Lamar Miller

Norma Rae (1979)

Actors: Frank McRae (actor), Noble Willingham (actor), Henry Slate (actor), Bob Minor (actor), Beau Bridges (actor), Bob Hannah (actor), George R. Robertson (actor), Lee de Broux (actor), Lonny Chapman (actor), J. Don Ferguson (actor), Booth Colman (actor), Bert Freed (actor), Pat Hingle (actor), Grace Zabriskie (actress), Sally Field (actress),

Plot: Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.

Keywords: activist, against-the-odds, alabama, alienation, american-south, badge, bare-chested-male, based-on-true-story, beer-drinking, bloody-nose
Genres: Drama,
Taglines: The story of a woman with the courage to risk everything for what she believes is right. Academy Award Winner SALLY FIELD Best Actress 1979 If you haven't seen Norma Rae then you're missing...

Quotes:

Reuben Warshowsky: Under the circumstances, best wishes hardly seem enough. Thanks are in order. Thank you for your companionship, for your stamina, your horse sense, and a hundred and one laughs. I also enjoyed looking at your shining hair and your shining face.::Norma Rae Webster: Reuben, I think you like me.::Reuben Warshowsky: I do.::Norma Rae Webster: I was gonna get you a tie clip or some shaving lotion, but I didn't know what you'd like.::Reuben Warshowsky: Norma, what I've had from you has been sumptuous.

Norma Rae: Forget it! I'm stayin' right where I am. It's gonna take you and the police department and the fire department and the National Guard to get me outta here!

Reuben Warshowsky: I know the first time you're in is bad. It comes with the job. I saw a pregnant women on a picket line get hit in the stomach with a club. I saw a boy of 16 shot in the back. I saw a guy blown to hell and back when he tried to start his car in the morning. You just got your feet wet on this one.

Norma Rae: Why did you tell him that, we don't even have a dog?

Reuben Warshowsky: On October 4, 1970, my grandfather, Isaac Abraham Warshowsky, aged eighty-seven, died in his sleep in New York City. On the following Friday morning, his funeral was held. My mother and father attended, my two uncles from Brooklyn attended, my Aunt Minnie came up from Florida. Also present were eight hundred and sixty-two members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers' Union. Also members of his family. In death as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. When they spoke, they spoke in one voice, and they were heard. They were black, they were white, they were Irish, they were Polish, they were Catholic, they were Jews, they were one. That's what a union is: one... Ladies and gentlemen, the textile industry, in which you are spending your lives and your substance, and in which your children and their children will spend their lives and their substance, is the only industry in the whole length and breadth of the United States of America that is not unionized. Therefore, they are free to exploit you, to cheat you, to lie to you, and to take away what is rightfully yours - your health, a decent wage, a fit place to work. I would urge you to stop them by coming down to room 207 at the Golden Cherry Motel, to pick up a union card and to sign it... It comes from the Bible - according to the tribes of your fathers, ye shall inherit. It comes from Reuben Warshowsky - not unless you make it happen.

Norma Rae Webster: Reuben, you need yourself a woman.::Reuben Warshowsky: Funny you should mention it- tonight's the night.::Norma Rae Webster: My my, what would Dorothy say?::Reuben Warshowsky: Wear a rubber.

Norma Rae: Norma Rae [on walking out of Reuben's residence] "K'vetch, k'vetch, k'vetch."