A middle-aged woman in a vibrant green and yellow patterned sequined dress on a late-night talk show set with urban night backdrop. 5:57
Conan O'Brien channel icon Conan O'BrienOriginal creator 2.8M views Save

The night a NYC hotel threw out Dolly Parton

The first time Dolly Parton came to New York City, the hotel put her luggage out in the hall and locked the door. She tells Conan O'Brien why, and then she keeps going. more

She comes out to applause in a green and yellow dress she calls her tie-dye, worn for the hippie songs she has been singing. Conan tells her it has been gloomy here and she brought the sunshine. She picked the green for him, she says, since he's Irish. Then she stops to ask the crowd how they are doing.

Dolly Parton, with long blonde hair and a colorful outfit, smiles in a chair in front of a city skyline backdrop at night. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Dolly arrives in green and yellow, and Conan says she brought the sunshine with her.

Conan wants to know if a girl from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee is really at home in New York. "Well, I am now," she says. Her first trip was in the late sixties or early seventies, when she had just started making a name in country music. She came up with her friend Judy, whom she has known since they were little.

They had no money, so they got one room. "Of course I look cheaper then than I even do now," she says, and Judy didn't look any better. The hotel decided the two were hookers. When they came back from looking around the city, their bags were out in the hall and the door was locked.

Dolly Parton smiles with her hands clasped, wearing a colorful headband, in front of a city skyline backdrop at night. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Dolly remembers the hotel that put her bags and Judy's out in the hall.

With no way home booked yet, they asked to leave their things in the lobby and set off walking. They wound up on 42nd Street by accident, where a man was sure they were working. "We was just trying to get home," she says. Then, almost in passing, she mentions the gun in her purse.

Conan stops her right there. "Wait a minute. I love how you just throw that in there." Of course she had a gun, she tells him, since she was a country girl from the mountains. The man would not leave her alone, so she pulled it out and said, "If you touch me one more time, I'm gonna shoot you."

A middle-aged woman in a vibrant green and yellow patterned sequined dress on a late-night talk show set with urban night backdrop. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
The first time Dolly Parton came to New York City, the hotel put her luggage out in the hall and locked the door.

He backed off, though he also laughed. So did Judy, who thought it was the funniest thing she had ever seen, and that convinced the man it was all a joke. "When people in New York pull a gun," Conan says, "it doesn't usually end up in giggling." This isn't the story he expected from her.

A piece of that night even ended up in 9 to 5, she says, in the line "I'll turn you from a rooster to a hen with one shot." She thinks they based it on the story she told. And she loves New York now. She keeps coming back.

Conan says she is just as humble off camera, and she gives her family the credit. Years ago her hometown put a bronze statue of her in the courthouse yard, and she bragged about it a little too much. Her dad told her he was very proud. To her fans she might be some sort of an idol, he said, "but to the pigeons, you're just another outhouse."

Then Conan brings up the tabloids, which love to print that her chest is so big she can't get out of bed. When he allows that it does seem like it would be heavy, she has the answer ready. "Well, they're heavy. That's why I do so many Led Zeppelin songs."