Norma Rae

Norma Rae finds Sally Field cast in the title role, a minimum-wage worker in a cotton mill. The factory has taken too much of a toll on the health of Norma Rae's family for her to ignore her Dickensian working conditions. After hearing a speech by New York union organizer Reuben (Ron Leibman), Norma ...more

Before her Oscar-winning, breakthrough role as a union organizer in Norma Rae, Sally Field was famous for being television's The Flying Nun and for her subsequent lightweight comic work, particularly with Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. Casting Field in the lead role of a poor, uneducated worker who organizes a Southern mill proved to be a stroke of genius. She wasn't known for portraying assertive, powerful characters, and so her transformation in the film from mousy and helpless to an ...more