Best Actress: Sally Field I
Union!
How Norma Rae succeeds is showing that she's already got spunk and she's already willing to do the difficult job. It's less a movie about convincing the underdog to become a hero and more about showing how a woman could be moved to make decisions that could help her family and her town despite the personal cost when we've already seen the stakes. Even the union heads try to beat her down, throwing her casual relationships and her children by separate fathers in her face as reasons why she's probably not the perfect face for their efforts.
But Norma, played masterfully by Sally Field, realizes the stakes and she gets the job done. The textile factory wins the battle by having her arrested for disorderly conduct, but her efforts, alongside Reuben Warshowsky, the union organizer from New York City, and her Black coworkers, who are also fighting for union rights and suffering the costs, win the war, and the employees ultimately win the war by voting to unionize.
I'd forgotten how taut of a story this is. How it shows Norma's successes and failures. How you find yourself rooting for the workers of this factory and how you want to stick it to the men who run it. When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose, as they say.
Sally was nominated against Jill Clayburgh (Starting Over), Jane Fonda (The China Syndrome), Marsha Mason (Chapter Two), and Bette Midler (The Rose). It's almost like a redo of the 1978 Oscar nominations with two substitutions. And once again, I think the Academy got it right in rewarding Sally.
DID I LIKE NORMA RAE? I did! I use that union scene gif so much in real life (I'm not part of a union, nor have the prospect of it, but it's such an evergreen reaction).
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Did you like Norma Rae? What are your thoughts on Sally Field's first Oscar win?
Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here!
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