AMC Theaters Pays Tribute to Dolly Parton By Bringing Two of Her Classic Movies Back to the Big Screen

The parade of tributes to late country icon Dolly Parton will march on this weekend into movie theaters when AMC Theaters revives two of the Queen of Country’s most beloved big-screen appearances. AMC CEO Adam Aron announced that the chain will be screening the raunchy 1982 musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as well as 1989 classic dramedy Steel Magnolias.

The nod to the life and legacy of Parton — who died on Tuesday (Aug. 25) at age 80 following a brief battle with cancer — will include showing the two classic films at discounted prices, with the movies slated to run from Friday through Wednesday (Sept. 2); click here to see where Whorehouse is screening near you and here for Steel Magnolias.

While Parton was a well-established, cross-genre music star by the 1980s, her appearance in Whorehouse — which was based on the 1978 stage musical — found her co-starring with then box office giant Burt Reynolds in a cast that also included The Andy Griffith Show star Jim Nabors, Golden Globe-winning Dog Day Afternoon actor Charles Durning and frequent Reynolds sidekick and comedy great Dom DeLuise.

The movie tells the story of Parton’s beloved Chicken Ranch madame Mona Stangely and the shake-up in her secret relationship with local sheriff Ed Earl Dodd (Reynolds) when TV reporter Melvin P. Thorpe (DeLuise) comes to town intending to do an exposé on the brothel. The film was a box office it and it was nominated for two Golden Globes, with Parton earning a nod for Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Durning getting an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his role as Texas governor.

While the film featured some of the songs from Broadway score, along with two originals from Parton, the Parton-Reynolds duet “Sneakin’ Around” and a revamped version of her most iconic song, “I Will Always Love You,” that was released as a single in 1982 and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in October of that year, eight years after the original version had topped that same chart.

Steel Magnolias was also adapted from a play of the same name about the lives of a group of six women in a small Louisiana town, with Parton playing the role of a Truvy Jones, a hairdresser who works out of her home salon. The stacked cast included star Sally Field as Southern mother hen Mary Lynn “M’Lynn” Eatenton, as well as Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, Julia Roberts, Tom Skerritt, Sam Shepard and Dylan McDermott.

The movie as another box office success for Parton and it garnered a number of awards and nominations, including a Best Supporting Actress win for Roberts at the Golden Globes — she was nominated in the same category for that year’s Oscars — as well as a Best Supporting Actress Globe nomination for Field.

The pair were among the dozen films Parton appeared in over her career, a list that includes her 1980 break-out role in 9 to 5, as well as appearances in 1984’s Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone and the 1992 talk radio comedy Straight Talk.