Nine to Five, also known as 9 to 5, is a 1980 American comedy movie starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman.
The film concerns three working women living out their fantasy of getting even with, and their successful overthrow of, the company's autocratic, "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss.
Nine to Five was an across-the-board hit, grossing $103,290,500 in the U.S. alone. The film became the highest-grossing comedy of 1980. As a star vehicle for singer Parton, it launched her permanently into mainstream popular culture. Although a television series based on the film was less successful, a musical version of the film (also titled 9 to 5), with new songs written by Parton, opened on Broadway on April 30, 2009.
This film is number 47 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
Premise
Three women decide to turn the tables on their "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss when their dissatisfaction causes them to reach the boiling point. A bizarre series of misunderstandings causes them to seize control of their department forcibly, kidnapping their boss and imprisoning him while they change their workplace to suit their vision of a more equitable, friendly environment.
Plot
The film is centered on the friendship among three women who work in the business offices of a large corporation known as Consolidated. Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) is a naïve new employee, a recent divorcee whose husband left her for his secretary. On her first day, Judy meets Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), the supervisor of her department, and a longtime employee of Consolidated. Violet trains Judy and introduces her to the department executive, Franklin Hart, Jr. (Dabney Coleman), who immediately reveals himself to be arrogant and sexist. Judy soon learns that Violet has been passed over consistently by those who could promote her, and in fact she has seniority over Hart. The third woman in the trio is the buxom Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton), Hart’s personal secretary. Despite the fact that Doralee is a happily married woman, and Hart is also married, Hart continually makes inappropriate advances toward her, pushing her patience and tolerance to the limit. Hart has also been lying to his colleagues that he’s been sleeping with her, causing office gossip to go wild. The women in the office treat her rudely as a result, and initially Judy shuns Doralee’s attempts to be friendly.
Some time passes, and then some more, and then Violet is once again passed over for an important promotion, even though her ideas are good enough that Hart passes one off as his own and takes all the praise for it. Hart bluntly tells Violet that the company would rather have a man in the position, and Violet becomes enraged, storming off on her own, but not before she reveals to Doralee that her “affair” with Hart is common knowledge. Doralee snaps and also rages at Hart, threatening to use her gun on him the next time he makes an indecent proposal, stating (in what is perhaps the film's most well-known line) that she will turn him "from a rooster to a hen with one shot". Judy witnesses a fellow secretary lose her job over a minor infraction and she, too, becomes enraged. The three women converge at a local bar to drown their sorrows, where Violet finds a marijuana joint (that her son gave her) in her purse. They go to Doralee’s house to "light up", prompting each of them to have a detailed fantasy about how they would kill Hart if they had the chance. Judy carefully imagines a scenario where Hart is being hunted down by an angry mob of his disgruntled employees through the Consolidated offices, and she (as a big game hunter) hunts down Hart in the office with a shotgun, eventually shooting him and mounting his head on her office wall as a trophy. Doralee turns the tables on Hart and sexually harasses him before hog-tying him and roasting him alive on a spit. Violet envisions a fairy tale where she is a Snow White-type character who poisons Hart’s coffee and sends him falling to his death outside his office window, via a spring-loaded version of his office chair.
Things take a sudden bizarre turn the next day when each of the women’s fantasies comes true in some way. Violet accidentally puts rat poison in Hart’s coffee, mistaking it for an artificial sweetener. Before Hart can drink it, his defective chair throws him backward and knocks him unconscious in his office. When the women get to the hospital, Hart has already left. Policemen are there concerning a witness who was poisoned and killed, and when the women overhear their conversation with the doctor, they assume they are talking about Hart. Out of desperation, Violet steals the body she believes is Hart, which is draped with a sheet, and stuffs it in her trunk. It is only after she crashes her car do the women realize the body in the truck is not Hart at all. After narrowly escaping a curious traffic cop, the women manage to sneak the body back into the hospital by propping it up in a wheelchair then ditching it in a bathroom. The next day at work, they discover that Hart wasn’t harmed at all, but their discussion about the incident the night before is overheard by Hart’s nosy personal assistant, Roz Keith (Elizabeth Wilson), and Hart tries to use the information to blackmail Doralee into having an affair with him after all. Doralee loses her temper and ropes Hart with telephone wires, and Judy fires on Hart with Doralee's gun when he escapes his bonds.
With Hart’s wife away on a lengthy cruise, the women decide to kidnap Hart and imprison him in his own house until they can somehow get him to cooperate and forget the whole incident. Violet discovers that Hart has been embezzling money from Consolidated, and the women plan on using the information to blackmail him. The race is on to see if Hart can escape or if Violet’s documented proof of the scam will arrive in time. While taking a turn guarding Hart, Judy gets a surprise visit from her philandering ex-husband, whose affair has come to an end. He wants a reconciliation with her, and has expected her to welcome his return. She (somewhat inadvertently) gives her ex his comeuppance when he discovers Hart tied up. Judy covers by claiming she now has a wild, hedonistic, unfettered lifestyle and is exploring S&M sex, and has no interest in being a mousy housewife any more.
