There are stars, there are icons, and then there are those extraordinarily rare people who somehow become part of the American vocabulary. Dolly Parton was one of them.

Dolly Parton, the singer, songwriter, actress, entrepreneur, philanthropist and gloriously self-created woman who traveled from a one-room home in the Smoky Mountains to become one of the most recognizable people in the world, died peacefully Tuesday in Nashville. She was 80.

Dolly Parton-Rockstar

It seems almost impossible to write about Dolly in the past tense because she spent seven decades making herself so vividly present. The hair. The rhinestones. The impossible fingernails. The laugh. The jokes she made about herself before anyone else could make them. But underneath the deliberately exaggerated package was something far more formidable: one of the great American songwriters and one of the shrewdest women ever to navigate show business.

Born Dolly Rebecca Parton on January 19, 1946, in Sevier County, Tennessee, she was one of 12 children raised in poverty in the Smoky Mountains. She began writing songs as a child and headed to Nashville immediately after graduating from high school. By 1967 she had joined The Porter Wagoner Show, beginning the partnership that brought her national attention but eventually became too small to contain her ambition.

When she left Wagoner in 1974, she didn’t simply say goodbye. She wrote “I Will Always Love You.” Years later, when Elvis Presley wanted to record the song but his manager demanded a share of its publishing rights, Parton refused. It was an extraordinary business decision. Whitney Houston’s 1992 recording would eventually turn the song into a worldwide phenomenon. Dolly kept her publishing. That combination—heart and steel—was Dolly.

She could write “Jolene,” one of the most instantly recognizable songs in popular music, and “Coat of Many Colors,” turning childhood poverty into something tender rather than sentimental. She crossed from country into pop with “Here You Come Again,” then walked into Hollywood opposite Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in 9 to 5 and proved almost immediately that she was a natural screen presence. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Steel Magnolias followed.

Then there was Dollywood. What might have looked like celebrity branding became something much larger: an economic engine in the region that created her. Her business interests eventually stretched across entertainment, hospitality and consumer products, but Dolly never seemed embarrassed by money or hypnotized by it. She understood what money could do.

That became clearest through the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, founded in 1995 to provide books to young children. Her philanthropy extended far beyond literacy, including support following the devastating Tennessee wildfires and a $1 million contribution to COVID-19 research at Vanderbilt University that helped fund work connected to the Moderna vaccine. Her family has asked that, in lieu of flowers following her death, donations be made to the Imagination Library.

Her honors became almost absurd in their abundance: Grammys, CMA Awards, a Kennedy Center Honor, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame and, after initially protesting that she did not consider herself sufficiently rock-and-roll, induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She responded to that last honor in quintessential Dolly fashion: she made a rock album.

Her private life remained remarkably private. She married Carl Dean in 1966, and while Dolly became one of the most photographed women on Earth, Dean largely declined the circus. Their marriage lasted 59 years, until his death in 2025.

Dolly’s final act may now belong to Broadway. This winter, DOLLY: A True Original Musical, the autobiographical musical she helped create, is scheduled to arrive at the St. James Theatre. Previews begin December 7, with an opening night set for January 19, 2027—Dolly Parton’s 81st birthday.

The musical features Parton’s existing songs alongside new music she wrote specifically for the stage, with a book by Parton and Maria S. Schlatter. Tony winner Bartlett Sher directs, with choreography by Mandy Moore. The score draws upon the songs through which Dolly had already been writing her autobiography for decades, including “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You.”

The date now carries a poignancy nobody intended when it was announced. What was supposed to be an 81st birthday celebration will instead become something else: Broadway opening its doors to Dolly Parton without Dolly Parton there to walk through them.

Yet there is something strangely appropriate about her having written herself into the next chapter before leaving us.

Dolly understood image better than almost anyone. She famously constructed herself from exaggeration and then spent a lifetime allowing people to underestimate the intelligence underneath it. She could be outrageous without becoming vulgar, sentimental without becoming foolish, enormously wealthy without pretending she had forgotten poverty, and deeply rooted in where she came from without allowing it to determine how far she could go.

Most importantly, she understood storytelling. She took a frightened woman begging another woman not to steal her man and made “Jolene.” She took a coat sewn from scraps and made childhood poverty beautiful. She took leaving a professional relationship and wrote one of the most enduring farewell songs ever composed. Now that song inevitably belongs to her.

Dolly Parton spent her life telling us exactly who she was, often while making us laugh so hard that we failed to notice how much truth she had slipped into the joke.

The rhinestones were real. So was the woman underneath them. Come January 19th, the lights at the St. James Theatre will rise on Dolly Parton’s story. She simply won’t be sitting there to watch it.

Labor Day weekend always arrives with a strange mixture of celebration and denial. Technically, summer isn’t over. Emotionally, however, New Yorkers know exactly what the weekend means. The white shoes are living on borrowed time, evenings are beginning to arrive earlier, and somewhere in the distance September is already sharpening its pencils. Before we surrender to fall, New York is giving us one final long weekend—and there are some wonderful ways to spend it.

