Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” the true story behind the anthem (bonus)

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to fixing wealth inequality. And beyond, join me, Todd's Willick, and me, Jen White on the One A podcast from WAMU and NPR. Hey, it's Sarah, and this is a bonus Sunday episode, because as we all know, Dolly Parton has sadly passed away. And there's so much to say about her music, her acting career, Dollywood, her business savvy.

Today, though, we have the Renegade True Story behind Dolly Parton's nine to five anthem. The song was for a movie, and I did not know this before I worked on this episode. The song and movie were based on real people and a real labor movement formed by a group of secretaries in Boston. We spoke with them and learned how the song and movie and the real life movement all started to

feed into each other. This was all recorded back in 2021, but please enjoy my true delight, watching Dolly Parton in this movie, and how much all the people we interviewed love love love this song. But before we turn to our Dolly Appreciation, I just want to say do not let this bonus episode take the place of our usual Friday episode. It is there waiting for you, and it's all about the

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We hear from the food scientists, creating a new type of cherry tomato. Let's supposed to be a lot better, and this episode may just change how you see fruit at the grocery store. Scroll down in the feed to find it. Okay. Here you are. Manage that. This is planet money from NPR. All right, so you have your snack. Okay, I have my snacks, and well, I have actually

“have, I have a chicken pot pie. A chicken pot pie? Is your movie snack?”

Yeah, I got string cheese, goldfish crackers, and I haven't seen this film. That is going to change today, because we are watching 9 to 5. The movie, during the workday, the way it was meant to be watched. Okay. Ready? Three, two, one play. I don't even think I knew that 9 to 5, the song had a movie. I was like, it was a song. What you got a lot of is like, how long open and credit set. I'm excited. I'm getting into it.

Well, welcome to the front lines. Nilly, Tom, and I love her. I wanted to ask you about my salary. Huge and fun to look. So good. Mr. Hard, I've told you before I'm a married woman. Dolly, are anything new?

This is her debut film. Okay, Sarah, here's what you got to know about 9 to 5.

Okay. It is truly a movie of its era. It's one of the first movies that was set in the work world. It's about clerical workers, secretaries, a workforce which in 1980 was predominantly women. Most of the bosses were men, which lead to all sorts of problems. A little sexual harassment in the workplace. Oh, it gets worse. So they've gotten to men being promoted over women when they're not as qualified,

getting coffee for the guy. What I love about this film is that they take these issues and they handle them with comedy. The problems are played for laughs. Like the main plot of the film, getting revenge against your boss. Lily, Jane, Dolly, their characters all get high one day and fantasize about killing their boss. They end up kind of accidentally tying him up one day. And while he's tied up, they take over the business. They're running things. By the end of the

movie, the boss gets free. He shows up at the office and with the women in charge, the workplace looked totally different. What are all these people doing here? It's not even 9 or clocked. It's called flexible hours. People set their own time. Some work 8 to 4. Some work 10 to 6.

“Some work 9 to 5. Not less absenteeism. People really like it. How do they?”

They make a bunch of workplace improvements. There's a daycare center at work, flexible hours,

equal pay and they all end up sticking. Well, except the equal pay. That one was never going to sound

a chance. Yeah, exactly. But the others do stick. So at the end of the film, Lily, Jane, and Dolly, they all pop Shane, okay. And tears were they laughed to what we did. Yeah, everything except

This is just the beginning. This is just the beginning. Oh, no, nothing changes.

“Nothing changes. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Sineering Martin.”

And I'm Sarah Gonzalez. And Sineering, the reason you wanted me to watch this movie is because 9 to 5 is not just a movie. Exactly. For the women who watched it, there was a real true feeling that the changes they saw on the big screen would lead to changes in the actual world. Today on the show, the story of how 9 to 5 the movie, 9 to 5, the song even started with a group of secretaries in Boston. This message comes from home serve,

