Dolly

Tyne Daly's guest appearance on Dolly, during which she performed a duet with Parton, directly led to her being cast in the lead role of the 1989 Broadway revival of Gypsy.

ABC reportedly paid Dolly Parton $44 million for a two-year contract to headline the show, betting heavily on her star power to revive the traditional variety show format.

Veteran variety show writers Buddy Sheffield, John Aylesworth and Jack Burns, along with producer Nick Vanoff, were brought in to boost the show's chances of success, and Parton hired then-relatively-unknown Brett Butler as one of the writers.

This was not Parton's first variety show attempt; a similarly titled syndicated series called Dolly aired in 1976, but she left after one season due to overwork and creative disputes. ABC promoted the 1987 series as 'Dolly... Dolly's way' by offering her more creative control.

While most episodes were filmed at ABC's Los Angeles studio, several special episodes were shot on location in Hawaii, New Orleans, Nashville, and Parton's hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee, for a Thanksgiving episode.

The series premiere drew 39.47 million viewers, the largest audience ever recorded for a television series premiere at the time, though ratings steadily declined afterward despite the show reaching the Nielsen top five initially.

Midway through the series, Parton used her creative control to cut many of the lavish, splashy segments in favor of a more 'down home' feel, but by then many initial viewers had already stopped watching, and the show was canceled just 16 days after its final episode aired.

The opening theme was originally Parton's 1978 hit 'Baby I'm Burnin'' before being replaced with 'Hoedown-Showdown', while she closed every episode with her signature song 'I Will Always Love You', just as she had done on her 1976 series.

The song 'Don't Stop Dreamin'', performed by Parton in Episode 6, is believed to be an unreleased track from her 1987 album Rainbow.

Time Life released a 19-disc box set, Dolly: The Ultimate Collection – Deluxe Edition, in September 2020, marking the first time any episodes of the series were released on DVD; 15 of the 16 included episodes were heavily edited due to copyright issues.