Trailer
Plot summary
At fifteen, Loretta Webb marries Doo Lynn, and by nineteen she is the mother of four. The family relocates to northern Washington State for Doo's work in the forest industry. There Loretta sings on weekends at honky-tonks and sometimes appears on local radio. Norm Burley, who runs the small Canadian label Zero Records, hears one of those broadcasts and pays for their trip to Los Angeles, where they record a demo. From that session comes her first single, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl". Doo proposes a promotional tour, takes her publicity photograph himself and writes late into the night to promoters and disc jockeys across the South.
Cast
- Bill Anderson Jr.as Webb Child
- Foister Dickersonas Webb Child
- Malla McCownas Webb Child
- Pamela McCownas Webb Child
- Kevin Salvillaas Webb Child
- Sissy Lucasas Betty Sue Lynn
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Undecided about the part, Spacek was advised by her mother-in-law to pray for a sign. She and her husband then went for a drive in his mother's car, and as they pulled out of the parking garage the title line of "Coal Miner's Daughter" came from the radio.
- Lynn chose Spacek to portray her on the strength of a photograph, despite being unfamiliar with the actress's films, a story Spacek recounts in a DVD audio commentary for the collector's edition.
- Though Spacek had started out as a singer, the producers considered dubbing Loretta's vocals over her performance. Lynn encouraged them to let Spacek do all her own singing and helped the actress learn to sing and play guitar in her style.
- The replica of Lynn's home in Butcher Hollow, built at Bottom Fork in Letcher County, Kentucky, was burned by arsonists. It was on that front porch that Levon Helm, drummer and singer of The Band, made his acting debut as Lynn's father.
- In an interview with Merv Griffin broadcast on November 7, 1978, Loretta Lynn said that Harrison Ford had originally been cast in the film.
- The film emphasises Lynn's self-fabricated myth that she married at 13. It went uncontested until May 2012, when the Associated Press unearthed her Kentucky birth certificate, revealing that she was actually almost 16 at the time of her marriage.
- The film suggests Lynn wrote "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)" after catching Mooney cheating while she toured with Cline. In fact a fan told her backstage that another woman was trying to steal her husband, and Lynn replied, "Why she ain't woman enough to take your man."
- The soundtrack won the Country Music Association Award for Album of the Year in 1980, the first of only two soundtracks ever to do so; O Brother, Where Art Thou? became the other in 2001.