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Hey, you know that nagging voice in your head, the one telling you to put the phone down and stop doomsgrowing while it's time. Look up. Take a daily curiosity break with shortwave and pair a science podcast. Let your mind wander to the edges of outer space or wonder about what's lurking in the depths of the sea floor all in under 15 minutes. Shortwave, your daily mental reset, listen on the empire app or wherever you get your podcasts. 9 to 5 the movie was based on

real workplace experiences and it all started with a woman named Karen Nussmau. I was very active in the anti-war movement and in the newly blooming women's movement and I got a job to support my activism in the kind of work that most women did in those days and that was as a clerical worker. This is the 1970s and something really big was happening around this time. Millions of women were entering the workforce. This is during the Vietnam War. In the 70s, women in the labor force

increased by 12 million and a lot of women were clerical workers. There were 18 million clerical

workers by the end of the decade. If you ask somebody who is a typical worker in America they most likely say a man in a hard hat but in fact literally the most typical worker in America was a woman at a keyboard. Now Karen was just doing clerical work to you know pay the bills. Her real passion was protesting the Vietnam War. So one day, Karen is at this anti-war conference and she runs since you one of the biggest movie stars at the time and perhaps the most famous

Vietnam War protester. I saw Jane found a sitting on the floor just participating like anybody else and made a big impression on me. Karen and Jane found a teaming up, protesting the Vietnam War together. Jane would like sleep over at Karen's. I lived with five other women in an apartment that was a mess. She stayed in somebody's water bed. We had meetings in our living room and every once in a while I'd think, oh Jane found a major motion, picture star is sending in my living room.

Once the war ended Jane found a return to acting and Karen, you know, Karen's an activist and now that the war is over she starts noticing all these things about the office that she didn't really really notice before. There was this casual chauvinism that just popped up all of the time

at first, Karen and some of her co-workers started meeting regularly talking about their workplace

problems and then they realized that women all over Boston were doing the exact same thing. So they decide to start a formal labor organization. And what do they decide to call it? Well at the time, the work day for clerical workers was nine to five. So we just picked the hours of the day and called it nine to five and we had an organization of nurses inspired by nine to five which called themselves seven to three because that was their role right off the tongue seven to three.

No one said seven to three. Nine to five is the phrase. Thank you so much, Karen, for the much better phrase. Now at first, Karen says nine to five, the labor organization started with what felt like painfully small issues. We started with job posting

“that you should at least know when there was a job at opening in your company. That's still a”

problem. Yeah. Nine to five, the organization starts spreading across the country more and more chapters and it leads to a local union in Boston, SCIU local nine twenty five. Get it nine to five.

They help pass the pregnancy discrimination act and a big priority for Karen was to have fun

“with all of their campaigns. One of the very first things nine to five instituted was”

the pediist office procedure contest and the bad boss contest. And you would be amazed at the things that these guys asked these women to do and what's the patterns? What yeah, what was the pediist? Oh my gosh, we had a guy who asked his secretary to sew up a hole in his pants while he still had them on. I was going to ask now while he was still wearing them of course. While he was still wearing them and you may think that I made that up except for that when we gave

him the award, it was on television. He went on television with the secretary. Wait, how did you, you would invite the pedi boss to come on TV to win the pedi boss award and they were like, "Sure, I would love to." They didn't even have enough sense to

“know that they should be embarrassed. We had a guy who gave his secretary his beeper and”

sent her to the pub, the bar, downstairs from their office and if she saw a woman who met his specification, she was supposed to beep him. Now, you might think that that's a made up story too, except for that was on "Fill Donnie Hue." We got the boss and his secretary on the "Fill Donnie" who show. Using daytime talk shows like "Fill Donnie Hue" millions of women across the country

could see themselves in the office workers on television, which sort of made people go, hold on second,

this is ridiculous. And it made them feel like they could actually call out their own bosses. I know my mom watched a lot of "Fill Donnie Hue." And seeing the craziness out in the open on television help propel the woman's worker movement. This whole time Karen, she stayed in touch with Jane Fonda and she tell Jane about the things she was hearing from her fellow office workers. And Jane Fonda said, "I want to help." Jane came to me and said, you know, I'd love to support

“nine to five in the best way I know how. And that's by making a major motion picture. So I love, whoa, great.”

Jane Fonda's like, "Let's write up a real pitch. I'll shop it around to the film executives." Karen thinks the best angle to pitch is just the sheer number of clerical workers. She writes, "Office workers haven't seen themselves represented in pop culture, almost ever."

