Dolly Parton Laughs All the Way to the Bank

Dolly Parton photo courtesy of Dolly Records.

April 3, 2009 — Dolly Parton has long held that her cartoonish appearance — the blonde wigs, long fingernails, tight dresses and that curvacious figure — drew its inspiration from the professional girls who worked in the Smoky Mountain range where she grew up in East Tennessee.

She played up the appearance in one of her first singles, "Dumb Blonde," but her motivations were anything but stupid as she tarted up the bright red lipstick and giggled to the men who ran the music industry when she started in the ‘60s.

"I certainly got hit on a lot, and a lot of men thought I was as silly as I looked," she told Morley Safer in a "60 Minutes" profile that runs on CBS Sunday at 7 p.m. ET, leading up to the "44th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards". "I look like a woman but think like a man, and in this world of business, that has helped me a lot because by the time they think that I don't know what's going on, I done got the money and gone."

This week, she’s gone to New York, where the financial stakes are high. Tuesday marks the beginning of previews for 9 To 5: The Musical, her first stab at Broadway. It’s built around the 1980 movie 9 To 5, but Dolly added plenty of new music, including several songs that appear on her current album, Backwoods Barbie. She won an award for last fall’s run of 9 To 5 in Los Angeles, where she saved an opening-night glitch by getting up from the audience and diverting attention to an impromptu one-woman show — including a rendition of "I Will Always Love You" — while technicians went to work onstage. It was good entertainment, but it was also good for press coverage and good for business.

"I love the business end of the business," she said. "I am almost like three people. There's me, the person; me, the star; and then there's me, the manager."

All of them in big hair and makeup.