Did your father work in a coal mine?

Actually, [he was] dynamiting the tunnels through some of the Smokies. They made it a coal mine to make it more dramatic, but it happened that daddy almost died, and we felt that it was a miracle that he survived.

And what about the Painted Lady?

This lady was the town tramp, and I thought she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen when we were little kids. Everybody would say, “Oh, she’s nothing but trash.” And I thought, “Well, that’s what I’m going to grow up to be.” She’s the lady that I actually patterned myself after because she left an impression. It was only years later that I found out that she was the local prostitute, so to speak. We thought it would be some way that I could be in the movie myself as a grown-up. Who better looking like a town tramp than me? That wasn’t a stretch.

You’ve said that in high school you were voted “least likely to succeed.” Last spring the University of Tennessee offered a history honors course titled “Dolly’s America.” How did that feel?