Madam Parton

Dolly Parton died back in September, and since the death was unexpected, I didn't really think about the movie of hers that I'd had sitting on my DVR since TCM ran it back in March or so. That movie is The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and recently I got around to watching it.

Jim Nabors plays Fred Wilkins, deputy sheriff of Lanville County, TX, under sheriff Ed Earl Dodd (Burt Reynolds). Linville County is famous for one thing: the Chicken Ranch, a brothel which had been open for decades. In an opening sequence, Fred informs us of the founding of the brothel at the beginning of the century, how it survived both the Depression as well as transfer in ownership from one madam to the next, and remained open until recent times, with the most recent proprietress being Mona Stangley (Dolly Parton).

Mona has some strict rules for her girls, but they're rules with a purpose, part of which is that the brothel not be hated by the people in town. In fact, thanks to those rules and Mona's charity work, the people in the county mostly like the brothel because it's fairly peaceful apart from the fact that it's selling sex. In short, they tolerate it, with even the sheriff not doing anything about it in part because he's in a fairly committed relationship with Mona, even if he doesn't plan to marry her.

But then big-city reporter Melvin Thorpe (Dom Deluise) comes onto the scene. He's a muckraker who plans to advance his career by, well, raking muck, so when he learns about the open secret of the Chicken Ranch, he decides he's going to whip up people in the rest of Texas against the Ranch. Somehow he does do this, with political pressure being put on Sheriff Dodd to close the place down. Dodd impresses upon Mona the fact that she should probably lay low for a while, at least until the political furor dies down, at which point she can quietly reopen the Ranch.

Except that the Ranch is also at the center of a tradition. Every year over Thanksgiving, the University of Texas and Texas A&M play the big in-state football game, and the alumni backers of both schools had a scheme whereby the team that won the game would be driven to the Chicken Ranch to have a night with the girls there. Unfortunately, the Ranch is supposed to be closed still over that Thanksgiving weekend, but the alumni don't care, and drive the winning team to the Ranch for a night of debauchery that really makes the news and pisses Thorpe off even more.

The plot of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a really good plot for a light comedy, the sort of thing that Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds excel at. Unfortunately, the movie is based on a Broadway musical, and naturally, the idea in producing the movie was to keep it a musical. The musical numbers mostly don't work here. The Melvin Thorpe numbers don't fit local TV news, with it making Thorpe come across as ridiculously obnoxious. And then the locker room number after the big football game absolutely brings the movie to a screeching halt. It's a bit of a shame becaus Parton and Reynolds are both likable here. Charles Durning, who plays the governor, earned an Oscar nomination and is qutie good too.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas really deserved a better fate than it got.