The three women gleefully work together to make Hart’s absence in the office as inconspicuous as possible, and along the way they take a number of liberties in improving the workplace in ways that they see fit. Hart is accidentally freed when his wife returns early from her cruise, and just when it appears as if he is going to send the women to jail, a sudden visit from the Chairman of the Board, Russell Tinsworthy (Sterling Hayden), interrupts him. Violet, Judy, and Doralee have made some radical changes while keeping Hart imprisoned, and it seems as if the sudden surge in productivity has caught the attention of Tinsworthy. Since the women did all of it under the false approval of Hart, they can take no credit for it, but fate seems to be on their side: Tinsworthy “rewards” Hart for his good work by immediately removing him from his position and sending him to work on a special project in Brazil, much to the amusement and delight of Violet, Doralee, and Judy.
In the epilogue, it is revealed that Violet took Hart's place as vice president, Judy fell in love and married the Xerox representative, Doralee quit the company and became a country music singer (just like the actress who played her), and Hart was kidnapped by natives in the Amazon and never heard from again.
Cast
Production
- This was Dolly Parton's first film.
- In the middle of the film, the secretaries send a nosy manager to the Aspen Language Center in Colorado to learn French. The actual TWA 747 aircraft shown in the film later exploded off Long Island, NY as TWA Flight 800.
- In her autobiography, My Life So Far, Jane Fonda wrote that Dolly Parton committed the entire movie script to memory prior to the commencement of shooting, not realizing that she only needed to know her own dialogue, and that it wouldn't be shot in order.
- The young candystriper who briefly exchanges dialogue with Tomlin's character during the hospital sequence was played by Florence Henderson's daughter Barbara Chase.
Legacy
American Film Institute recognition
Theme song
The movie's theme song, "9 to 5", became one of Parton's biggest hits of the decade. It went to number one for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Song. It won the 1981 People's Choice Award for "Favorite Motion Picture Song", and two 1982 Grammy Awards: for "Country Song of the Year" and "Female Country Vocal of the Year" (it was nominated for four Grammys). Additionally, it was certified platinum by the RIAA.
At the same time, newcomer Sheena Easton was enjoying her first major hit in United Kingdom with a song also titled "9 to 5". With the success of Parton's song, Easton was forced to rename her recording "Morning Train (9 to 5)" for its North American release.
Television series
The movie inspired a sitcom version which aired from 1982 to 1983 and from 1986 to 1988. The show, which aired on ABC (1982-83) and in first run syndication (1986-88), featured Parton's younger sister, Rachel Dennison, in Parton's role; Rita Moreno and Valerie Curtin took over Tomlin and Fonda's roles, respectively. In the second version of the show, Sally Struthers replaced Moreno. A total of 85 episodes were filmed.
2009 Broadway musical
In an interview aired September 30, 2005 on Larry King Live, Parton revealed that she was writing the songs for a musical stage adaptation of the film.[1] A private reading of the musical took place on January 19, 2007[2] Further private presentations were held in New York City in summer 2007.
In early March 2008, Center Theatre Group artistic director Michael Ritchie announced that 9 to 5 will have its pre-Broadway run at the Center's Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles beginning September 21, 2008. Allison Janney will star as Violet, joined by Stephanie J. Block as Judy and Megan Hilty as Doralee, and Marc Kudisch as Franklin Hart Jr. The book for 9 to 5: The Musical is by Patricia Resnick, who co-authored the film. Choreography is by Andy Blankenbuehler and Joe Mantello will direct.[3]
According to playbill.com, the musical opened on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre in previews on April 7, 2009, and officially on April 30, 2009.[4] However, due to low ticket sales and gross, the production will close on September 6, 2009. A National Tour is planned for 2010
Possible sequel
In a TV interview broadcast on BBC1 in the UK in 2005, the movie's stars Fonda, Tomlin and Dolly Parton all expressed interest in starring in a sequel. Fonda said if the right script was written she would definitely do it, suggesting a suitable name for a 21st century sequel would be 24/7. Parton suggested they had better hurry up before they reach retirement age. In the DVD commentary, the three reiterate their enthusiasm, Fonda suggests a sequel should cover outsourcing, and they agree Frank Hart would have to return as their nemesis.
Popular culture
- Marian Mercer and Dabney Coleman played husband and wife on the 1970s cult Soap opera spoof Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
- A clip of the film appeared on the Xbox 360 interactive game Scene It.
- Like many popular films of the early 1980s, an unofficial X-Rated parody was released, titled 8 to 4, in 1981. The film was shot on 35mm film and played in adult cinemas. It also featured a theme song that parodied the original Nine to Five theme. The Tomlin, Fonda and Parton roles were played by Annette Haven, Loni Sanders and Lisa De Leeuw, respectively.
- President Ronald Reagan watched the movie and found it to be humorous. He did, however, voice his anger over the scene where Fonda, Tomlin, and Parton smoked marijuana, as he considered it to be an "endorsement of [p]ot smoking for any young person who [saw] the film."[5]
References
- ^ "Dolly Parton's Anniversary; Walter Cronkite on Peter Jennings" from CNN
- ^ "Ullman, Ripley, Hilty, Kudisch, Lewis Will Read Nine to Five Musical" from Playbill, January 11, 2007
- ^ Center Theatre Group - LA's Theatre Company
- ^ Jones, Kenneth."Hello, Dolly! 9 to 5 Books Broadway's Marquis; Full Casting Announced", Playbill.com, July 15, 2008
- ^ Reagan, Ronald; ed. Douglas Brinkley (2007). The Reagan Diaries. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 4. ISBN 006087600X.
External links
