The TV Column

Coat of Many Colors re-creates Dolly Parton's Tennessee childhood

NBC presents Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors at 8 p.m. today starring (from left) Alyvia Alyn Lind, Jennifer Nettles and Rick Schroder.
NBC presents Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors at 8 p.m. today starring (from left) Alyvia Alyn Lind, Jennifer Nettles and Rick Schroder.

If you only watch one heart-warming, warm-and-fuzzy, inspirational, feel-good holiday movie this season, make it this one.

Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors airs at 8 p.m. today on NBC and continues the tradition established by such country-themed bio-pics as Walk the Line (Johnny Cash) and Coal Miner's Daughter (Loretta Lynn).

Whereas those films took a broader perspective on the lives of their country legends, this offering concentrates on a seminal period in young Dolly's life -- her hardscrabble but loving childhood in rural Tennessee that inspired the famous hit song from which the movie takes it name.

Many viewers will be familiar with Parton's 1971 song and its poignant lyrics that end:

Now I know we had no money

But I was rich as I could be

In my coat of many colors

My momma made for me.

The film, set in 1955, stars Sugarland's lead singer Jennifer Nettles (barely recognizable as a brunette) as Dolly's mother, Avie Lee Parton, and Ricky Schroder (NYPD Blue) as patriarch Robert Lee Parton.

Adorable 8-year-old Alyvia Alyn Lind (The Young and the Restless) plays Dolly when she was 9.

Gerald McRaney is perfectly cast as Dolly's maternal grandfather, the Rev. Jake Owens.

Parton was born in 1946 in Sevier County, Tenn., in the Great Smoky Mountains, and grew up in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, just a few miles east of where her theme park, Dollywood, is now located at Pigeon Forge.

As with so many Appalachian families, they were, as Parton describes it, "dirt poor," but they had love and one another. The film tells the tale of the tight-knit family "as they struggle to overcome a devastating tragedy and discover the healing power of love, faith, and a raggedy patchwork coat that helped make Parton who she is today."

Parton told People that she finally watched the movie with her sister, Stella, the day before the official NBC screening last week.

"It's too emotional to watch with a bunch of people because we lose our eyelashes [since] we wear a lot of makeup," she said. "We cried our eyes out.

"It brought us back together as family and made us miss Mama and Daddy a lot. They're gone now, but we get a chance to see our brothers and sisters again when we were little, and think of Mama and Daddy and all that they meant to us."

Robert Parton died in 2000; his wife in 2003.

Dolly, who handpicked the cast, was especially pleased with the performance of the young actress who played her.

"People get the chance to see me as a little girl," Parton said. "Little Aly Lind did so great. I never was that pretty or that cute or that special, but she did a great job."

About why she wanted to do the movie now, Parton, who's 69, told Reuters, "It's very emotional, very personal to us and I think it's time that we put it out because I think on TV we are missing a few things about family and faith, so it just seemed to be the right time.

"I ain't getting no younger and I wanted to live to see this movie on screen, so I was very proud the way that it turned out."

Christmas cheer. Although there is music in it, Dolly's movie isn't exactly a musical. But viewers can start off the evening at 7 p.m. with plenty of music with Michael Buble's Christmas in Hollywood on NBC.

This will be the fifth consecutive year for an NBC Buble holiday special and this year he'll be joined by Celine Dion, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and Tori Kelly.

Putting in cameo appearances will be Jay Leno, Eva Longoria, William Shatner, Blake Shelton and models Gigi Hadid and Kylie Jenner. They will join Buble in comedy segments at classic Hollywood locations.

Featured songs include holiday favorites "This Christmas," "Here Comes Santa Claus," "Jingle Bells," "White Christmas," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," along with others requested by his followers on social media.

All that sounds well and good, but it makes me nostalgic for the good ol' days when Andy Williams would don a sweater for his annual special, sit on a stool in front of a crackling fire and croon Christmas tunes with his brothers; his folks; his adoring wife, Claudine Longet; their three small children; and the Osmond Brothers.

It was utopian televised Americana at its best but, of course, it didn't last. Neither did Andy and Claudine, who divorced in 1975.

Mary Poppins. The 1964 classic airs on network TV for the first time in 13 years at 7 p.m. Saturday on ABC.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Weekend on 12/10/2015

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