A Tasty Dish

At the State Department Dinner, Even the Stars Get Starry-Eyed

Dolly Parton's gown was accessorized by her Honors medal Saturday night. "I want to look like Frederick's of Dollywood," said the country singer. (By Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)

"Helloooo, Dolly!" sang the chorus of photographers, their moods as jubilant as Dolly Parton's brisk bounce down the red carpet at the State Department dinner on the eve of last night's Kennedy Center Honors gala.

Except -- the country music star wasn't slowing down. She was supposed to slow down. And stop.

"Not too far," one of the photographers cautioned.

"No!" the country star retorted, finally halting and leaning forward flirtatiously. "He said to the 'X' " -- she pointed to the black tape under her heels -- "and that's the 'X.' " The lower half of her face cracked into a wide Joker's grin, the upper half remaining frozen as a photo. Flashes popped. Sparks flared from the sequins of her black velvet dress.

When Parton heard she would be one of the 29th annual Kennedy Center Honors recipients, joining musical theater composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, conductor Zubin Mehta, Motown legend Smokey Robinson and filmmaker Steven Spielberg, she "immediately went to work on the clothes," she said, telling her designer, Robert Bahar, "I have to look good, and I have to look like me. I want to look like Frederick's of Dollywood."

She calls her very low-cut dress and its accompanying bolero "my version of a tuxedo, with boobs out."

This was upstairs, just past the State Department receiving line where Condoleezza Rice -- emerald gown, big smile -- was welcoming everyone, with the honorees basking in this clubby, intimate and exclusive venue where the arts world's biggest stars and Washington's brightest bulbs celebrate together on the night before the grand and much more public gala.

Behind Parton was Aretha Franklin, who had just plucked three egg rolls from a passing tray and was drinking a Coke. Her fur wrap was flung across her high-backed chair. "Oh, Ms. Franklin!" squeaked Steven Spielberg's wife, Kate Capshaw, as she walked past. "How are you?"

Even the stars get starry-eyed at this black-tie, silk-gowned, stiletto-heeled, double-take-whiplash-inducing affair: There's George Lucas and Itzhak Perlman and Ted Kennedy and Barbara Walters and Michele Lee (from "Knots Landing") and Shania Twain.

Shania Twain! Zubin Mehta's young granddaughter Shenaya was excited to meet her, telling the crossover country star that they share the same name. Which prompted Twain to ask the granddaughter of the former director of the New York Philharmonic if she was named after her, a songstress whose hit list includes "Man! I Feel Like a Woman." Shenaya Chinoy said she answered, after a brief pause: No.

The star-studdery was everywhere. Natasha Richardson confessed that although the formal dinner -- crab cakes with avocado salsa, rack of lamb, chestnut potato puree, corn bread plus three wines (all fabulous) and, for dessert, chocolate coffee baked Alaska (not fabulous) and demitasse -- is a quintessentially grown-up evening, "it's making me feel like a 15-year-old, and I want to go around with my autograph book."

Franklin had come to celebrate, she said, "my oldest, dearest friend" -- Smokey Robinson, who grew up a block away from her in Detroit, where they were "childhood friends, sandbox friends." Back then, said the Queen of Soul and 1994 Honors recipient, "we sang a lot. People in Detroit like to sing. There was a group on every corner: Everyone aspired to be a singer." She took another bite of egg roll and said, "The way they play basketball now is the way we came up singing."