Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner Were Slammed as ‘Disgusting’ for Advertising 1 Product
According to Dolly Parton, she was never more than friends with Porter Wagoner. She was married when she joined Wagoner’s show, and denied ever having romantic feelings for her longtime musical partner. Still, some people believed Parton and Wagoner’s relationship was more than just professional. Many viewers of The Porter Wagoner Show responded with outrage to some of Parton and Wagoner’s behavior.
Some fans did not like the way Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner behaved on his show
Parton and Wagoner’s witty rapport and series of romantic duets fueled rumors that they were having an affair. While some people believed the pair were a married couple, others thought they were crossing a line with their behavior. When the pair advertised a laundry detergent on the show, people responded with outrage.
“Why does television carry that Breeze commercial with Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner?” wrote one viewer in a letter, per the book Ain’t Nobody’s Fool by Martha Ackmann. “They are not married to each other, but at the end of the commercials she says, ‘the towels we use.’ They act too intimately towards each other. It is disgusting and so are they.”
Parton was well aware of people’s complaints about her.
“[People thought] I was Porter’s whore or something,” she said. “They didn’t take me seriously.”
Some people believed that Porter Wagoner was in love with Dolly Parton
Parton denied ever having romantic feelings for Wagoner. Many people believed he felt something for her, though.
“The main reason Dolly had such a hard time disentangling herself from Porter is because he was in love with her,” a journalist told Alanna Nash in the book Dolly: The Biography. “Porter was really torn up over losing Dolly. Really torn up. Because he really did love her, and I don’t think he’d ever been in love with anyone but himself. And about Carl Dean, well, you know Porter was the main man in Dolly’s life all the years she was with him.”
Even Parton admitted that Wagoner’s feelings for her could have been more than platonic.
“Maybe he was in love with me,” she said. “But it was a love of its kind. It was not a love that could ever be shared, if he was.”
He warned her husband about potential rumors before she joined the show
Wagoner said he knew from the moment he met Parton that she would be the perfect addition to his show. Before he offered her the position, though, he wanted to speak to her husband, Carl Dean. In their conversation, Wagoner warned Dean that viewers might speculate that he and Parton were romantically involved.
“We all agreed we didn’t want that to happen,” he said, per the book Smart Blonde by Stephen Miller.
Of course, their intentions didn’t do much to temper the rumors. Still, Parton said Dean never felt threatened by the rumors that she was cheating on them. They cropped up more than once over the years.
