Labor Day 2015: Movies About Workers

Posted on September 7, 2015 at 12:00 pm

Today we pay tribute to workers, especially those who worked for better conditions for everyone.

Sally Field won an Oscar for “Norma Rae,” a real-life story about a courageous woman who helped mill workers form a union. It was inspired by Crystal Lee Sutton, a courageous advocate for workers’ rights.

Doris Day plays a union worker who falls for a new guy in management but doesn’t lose sight of the seven and a half cent raise the workers are bargaining for in the rollicking musical, “The Pajama Game.”

John Sayles’ “Matewan” tells the story of mine workers fighting for safer conditions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEMIvDEFy4

“Harlan County USA” is a documentary about a strike by mine workers.

“Bread and Roses” is based on the real-life story of a strike by undocumented janitorial workers, with Adrian Brody as their lawyer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrDpd4sCswY

“Salt of the Earth” was inspired by an actual miners’ strike against the Empire Zinc Co. and the cast includes real-life miners who were involved in the strike

Celebrate Labor Day With “The Pajama Game!”

Posted on September 7, 2015 at 7:00 am

Pajama factory workers celebrate Labor Day in this musical number from “The Pajama Game” with Doris Day, John Raitt, and Carol Haney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkdWgMFzVNE

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Great Movie Moments Holidays Musical

Labor Day 2014: Movies About Unions

Posted on September 1, 2014 at 7:00 am

Today we pay tribute to workers, especially those who worked for better conditions for everyone.

Sally Field won an Oscar for this real-life story about a courageous woman who helped mill workers form a union.

Doris Day plays a union worker who falls for a new guy in management but doesn’t lose sight of the seven and a half cent raise the workers are bargaining for.

John Sayles “Matewan” tells the story of mine workers fighting for safer conditions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEMIvDEFy4

“Harlan County USA” is a documentary about a strike by mine workers.

Related Tags:

Holidays

Happy Birthday, Doris Day!

Posted on April 3, 2012 at 11:29 am

Happy, happy birthday to Doris Day. Born April 3, 1924 as Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, she planned to be a ballet dancer until an injury to her leg made her switch to singing. She began to appear in films as a wise-cracking singer and in the 1960’s made a series of enormously popular comedies as the girl you wished lived next door, three of them with her close friend Rock Hudson.

No one got mad better than Doris Day.

She is often associated with pre-feminist gender stereotypes and films like “The Thrill of it All” have their retro moments, but as critic and film historian Molly Haskell points out, Day most often played highly competent working women. Here she is a union leader in “The Pajama Game.”