Coal Miner's Daughter Information

Coal Miner's Daughter is a 1980 biographical film which tells the story of country music legendary singer Loretta Lynn. It stars Sissy Spacek as Loretta, a role that earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Tommy Lee Jones as Loretta husband Mooney Lynn, Beverly D'Angelo and Levon Helm also star. The film was directed by Michael Apted.

Helm (drummer for the rock group The Band) made his screen debut as Loretta's father, Ted Webb. Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, and Minnie Pearl all make cameo appearances as themselves.

The film was adapted from Loretta Lynn's 1976 autobiography written with George Vecsey. At the time of the film's release, Loretta was 48 years old.

Background

Loretta Lynn is one of eight children born to Ted Webb (Levon Helm), a coal miner raising a family with his wife despite grinding poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky (pronounced by locals as "Butcher Holler"). She marries Oliver Vanetta (Doolittle) "Mooney" Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones) when she is 15 years old and he was 22 year old. A mother of four by the time she is 19 (and a grandmother by age 29), Loretta begins singing the occasional songs at local honky-tonks on weekends as well as making the occasional radio appearance.

At the age of 25, Norm Burley"?the owner of Zero Records, a small Canadian record label"?hears her sing during one of her early Northern Washington radio appearances. Burley gives the couple the money needed to travel to Los Angeles to cut a demo tape from which her first single, "Honky Tonk Girl", would be made. After returning home from the sessions, Mooney suggests that they go on a promotional tour to push the record. He takes his own publicity photo, 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 Mooney 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 pair, Loretta's first single, "Honky Tonk Girl", hits the charts based on radio and jukebox plays, and earns her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry. After seventeen straight weekly performances on the Opry, she is invited to sing at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop 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, prompting 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 down to Tubbs' record shop to fetch Loretta so the two can meet. A long and close friendship with Patsy Cline follows, and endeds only by the tragic death of her idol in a plane crash on March 5, 1963.

Extensive touring, keeping up her image, overwork and a great deal of stress from trying to keep her family and marriage together causes a nervous breakdown. However, after a year off at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, TN, Loretta goes back out on the road in fine form and becomes The First Lady of Country Music.

Some months later, Mooney drives Loretta at breakneck speed out to what she discovers is a proposed site for a new house. They argue about where to put the bedrooms, and finally, Mooney somewhat jokingly says if they can't settle the issue about where to put the bedrooms, he's going to go live in a treehouse up at the top of a hill. The film ends with Loretta performing Coal Miner's Daughter that is now well known as her signature song to a sold out crowd, and a medley of Loretta Lynn hits performed live plays over the credits.

Cast

• Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn
• Tommy Lee Jones as Oliver Vanetta (Doolittle) "Mooney" Lynn
• Beverly D'Angelo as Patsy Cline
• Levon Helm as Ted Webb
• Phyllis Boyens as 'Clary' Webb
• 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 an 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.

Release

Awards

The film won the Academy Award for Best Actress (Sissy Spacek), and was nominated for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (John W. Corso, John M. Dwyer), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Sound (Richard Portman, Roger Heman and James R. Alexander) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

For her performance, Spacek won an Academy Award, as well as "Best Actress" awards from the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the Kansas City Film Critics Circle. Her co-star Beverly D'Angelo, who played Loretta's mentor, Patsy Cline, also chose to do her own singing rather than lip-synching; she was nominated for a Golden Globe, as was Tommy Lee Jones.

Home media

• This film was released on LaserDisc on two separate releases. The first release was in May 1980, and the extended play version was released in July 1981. These releases were both made by MCA DiscoVision.
• The film was released in the VHS format on March 1, 1992 by MCA/Universal Home Video
• On September 13, 2005, Universal released a 25th Anniversary Edition on DVD, in widescreen (1.85:1) format and featuring the music tracks remixed to 5.1 Dolby Digital stereo, leaving the dialogue and effects tracks as they were on the original mono soundtrack from 1980.

Soundtrack

}} 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.

Personnel

Credits for Coal Miner's Daughter: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack adapted from liner notes.

• Alan Block " composer
• A.P. Carter " composer
• Beverly D'Angelo " performer
• Bill McElhiney " string arrangement
• Bill Monroe " composer
• Bob Montgomery " composer
• Bobby Bradley " engineer
• Don Gibson " composer
• Don Hecht " composer
• Durwood Haddock " composer
• Eddie Miller " composer
• Funeral Guest " performer
• Hank Cochran " composer

• Harlan Howard " composer
• Jim Phillips " digital remaster
• Joe Mills " engineer
• Jordanaires " background vocals
• Levon Helm " performer
• Loretta Lynn " composer
• Maybelle Carter " composer
• Owen Bradley " producer
• Sarah Carter " composer
• Shel Silverstein " composer
• Sissy Spacek " performer
• Willie Neslon " composer
• W.S. Stevenson " composer

Charts and certifications

Weekly charts

Chart (1980)	Peak position
Canada Country Albums (RPM)	1
Canada Top Albums (RPM)	23
US Top Country Albums (Billboard)	2
US Billboard 200	40

Certifications

Country	Certification
United States	Gold

Adaptation

On May 10, 2012, at the Grand Ole Opry, Lynn announced that Zooey Deschanel will play her in a Broadway musical adaptation.

One episode of The Simpsons, entitled "Colonel Homer", is partly based on this film. The episode also stars Beverly D'Angelo as cocktail waitress Lurleen Lumpkin, who happens to have a beautiful country singing voice.