And there are almost 20 million of us. You'd have a built-in audience film executives

a built-in audience of almost 20 million people. The movie studio 20th Century Fox approves the idea. Now Jane heads to figure out what the movie was going to be about. She starts meeting with workers from Karen's group, the original nine to five, to get ideas. And there's this pretty important meeting that's the big aha moment. Jane's meeting with about 40 workers in Cleveland hearing all their complaints. And long into the meeting, Jane at one point says, "Now, has anybody here

ever dreamed of killing your boss?" And the room just lit up because everybody had dreamed about getting even with their boss and told story after story about the kinds of things that they're going to do to their boss. And it was those stories that became the basis of the movie. At this point, Jane decides, "This is a movie about getting back at the man." So they have a movie studio. They have stars. They have a premise. All they need now is a script. In comes a young 26-year-old

rising star. She's a writer, Patricia Resnek. And she hears that Jane Fonda, a hero of hers, was producing a movie. She knew that she had to be a part of it. So she gets a meeting with Jane Fonda. When I went to meet with her at her house, she had stacks and stacks of files. And so I felt that my job was to come up with a compelling story and characters you could root for. And a boss that was, you know, as close as you could get to the mustache twirling villain.

Problem was, even though Patricia had plenty of non-glamorous jobs, including waiting tables,

she had never had a clerical job. So the movie CD of 20 Century Fox was like, "You want to learn

about office culture? We've got a place for you. Montetrierey, insurance company, and downtown Los Angeles." It was a, you know, a giant whole floor of secretaries. And as seduce you walked in, you saw, "Oh, all the underlings are female." And all the bosses are male. There was not one female in an upper level position. Patricia spent weeks hanging out with the secretaries,

One woman in particular kept coming up in all these lunches. Everyone was absolutely sure

she was sleeping with the boss. I was a tiny bit afraid of her. And anyway, I took her out to lunch last and got a couple of Martinez into her. That's when people used to drink at lunch. I didn't bring it up. I didn't feel comfortable bringing it up. But she told me that she knew that everybody thought she was sleeping with the boss. And, you know, he was letting them think that, but it was completely untrue. And she started to cry. And, you know, I had no proof either way,

but I absolutely believed her. This real-life worker inspired the character played by Dolly Parton. So, you've been telling everybody I'm sleeping with you, huh? No. Well, that explains it.

“That's why these people treat me like some dumb, stork losing. I think I'm screwing the boss.”

Dolly Parton's star turn made the idea of sexual harassment, a central part of the movie. But the phrase basically didn't exist yet.

Sexual harassment, those words are never used in the movie. We didn't even have a term for it.

Because it was just this thing that men did that we didn't write. Patricia subtly inserted huge workplace reforms into the script. Like, at the very end of the movie, after the women have instituted all these new workplace programs, the boss's boss, the big boss. He shows up like, wow, you've been so productive, Frank. Frank, my boy, I would like to shake your hand. You managed to create a very, very splendid environment here.

Like the, you like the job sharing program. Job sharing. Of course, the boss has been

“literally tied up in a harness, the whole movie. And didn't do anything, but he takes all the credit.”

So, are you pulled it off, Frank? Well, I like to think we did in a way. Good. Like the day care center. They care center. Our working parents like it. The cost was minimal. It's kept out in absentee, isn't it? And we had a wonderful time doing it. Well, Frank, I got to get you a credit. That equal pay thing though. That's, that's got to go. All right. Well, here's an irony. A director named Colin Higgins gets hired to direct the

movie. Yes, apparently, you needed a dude to direct the movie about women. And this guy, well, he ends up pushing out Patricia wrestling. He wouldn't let me on the set. He didn't want me around. You know, he gave me the every ship has one captain speech. So, I kind of got nine to five on nine to five. When you say nine to five done nine to five, there is a plot line in which the man takes credit for other for the women's work. That's like a

theme. And that's where the theme in the movie. Right. And that's exactly what happened to me. There was a whole documentary about Colin Higgins that talks about nine to five.

I've endlessly, I've never mentioned there have been other documentaries more recently. I've never

mentioned. And it's quality, you know? Is that like a, there's something, I don't know what word you would use for it. But there's some weird poetry in, in, in that idea. Yes, your poetry is my golly. After the break, we see just how far the influence of Hollywood goes in the real world. It's not, it's not much, it's not great. It's like almost none. This week on shortwave, you are what you eat, may not be afraid you associate with your mental

health. But one in three people have insulin resistance in our country. And if you have insulin resistance, you are double the likelihood of developing major depression. We explore the link between your body and your brain. Listen on shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of fresh air. As we mourn the loss of the great dolly part and it feels good to listen back to her reflecting on her life and to hear some of her

dollyisms. Oh, I think that it's a good thing. I was a woman because about a bit of man. I would have been a drag queen just because I'm so damn gaudy. We've dropped the dolly fresh air interview on

