breaking female artist, constantly pushing social boundaries with her unique mix of raunchy femininity and empowered feminism.
On the sexuality whispers, Dolly shakes her head and says: “So people say that — because you can’t really have a great relationship with a woman. I’m not gay but I have so many gay friends and I accept everybody for who they are.”
It’s clear her feelings for Judy, who she regularly describes as her “girlfriend”, are strong, even though they are purely platonic. The pair have been a force together in the same way as Oprah Winfrey, 65, and her best friend Gayle King, 64, who have been struck by similar claims.
“Well, people love to talk, people love to gossip. They’ve said that about Oprah but it’s not true,” Dolly explains.
“Judy and I have been best friends for 64 years, since we were little kids. Our parents knew each other, we grew up together, we were like sisters, became best friends.
“She was very quiet, I was very outgoing. So we made perfect friends. We went all through school together.
“She went to the army when we graduated because she needed the insurance and she needed to help her family and I was trying to make it. As soon as she got out, she came to Nashville and we’ve been together ever since.”
Dolly has had every aspect of her larger-than-life appearance and quirky life picked over since her extraordinary rise to fame, but it is obvious that gossip about her loved ones crosses the line.
She says: “People love to talk — but sometimes that’s your best publicity. I don’t care what they say as long as they don’t hurt other people I love.”
Dolly is now a gay icon (“I love that,” she shrieks in her southern twang) who, if she had been born a boy, would have “been a drag queen because I love all the flamboyant stuff”.
But she does raise questions about the recent move among pop stars — including her own god-daughter Miley Cyrus, 26 — to define themselves as gender fluid, pansexual or bisexual.
She tells in the new episode of The Dan Wootton Interview podcast: “For me, I’m still an old timer. Sometimes I think it’s just become kind of fashionable to speak out like that. I think some of them even say more than who they really are.
“I think they just want to be part of that whole movement to make people think that they’re so free and all that. But I don’t really know how they feel inside. I know how I feel inside.” She adds: “Miley, she does a lot of stuff for effect, and I think a lot of them do.”
For Dolly, faith and tradition still guide how she lives her life — and marriage “to the same man” means a lot, even though they are believed to have had an open and free relationship in the past.
“He’s a good man. It is a true love story and he’s my best buddy — he’s crazy, he’s funny,” she says. So I think laughter has been a big part of our relationship. We both have a lot of fun.
“And we’re not in the same business — he doesn’t care about that. He’s pretty much a homebody, loves staying around home. We live out on a farm. He likes to mow the fields and work on his tractors.”
A hysterectomy when Dolly was 36 took away the couple’s chance to start a family of their own, something she believes “wasn’t meant to be”. Would her stratospheric career have been as successful if she’d had children?
“Chances are, not,” she admits. “I look at everything like it happened the way that it was supposed to. I’m pretty sure if I’d had kids I would not have done as much. I always think, ‘Well, maybe God didn’t mean for me to have children, so everybody’s children could be mine.’”
Besides, she still has plenty of nieces, nephews and godchildren in her life, without any of the pressure.
She admits: “My husband feels the same way. Now that we are older, we’re almost kind of glad that we don’t have a bunch of grandkids driving us crazy that we have to babysit if we don’t want to.”
I’m meeting Dolly at the Savoy Hotel during a whirlwind three-day visit to London, where she is relaunching the West End musical version of the iconic Eighties movie 9 To 5, given the attention
#MeToo has “stirred up” when it comes to equal gender pay and sexual harassment in the workplace.
But Dolly has a surprising warning to campaigners by agreeing with those who say the movement has started to go too far.
When I raise complaints that #MeToo is viewed by some as an attack, making some men afraid to flirt with women, she says: “I think that there’s a lot of truth in that. I really think if women want to be respected, we need to respect ourselves as well.
“We can’t just figure that we can just flirt and take it to a point to get what we want and then turn our backs.
“So we need to be very careful. We have a wonderful opportunity, we have made a lot of good points and we’ve got a clear way to really do more things, but we need to handle that with care and with respect.”
For Dolly, who found fame in the Mad Men era of the Sixties, she was able to use her forceful attitude to stop men taking advantage.
“Because I am a country girl that doesn’t mean I’m a stupid girl,” she points out. If somebody got too aggressive, I would either just squeal or holler or say, ‘Hey, I think you’ve got the wrong girl here, I’m not willing to sleep with anybody to try to get ahead in the business.’ ”
She adds: “I never met a man I didn’t like but I never met one I couldn’t kick his ass if he didn’t treat me with the respect he should.”
It also helped that Dolly’s daddy “gave me a little pistol”, which she used during one night out in New York with best friend Judy after being mistaken for a prostitute. She recalls: “This guy thought I was out for a good time because I looked like a good-time girl, I guess. He wouldn’t leave me alone.
“My girlfriend Judy and I, who were just two country girls, had gone up there and he just kept harassing me. I said, ‘Look, that’s it — if you touch me again, you’ll have it.’
“I wouldn’t have shot him dead. But I’d have shot the ground, I’d have scared him pretty good. He’d have peed his pants.”
Having relaunched the 9 To 5 musical, up next is a movie sequel reuniting her with original 1980 co-stars Jane Fonda, 81, and Lily Tomlin, 79, but Dolly jokes: “It’d have to be called 95 instead of 9 To 5 with the three of us.”
With her infectious cackle, Dolly always comes across as a star without a care in the world, but in the in-depth and personal interview she admits she has battled with her own mental health issues during tough times in her life.
She says: “People always say to me, ‘Oh, you always seem to be smiling, you always seem so happy.’ I say, ‘That’s the Botox.’
“But seriously, honestly, I’m a very sensitive person. I’m a writer and I cannot harden my heart. I’ve often said I’ve strengthened the muscles around it.
“But I have to leave myself wide open to feel things in order to write and all that. But when I hurt, I hurt all over, when I laugh, I laugh all over — I feel everything to the nth degree.”
In the Eighties, she says she even considered suicide as she “had gained a lot of weight” because of “female problems”.
She adds: “I went through a very dark valley but I think we need to, in order to come out of it and to test our faith. So I came out of that a better, stronger person.
“While I was going through all of that it made me understand and realise how other people go through things, how people get on drugs, alcohol, how people commit suicide.
“You walk in their shoes, you feel those things. It gives you a better understanding. It helps you to love people more, it helps me to write better songs, to get more insight into people.”
Given her remarkable staying power, the chart-topping Jolene legend has seen fellow greats like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson succumb to the pressures of fame.
But most heartbreaking of all was Whitney Houston, who she will be forever linked to because she wrote her iconic track I Will Always Love You, the song played at the star’s funeral.
With tears welling up, Dolly recalls: “When they lifted that casket and they started into my song in her voice, it just . . . you have no idea how that hit me. It was just like a dagger in my heart.”
Dolly avoided temptations like drugs because she “never wanted to get on anything that was going to mess with my brains” — but it’s her faith that she credits more than anything with keeping her sane.
She says: “Even if I knew for a fact there was no God, I would choose to believe. I think we need to believe in something bigger than us or we have major ego problems or major depression.
“Every day I talk to God like He’s my best friend, I talk things out. We all have to pay our prices for our blessings but as the scripture says: To whom much is given, much is expected.
“It’s been a wonderful life. It’s had its ups and downs and I’ve paid my price, but you’ve got to be willing to sacrifice in any business that you’re in. I’ve been at this, like you say, for six decades now. I wake up with new dreams every day.”
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