Six Quintessential Movies to Watch in Honor of Dolly Parton

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There are so few people on whom we can all agree, and that list has gotten smaller with the passing of Dolly Parton. While she'd suggested health struggles for some time, the death of Dolly always seemed impossible—or maybe just too cruel an outcome in a world with enough heartbreak already. But here we are, and even though there are going to be a lot of tears, there's a lot to celebrate. It's her music, of course, that will live on, but her persona wasn't entirely built on songs. A larger-than-life personality with an outsized look (very much by design), her film presence is indelible, in spite of a relatively brief filmography. Her roles in two of the best films of the 1980s are so important to our cultural memories of that decade—and are so darn good—that it's hard to remember that she made that impact in just a handful of films (and a few more cameos) over the course of her career. Dolly may well have thrived in character parts and cameos, but she won and broke our hearts in movies like 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias . It's easy to wish she'd acted more, but instead, we'll just be grateful for the absolute gems she left us. 9 to 5 (1980) The title song nearly overtakes the film in cultural currency, but the film itself opened the 1980s on a high note, ultimately promising a better decade than we actually got. The generational team-up of Dolly, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin—three women with wildly differen…