“the NPR app and we're ever you listen to podcasts. Six months. That's how long it has been since”

the US and Israel went to war with Iran. Where are we? Diplomatically, economically, militarily. There's a lot changing in the shadow of this uncertainty about what happens with Iran. Not and more the week's big national security news on sources and methods you can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On December 19th, 1980, Karen Esbaum who started

The opening credits start. The song comes in, you know the song. Can you tell me as someone who's

“leading nine to five the union. It has to be a crazy moment the first time you hear the song.”

That you hear the song was thrilling. Karen wasn't sure people would like the movie, but then there was this scene. The copy machine is shooting papers everywhere. Jane Bond is character. There's a know how to stop it. And the woman not don't part-down the role for me stands up and yells push the stop button. You could just feel the electricity in the room because

all of the women there are totally in this movie. They see themselves nine to five is the second

biggest box office hit that year. Right after Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back. Jane and Karen go on a tour with the film and they're screening the movie in a bunch of theaters having huge worker rallies and using the song especially to promote organizing office workers. It became a

“cultural phenomenon far beyond Hollywood. After the movie, the number of nine to five chapters,”

doubles, and the union expands. Both groups are still active today. And both lobbied to pass Marquis employment protection laws, like the family medical leave act, and the Lily led better theater pay act. But for Karen, there was something more subtle that they all accomplished also. Nine to five the movement was the start of women being perceived differently in the workplace. They were starting to be treated more as professionals, less likely to be asked to sew up their

bosses' pants. More likely to say no, if someone did ask them to do that. The movement from the 1970s had a massive effect on the way women think of ourselves. We have built generations of self-continent women who take care of ourselves. But Karen really thought there would have been more progress made over the last 40 years. The main issues that nine to five fought for, there's still a problem today. Child care, sexual harassment, equal pay. The paid disparity

is largest for women of color. And I want to acknowledge for a moment that this is a movie about white women. Shout out to Maria Delgado for holding it down for all the women of color in the entire movie. Shout out, Maria Delgado. Now in many ways, Karen says we've actually gone backwards. You know, Karen has spent almost 50 years in the labor movement. She ran the union. She was in the Department of Labor. And she says the period right after the movie, the 80s,

undead a lot of the progress made in the 70s. When we started first organizing it nine to five,

I never expected that we would see fewer people without sick days, that we would see fewer people

without paid leave. I certainly thought we would have paid maternity leave. Karen blames the decline in labor protections on union participation. When the movie came out almost 25% of

“U.S. companies were unionized. Today, it's about 10%. I think our job now is to make sure that”

this coming decade is not a repeat of the 1980s. In 2021, Delley Parton released an updated version of her original song. It is called Five to Nine in ode to all the extra hours women have to work. She can certainly write a catchy tune, but she is its depressive. That's sort of the brilliance of this whole nine to five thing. You're like dancing along, you're enjoying getting them when you really listen to the lyrics. You're like, wait, this is a little messed up. Why does it have

to be this way? And thus, the greatness of Delley Parton. Okay, do not miss our Friday episode about the invention of a new type of tomato and why the produce section and all of our grocery stores is starting to look, I don't know, little fancy, you know, some golden cuties and all that. We have the story of what it takes to make a new fruit that you can trademark and wear the money from that ghost. Scroll down in the planet money

be to find that episode. Today's bonus show was produced by Nick Bountyn and James Need and edited by Mitra Kaboli. Sonari Glintin was my co-host. He has a new book coming out called Black Dynamics. We can find more including how to pre-order if you Google Black Dynamics and

Sonari Glintin. As always, thanks to our empire plus supporter to get bonus episodes and sponsor

for you listening. I'm Sarah Guantales, the Sampia.

I mean, it's so bad you can go through a long list of really quality hospitals and they don't

know their costs. So, can Medicare for all be a solution? We take a hard look at the cost of the

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“from Planet Money on the NPR app. Tanya, I think you did the best interview that I've done”

seriously. Oh, that's a great question. I'm thinking I want to think about that question

for the rest of my life. Good question. This is Tanya Mosley, co-host of fresh air and the questions are only the half of it. Listen to fresh air on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.