A Pigeon Forge movie theater is spending the week honoring hometown icon Dolly Parton the way she might have liked best: with cheap tickets and a charity payout. The Forge Cinemas, located in the Lumberjack Square complex on the Parkway, is screening three of Parton's signature films through Thursday for five dollars a ticket, with every cent of proceeds going to her Imagination Library literacy program.
The tribute week runs Friday, September 4th through Thursday, September 10th, according to the City of Pigeon Forge Department of Tourism, which announced the lineup on Facebook. The five-dollar price applies to all tickets, all days, for all three films. Phoenix Theatres Entertainment, which operates the five-screen cinema at 2530 Parkway, is backing the tribute in the wake of Parton's death on August 25th at age 80.
Parton died at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville following a brief battle with cancer, according to The Guardian, a loss that has sent ripples of public memorials across Tennessee in the weeks since. Pigeon Forge, the East Tennessee tourist town Parton has long been associated with through Dollywood, is one of many communities marking her passing with public tributes.
Three Films Spanning Three Decades of Her Career
The lineup pulls from very different chapters of Parton's acting career. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, released in July 1982 and co-starring Burt Reynolds, earned Parton a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical, according to background compiled by Wikipedia. The musical was adapted from the 1978 Broadway show of the same name.
Steel Magnolias, the 1989 comedy-drama in which Parton starred as salon owner Truvy Jones alongside Sally Field and Julia Roberts, earned over $83 million at the domestic box office and remains one of her most celebrated screen performances, per a ranking published by Rotten Tomatoes. Rounding out the week is Joyful Noise, the January 2012 musical comedy in which Parton and Queen Latifah play leaders of a small-town Georgia church choir — one of Parton's final major theatrical roles, and a film for which she also wrote several original gospel and country-pop songs.
Every Ticket Funds Free Books for Kids
All proceeds from the week benefit Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, the free book-gifting program Parton founded in Sevier County in 1995 to honor her father, who was unable to read or write. Through the Dollywood Foundation, the program mails free books to enrolled children from birth to age five.
The charity has grown well beyond Sevier County since then. Imagination Library reached a global milestone of more than 300 million books gifted by late 2025, distributing over 40 million books that year alone across five countries — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland.
Fundraisers Matter More as State Support Shrinks
The timing of the tribute week lands amid both a surge of public interest in the charity and new strain on its budget. In the week following Parton's death, regional Imagination Library chapters saw significant enrollment spikes, with some local affiliate websites slowing under the traffic as hundreds of additional children were registered, Hoodline previously reported on the sign-up surge.
At the same time, state funding for the program was reduced or cut in several state budgets during 2025 and 2026, including a $4 million reduction in Missouri, forcing local affiliates to lean more heavily on private donations and community fundraisers. That funding squeeze is part of why ticket-driven events like the Forge Cinemas tribute carry added weight for the program's day-to-day operations.
The Pigeon Forge screenings join a broader wave of tributes since Parton's death, including outdoor movie nights, archival releases and municipal proclamations across the country — Manhattan officials, for instance, declared September 25th “Dolly Parton Appreciation Day.” In Tennessee alone, communities have marked her passing with everything from bridge lightings to farm mazes, all pointing back to the same message the Forge Cinemas is putting on screen this week: her music and movies, and the charity she built around them, are staying close to home.
