Dolly Parton Admitted Casting Sylvester Stallone in Their Failed Movie Was a Bad Idea
In 1984, Dolly Parton and Sylvester Stallone starred in the movie Rhinestone together. While both Parton and Stallone enjoyed working on the film, critics and audiences hated it. Stallone was involved with the script, and Parton said the film’s failure devastated him. She wondered if he blamed her for the way this could impact his career. Ultimately, though, she thinks she took a bigger risk than he did.
Dolly Parton didn’t think Sylvester Stallone was a good fit for ‘Rhinestone’
Parton joined the cast of Rhinestone during a difficult period of her life. She said working with Stallone every day helped pull herself out of it. Because of this, she could never feel anything but warmth toward the movie. Still, she acknowledged that Stallone didn’t feel the same. Rhinestone was a critical and commercial failure.
“Which devastated Stallone,” Parton said, per the book Dolly on Dolly.
Parton acknowledged that Stallone might blame her for any damage done to his career. She didn’t think this was fair, though. She thought she took the bigger risk by signing on to a musical with a co-star who couldn’t sing.
“Sly probably thinks I nearly wrecked his career with that movie, but to me, I was the one taking the chance,” she said. “I’ve done two musicals with men who can’t sing — Sly and Burt Reynolds — and here I am a singer. Both were bad casting, of course, but I have only myself to blame.”
Still, Parton was grateful for Stallone’s presence on set, even if he couldn’t sing country music.
Parton blamed herself for some of his shortcomings in the film
Parton said that while Stallone didn’t sound good in Rhinestone, she didn’t think he had a bad voice. The genre just wasn’t right for him.
“Well, it’s true that Sylvester Stallone cannot sing country music,” Parton wrote in the book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “But I’ll tell you what he can sing: old ’50s rock ‘n’ roll songs. That’s what he sang on the set, and it sounded good.”
Parton wrote some of his songs and felt bad that he received criticism for them.
“I had to write songs for him to sing, and a lot of people didn’t like that, because he really didn’t execute them very well,” she wrote. “But I think that had to do with the fact that they were so out of his realm. It wasn’t fair to him. I’ll take responsibility for that.”
Sylvester Stallone signed on to the movie because of Dolly Parton
The only reason Stallone took the part in Rhinestone was because of Parton’s casting. Per the book Smart Blonde by Stephen Miller, Stallone previously turned down a role in Rhinestone after receiving the script.
Parton and Stallone shared an agent at the time, and he asked Stallone to reconsider. Stallone said that if Parton was in the movie, he would take the part.
