Coal Miner's Daughter (film)

Coal Miner's Daughter
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Michael Apted
Produced by	Bernard Schwartz
Screenplay by	Tom Rickman
Based on	Coal Miner's Daughter by George Vecsey
Starring	Sissy Spacek Tommy Lee Jones Beverly D'Angelo Levon Helm
Music by	Owen Bradley
Cinematography	Ralf D. Bode
Edited by	Arthur Schmidt
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	March 7, 1980 (1980-03-07)
Running time	125 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$15 million[1]
Box office	$67.18 million[1]

Coal Miner's Daughter is a 1980 American biographical musical film directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay written by Tom Rickman. It follows the story of country music singer Loretta Lynn, from her birth in a poor family and getting married at 13 to her rise as one of the most successful country musicians. Based on Lynn's 1976 biography by George Vecsey, the film stars Sissy Spacek as Lynn. Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D'Angelo and Levon Helm are featured in supporting roles. Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, and Minnie Pearl all make cameo appearances as themselves.

A film on Lynn's life was intended to be made since the release of the biography. Production for the film began on March 1979 and Lynn herself chose Spacek to portray her on screen after seeing a photograph of her, despite being unfamiliar with her films. The film's soundtrack featured all Lynn's hit singles which were all sung by Spacek, as well as Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams" sung by D'Angelo. The soundtrack reached the top 40 in the U.S. on the Billboard 200 and sold over 500,000 copies, thus being certified gold by the RIAA. Coal Miner's Daughter was released theatrically on March 7, 1980. The film grossed $67.18 million worldwide against a budget of $15 million, becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 1980. It received seven nominations at the 53rd Academy Awards including for the Best Picture and winning Best Actress (for Spacek). At the 38th Golden Globe Awards, the film received four nominations and won two : Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Actress – Musical or Comedy (for Spacek).

Plot

In 1945, 13-year-old Loretta Webb is one of eight children of Ted Webb, a Van Lear coal miner raising a family with his wife in the midst of grinding poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky (pronounced by locals as "Butcher Holler").

In 1948, at the age of 15, Loretta marries 22-year-old Oliver "Mooney" (aka "Doo," short for "Doolittle") Lynn, becoming a mother of four by the time she is 19. The family moves to northern Washington State, where Doo works in the forest industry and Loretta sings occasionally at local honky-tonks on weekends. After some time, Loretta makes an occasional appearance on local radio.

By the time Loretta turns 25, Norm Burley, the owner of Zero Records, a small Canadian record label, hears Loretta sing during one of her early radio appearances. Burley gives the couple the money needed to travel to Los Angeles to cut a demo tape from which her first single, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl," is made. After returning home from the sessions, Doo suggests he and Loretta go on a promotional tour to push the record. Doo shoots his own publicity photo for Loretta, and spends many late nights writing letters to show promoters and to radio disc jockeys all over the South. After Loretta receives an emergency phone call from her mother telling her that her father had died, she and Doo hit the road with records, photos, and their children. The two embark on an extensive promotional tour of radio stations across the South.

En route, and unbeknownst to the couple, Loretta's first single, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl," hits the charts based on radio and jukebox plays, and earns her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry. In the summer of 1961, after seventeen straight weekly performances on the Opry, she is invited to sing at Ernest Tubb Record Shop's Midnite Jamboree after her performance that night. Country superstar Patsy Cline, one of Loretta's idols, who had recently been hospitalized from a near-fatal car wreck, inspires Loretta to dedicate Patsy's newest hit "I Fall to Pieces" to the singer herself as a musical get-well card. Cline listens to the broadcast that night from her hospital room and sends her husband Charlie Dick to Ernest Tubb Record Shop to fetch Loretta so the two can meet. A close friendship with Cline follows, which was abruptly ended by Cline's death in a plane crash on March 5, 1963.

The next few years are a whirlwind. The stress of extensive touring, keeping up her image, overwork, and trying to keep her marriage and family together cause Loretta a nervous breakdown, which she suffers onstage at the beginning of a concert. After a year off at her ranch, in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, Loretta goes back on the road, returning to establish herself as the "First Lady of Country Music."

The film closes with Loretta recounting the story of her life through her 1970 hit song, "Coal Miner's Daughter", to a sold-out audience.

Cast

• Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn
• Tommy Lee Jones as Doolittle Lynn
• Beverly D'Angelo as Patsy Cline
• Levon Helm as Ted Webb
• Phyllis Boyens as Clara Ramey Webb, Loretta's mother
• Bob Hannah as Charlie Dick
• William Sanderson as Lee Dollarhide
• Ernest Tubb as himself
• Roy Acuff as himself
• Minnie Pearl as herself

Production

Lynn personally chose Spacek to portray her, making the decision based on a photograph of the actress despite being unfamiliar with her films, a story Spacek recounts in a DVD audio commentary for the Collector's Edition of the film. Initially, Spacek was reluctant to participate, and asked to do her own singing in the film in hopes of scaring off the studio from pursuing her for the role. At the time that Lynn prematurely announced on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson that "Sissy Spacek is going to play me," the actress was torn between friends who advised her to do Lynn's film and those who advised her to choose instead a Nicolas Roeg project due to start filming at the same time. Talking it over with her mother-in-law that evening, Spacek was advised to pray for a sign, which she did. She and her husband subsequently went for a drive in his mother's car, where the radio was tuned to a classical music station that changed formats at sunset every evening. As the couple pulled out of the parking garage, the title line of the song "Coal Miner's Daughter" sallied forth from the radio.^[2]

The film's soundtrack featured Spacek singing all of Lynn's hits sung in the movie, including "Coal Miner's Daughter".

The locations included Blackey, Eolia, Flatgap, Bottom Fork, Redfox in Knott and Letcher Counties in Kentucky and Pardee, a former coal camp on the Virginia side of Black Mountain. Interiors of Lynn's childhood home were shot in a warehouse in Norton, Va.^[3]

The replica of Lynn's Butcher Hollow homeplace, built at Bottom Fork, Letcher County, Kentucky was burned by arsonists. It was on the front porch of that house that Levon Helm, drummer and singer of the rock group The Band, made his acting debut as Lynn's coal miner father.^[4]

In an interview with Merv Griffin broadcast November 7, 1978, Loretta Lynn said that Harrison Ford was originally cast.

Release

Soundtrack

Coal Miner's Daughter: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack album by Various Artists
Released	March 7, 1980
Recorded	1980 Bradley's Barn (Mt. Juliet, Tennessee)[12]
Genre	Country
Label	MCA Nashville
Producer	Owen Bradley

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[13]

Coal Miner's Daughter: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released on March 7, 1980, under the MCA Nashville label.^[14] It included music by Beverly D'Angelo, Levon Helm, and Sissy Spacek except for the "End Credits Medley" and material by other artists which were not under contract to MCA. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA on January 11, 1982^[15] and has been released on vinyl,^[16] cassette tape,^[17] and CD.^[14] Levon Helm's Blue Moon of Kentucky was released as a single on 7" vinyl, both as a double-A-side and also with a non-album track also sung by Helm, Allen Toussaint's Working in the Coal Mine, on the B-side.^[18]