For music lovers, begin at Lincoln Center, where The Metropolitan Opera’s 17th annual Summer HD Festival returns to Josie Robertson Plaza from September 2 through September 7. Approximately 2,500 seats are available each evening on a first-come, first-served basis, no tickets or reservations are required, and the screenings include open captions. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts becomes particularly magical on late-summer evenings, and watching grand opera projected outdoors as the city darkens around you is one of those experiences that reminds you why living in New York can still be extraordinary.

The festival opens Wednesday, September 2 at 8 p.m. with Act I of Wagner’s monumental Tristan und Isolde, followed Thursday at 8 p.m. by Acts II and III. Friday brings Bellini’s I Puritani at 7:30 p.m., followed Saturday at 8 p.m. by Tchaikovsky’s exquisitely romantic Eugene Onegin. Sunday offers something decidedly different with Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, a magical-realist reunion of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera set around the Day of the Dead.  What could possibly be more appropriate for the unofficial farewell to summer than ending with heartbreak?

On Labor Day itself, September 7 at 8 p.m., the festival concludes with Puccini’s La Bohème. Parisian garrets, starving artists, impossible love and one of opera’s most devastating endings—under the Manhattan stars and completely free.

For something considerably brassier, head to Bryant Park on Friday, September 4 from 7 to 9:30 p.m., when Bryant Park Picnic Performances presents its first festival devoted to all things brass. Two-time Grammy nominee New Breed Brass Band headlines the free evening alongside Aberdeen and New York’s all-female Brass Queens. Bring your own blanket or snag one of Bryant Park’s on a first-come, first-served basis, find yourself a piece of lawn and let Manhattan become New Orleans for a couple of hours.

Then, on Labor Day evening, Bryant Park changes personalities again. The lawn becomes an enormous outdoor movie theatre for a free screening of the wonderfully ridiculous 1999 sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest. The lawn opens for picnicking at 5 p.m., with Hester Street Fair food vendors beginning at 4 p.m. Arrive early, claim your territory and settle in beneath the skyscrapers.

There is something particularly delicious about watching a movie outdoors in Midtown. Cars are honking a block away, office towers surround you, somebody’s picnic invariably becomes considerably more elaborate than yours—and then darkness falls and several thousand strangers collectively disappear into a movie.

Maybe you want to spend Labor Day weekend somewhere that doesn’t feel remotely like Midtown. Then get on the ferry. From September 5 through September 7, the Richmond County Fair takes over Historic Richmond Town, transforming 25 acres into one of New York City’s most wonderfully old-fashioned end-of-summer traditions.

This isn’t merely a carnival dropped onto an empty parking lot. Historic Richmond Town is an extraordinary open-air museum containing 38 historic structures, with the site’s history reaching deep into Staten Island’s past. The modern Richmond County Fair dates to 1980, while the tradition behind it reaches back to the 19th century.

For three days, costumed historical interpreters bring that world back to life through demonstrations of blacksmithing, tinsmithing, carpentry, hearth cooking and basket making, alongside hands-on crafts and living-history presentations. Then history collides rather wonderfully with the county fair.

There are carnival rides, games, pony rides, face painting, aerialists, a butterfly vivarium and more than 100 local vendors selling crafts, antiques and the sort of food for which nutritional information should probably remain confidential until Tuesday. Naturally, there are eating contests. Hot dogs, Chicken wings, Pie, because apparently merely eating fair food wasn’t sufficiently competitive.

There is also a three-day music festival featuring Staten Island bands, DJs and tribute acts, while the Staten Island Culture Crawl near the entrance introduces visitors to local arts, cultural and community organizations.

The fair runs noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, September 5 through Monday, September 7, with general admission currently listed at $15, $12 for seniors 65 and older, $7 for children ages 3–11, and free admission for children under three. Proceeds support Historic Richmond Town’s preservation and educational work. That makes the Richmond County Fair particularly appealing. You aren’t merely buying admission to another festival. You’re helping preserve a physical piece of New York history.

This Labor Day weekend is the moment to resist doing what we New Yorkers so often do: staying home because everywhere will be crowded, complaining that summer disappeared too quickly and promising ourselves we’ll do all these things next year.

Go hear Wagner under the stars. Dance to a brass band in Bryant Park. Pack a picnic and watch Galaxy Quest surrounded by skyscrapers. Take the ferry to Staten Island, watch somebody forge something the way it might have been done more than a century ago, ride something mildly inadvisable and eat something even more inadvisable.

Summer is leaving whether we approve or not. We might as well give it a proper New York goodbye.

For four decades, Ken Fallin has been looking at famous faces and seeing what the rest of us miss.

Joan Crawford

A few strokes of ink become a raised eyebrow. A slightly exaggerated jaw becomes an entire personality. A familiar silhouette suddenly tells you everything you need to know about the person inhabiting it. That is the peculiar magic of caricature when it is done brilliantly: exaggeration somehow produces something closer to truth.

Alfred Hitchcock’s website

This fall, Fallin celebrates that remarkable career on two fronts. On Wednesday, October 7, from 5 to 7 p.m., New World Stages will host the opening reception for an exhibition of his work, offering audiences an opportunity to see the drawings beyond the pages and screens where so many first encountered them.

Gregory Peck

At the same time, Fallin is assembling a self-published book featuring selected drawings from his 40 years as an illustrator and caricaturist—and for those who think they know his work primarily through Broadway, the collection may contain a few surprises.

Ethel Merman in London

Because Ken Fallin’s world has always been considerably larger than the theatre district.

Karl Lagerfeld

The proposed book reaches through an astonishing range of subjects and assignments: actors and filmmakers, politicians and journalists, fashion royalty including Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, architect Jean Nouvel, and hundreds of figures drawn during Fallin’s long association with The Wall Street Journal. Taken together, the images become something more interesting than a conventional career retrospective. They are a visual record of the people who shaped several decades of American culture.

Fallin’s first major break came in 1983 when he began creating the posters and advertising artwork for Gerard Alessandrini’s deliciously wicked Forbidden Broadway. It proved an ideal marriage of artist and subject. Fallin’s ability to lovingly skewer a famous face mirrored exactly what Forbidden Broadway was doing musically to Broadway itself.

Andy Warhol

Those drawings eventually traveled far beyond Manhattan, with Fallin’s Forbidden Broadway artwork appearing as productions reached London, Tokyo and Sydney. His visual language became inseparable from the show: you could recognize Forbidden Broadway before reading its title.

Bassets

By 1987, The Boston Herald had commissioned Fallin to create a weekly celebrity caricature for its Sunday arts and entertainment section. But another chapter of his career would eventually introduce his work to an enormous national readership.

Jean Nouvel

For The Wall Street Journal, Fallin has illustrated roughly 500 notable figures, ranging from presidents to movie stars, cultural figures and newsmakers. His subjects have included Barack Obama and Paul Newman, as well as journalist Tim Russert, whom Fallin drew for Peggy Noonan’s memorial following Russert’s death.

Bernard-Henri Levy

That work reveals something particularly interesting about Fallin’s gift. Caricature can easily become cruelty. Fallin rarely needs cruelty. His drawings can certainly be wicked—and anyone who has followed his theatrical work knows that his pen possesses teeth—but underneath the exaggeration is observation.

Warren Buffett

He isn’t merely drawing what someone looks like. He is drawing what makes us recognize them.

Cole Porter

Sometimes it is posture. Sometimes hair. Sometimes the architecture of a face. Sometimes it is simply attitude. Fallin understands that likeness has surprisingly little to do with photographic accuracy. Capture the right three things about somebody and suddenly there they are.

DOVER Quartet

That ability made him equally valuable outside editorial illustration. His commercial clients have included American Express, HBO, Showtime, CNBC and Walt Disney Productions, while assignments have taken his distinctive line into national advertising campaigns and commissioned work far removed from Broadway.

Patti LuPone

LuPone Carnegie Hall

Then there are the subjects themselves.

Gloria Vanderbilt

Sunset Blvd. Gloria Swamson

Fashion designers. Architects. Movie stars. Presidents. Broadway legends. Journalists. Cultural eccentrics. Fallin has spent forty years quietly assembling an extraordinary paper cocktail party populated by people who, in many cases, would never otherwise have occupied the same room.

John Williams

The forthcoming book promises finally to invite us into that room.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg

What makes the project especially appealing is the possibility of seeing work that even longtime admirers may never have encountered. Editorial illustration is ephemeral by nature. A drawing appears beside an article, advertisement or review and then disappears into an archive. Decades later, an artist can discover that he has created an enormous visual history almost accidentally. Fallin has.

Lani Bell

While the mediums surrounding illustration have transformed dramatically during those forty years—from newspapers and print advertising to digital publishing and social media—the fundamental appeal of his work hasn’t changed. A Ken Fallin drawing remains unmistakably a Ken Fallin drawing.

Robert Glasper

That may be the greatest achievement of all. In an age increasingly dominated by photographic perfection, filters, digital manipulation and now artificial intelligence capable of manufacturing faces that never existed, there is something wonderfully human about the visible intelligence of a hand-drawn line. You can see the decision. You can see the joke. You can almost see the instant when Fallin looked at his subject and thought, Ah. That’s it.

Steve Jobs

The October exhibition at New World Stages brings that line back where so much of Fallin’s story began: the theatre.

Yves Saint Laurent

The book promises something larger.

Vivek Ramaswamy

It reminds us that Ken Fallin hasn’t simply been drawing Broadway for forty years. He has been drawing his time. And what a cast he has had.

Ken Fallin