Coal Miner's Daughter

Sissy Spacek got her career role and her Oscar portraying country singing legend Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. The film was also up for Best Picture in 1980 and for a bunch awards in the technical fields. But only Spacek brought home the gold.

Loretta Lynn came from a background about as humble as you can get. She was as the title says of the film and one of her hit songs a Coal Miner's Daughter. From a place called Butcher Holler. One of the great strengths that Coal Miner's Daughter has is the location cinematography in Kentucky and Tennessee. Hollywood could never recreate the look of the poverty she came from.

She was the eldest of several kids born to Levon Helm and Phyllis Boyens-Liptak playing her parents Ted and Clary Webb. She was an assistant Moma to her younger siblings and a real Moma with for kids by the time she was 20. She married at 14 to Doolittle Lynn aka Mooney because of his original profession of moonshiner. But she liked to sing and it was her husband that said some of those songs that she made up just might be a career path. Anything was better than the unimaginable poverty in those Kentucky hills.

Watching this film today, made in 1980 and set in the 50s and 60s I thought about things today which are probably worse than in Loretta Lynn's salad days. Then the United Mine Workers was a strong union and insured some kind of living for these people. But coal for environmental reasons has been abandoned. Could Loretta Lynn make it out in 2017. She would sure have more incentive.

During her early days Loretta was mentored by Patsy Cline played here by Beverly D'Angelo. Both had the same problems, husbands who were on the sidelines of their wives' career. In this case Tommy Lee Jones plays an easy going Doolittle Lynn who feels a need every now and then to kick up their heels.

Of course the second great strength of Coal Miner's Daughter is the score of Loretta Lynn hits in the film. If you are not a Loretta Lynn fan, you might just become one after viewing this film. Some of Patsy Cline's hits are included, a little preview so to speak of her biopic Sweet Dreams.

Coal Miner's Daughter is as fresh as the day it was released and a must for country music fans.