Smoky Mountain Christmas is the sort of fare that always seems to pop up exclusively during the Yuletide season: an original made-for-TV musical fantasy.
Dolly Parton plays a country-music star (imaginative casting, this) who finds herself stranded in the Tennessee backwoods with taciturn mountaineer
Lee Majors. Parton also touches base with seven orphaned young'uns...and a witch (
Anita Morris).
John Ritter makes an uncredited cameo appearance as the judge who presides over the inevitable climactic adoption proceedings. First broadcast December 14, 1986 (directly opposite the ratings-grabbing
The Promise), A Smoky Mountain Christmas was directed "con brio" by
Henry Winkler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide