Word: norma
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...NORMA...
...Norma Rae is the story of trashy white woman (Sally Field), a textile worker in a small Southern town, who discovers that she actually has a social conscience when a labor organizer (Ron Leibman) arrives at her mill to establish a union. Despite his education and his uplifting concerns, he is a rainmaker figure, a man capable of breaking through the various dins (of factory, family and juke joints) that have drowned out the voice of Norma Rae's best instincts. His winning out over her suspicions (there is a romantic attraction here that is wisely left unconsummated...
...fault is surely not Field's or Leibman's. Each is at once tough and vulnerable and, above all, engagingly high-spirited. And their roles are well written. Norma Rae's somewhat checkered sexual history, we come to understand, represents the only locally available outlet for a venturesome, restless but essentially very moral spirit. She has, we see, merely been waiting for something more rewarding to occupy her energies and her realistic, feisty if untutored mind. The character of Reuben, the organizer, represents a triumph of sorts. He is the first accurate representation onscreen of a type...
...disparate minds. Added to this is a sweet courtship and real marriage between Field and a gas station attendant (Beau Bridges), a man with few brains but good, patient instincts. The problem lies in story development. There is something dreadfully predictable about the way the tale moves. When Norma Rae finally causes all the machines in the mill to be stopped through the sheer force of her belief in justice, our response is to wonder why it took so long for the film makers to reach this big scene. It is the same with other sequences: company goons...
...earned an M.B.A. from U.C.L.A., and for one six-month period worked as a ranch hand roping horses in Oregon. He joined Cannon Electric Co. of Los Angeles as a salesman, and in three years worked up to international vice president. Meanwhile, he became a U.S. citizen and married Norma Langstaff, a Los Angeles abstract painter who has had several art shows. In 1963, ITT acquired Cannon and shortly thereafter ordered Bergerac back to Europe to straighten out a small group of companies that were losing money...