Coal Miner's Daughter (film)


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 early teen years in a poor family and getting married at 15 to her rise as one of the most successful country musicians. Based on Lynn's 1976 biography of the same name 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 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 and grossed $67.18 million in North America against a budget of $15 million, becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 1980. It garnered critical acclaim and received seven nominations at the 53rd Academy Awards including for the Best Picture and winning Best Actress. 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.
In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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.
In 1948, at the age of 15, Loretta marries 22-year-old Oliver "Mooney" 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 17 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 abruptly was 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

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 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" came from the radio.
The film's soundtrack featured Spacek's 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.
The replica of Lynn's home in Butcher Hollow, 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 father.
In an interview with Merv Griffin broadcast November 7, 1978, Loretta Lynn said that Harrison Ford originally was cast.

Release

Critical reception

It has an 86% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 22 reviews; the average rating is 8.3/10. Variety called it "a thoughtful, endearing film charting the life of singer Loretta Lynn from the depths of poverty in rural Kentucky to her eventual rise to the title of 'queen of country music'." Roger Ebert stated that the film "has been made with great taste and style; it's more intelligent and observant than movie biographies of singing stars used to be."

Awards and honors

won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Loretta Lynn created a rarity in the Academy Awards' history in that the real-life Lynn was in the audience witnessing the victory. That same evening, boxer Jake LaMotta was in the audience when Robert De Niro won Best Actor for his portrayal of LaMotta in Raging Bull.
AwardCategoryNomineeResult
Academy AwardsBest PictureBernard Schwartz
Academy AwardsBest ActressSissy Spacek
Academy AwardsBest Screenplay Based on Material from Another MediumThomas Rickman
Academy AwardsBest Art DirectionJohn W. Corso and John M. Dwyer
Academy AwardsBest CinematographyRalf D. Bode
Academy AwardsBest Film EditingArthur Schmidt
Academy AwardsBest SoundRichard Portman, Roger Heman and James R. Alexander
American Cinema Editors AwardsBest Edited Feature FilmArthur Schmidt
British Academy Film AwardsBest Actress in a Leading RoleSissy Spacek
British Academy Film AwardsBest SoundGordon Ecker, James R. Alexander, Richard Portman and Roger Heman Jr.
Directors Guild of America AwardsOutstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion PicturesMichael Apted
Golden Globe AwardsBest Motion Picture – Musical or ComedyCoal Miner's Daughter
Golden Globe AwardsBest Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or ComedySissy Spacek
Golden Globe AwardsBest Supporting Actor – Motion PictureTommy Lee Jones
Golden Globe AwardsBest Supporting Actress – Motion PictureBeverly D'Angelo
Kansas City Film Critics Circle AwardsBest ActressSissy Spacek
Los Angeles Film Critics Association AwardsBest ActressSissy Spacek
National Board of Review AwardsCoal Miner's Daughter
National Board of Review AwardsBest ActressSissy Spacek
National Film Preservation BoardNational Film RegistryCoal Miner's Daughter
National Society of Film Critics AwardsBest ActressSissy Spacek
New York Film Critics Circle AwardsBest ActressSissy Spacek
Writers Guild of America AwardsBest Drama Adapted from Another MediumThomas Rickman

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
Coal Miner's Daughter: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released on March 7, 1980, under the MCA Nashville label. 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 and has been released on vinyl, cassette tape, and CD. Levon Helm's "Blue Moon of Kentucky" was released as a single on 7" vinyl, both as a double-A-side and also with Allen Toussaint's Working in the Coal Mine, a non-album track also sung by Helm, on the B-side. The soundtrack would win Country Music Association Award for Album of the Year in 1980, the first of only two soundtracks to do so. O Brother, Where Art Thou? would be the other in 2001.

Charts and certifications

Weekly charts
Chart Peak
position
Canada Country Albums 1
Canada Top Albums 23
US Top Country Albums 2
US Billboard 20040

Certifications
CountryCertification
United StatesGold

Adaptation

On May 10, 2012, at the Grand Ole Opry, Lynn announced that Zooey Deschanel was to portray her in a Broadway musical adaptation.
One episode of The Simpsons, titled "Colonel Homer", is based partly on this film. The episode also stars Beverly D'Angelo as cocktail waitress Lurleen Lumpkin.