It is about three working women living out the fantasy of getting even with, and their successful overthrow of, the company's autocratic, "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss.
''Nine to Five'' was an across the board hit, grossing USD$103,290,500 in the U.S. alone.
Premise
Three women are victimized by "the system" and their boss (Coleman) in a large, heartless American corporation. Violet (Tomlin) is passed up for promotions she rightly deserves, Doralee (Parton) is lusted after by her lascivious boss and Judy (Fonda) is shocked by the events going on around her, but, being a new hire, is powerless to do anything.Plot
The movie's plot centers around Franklin Hart, a sexist, mysogynistic, chauvanistic, and faintly unscrupulous businessman and three of the assistants in his office: Violet, Doralee, and Judy.Despite her seniority over Hart and her superior knowledge of the company's internal dynamics, Hart constantly calls Violet 'my girl' and requires her to fetch his coffee. She chafes at his treatment of her, as well as his supposed relationship with Doralee, but she puts on a sweet demeanor because she is being considered for a promotion. She is apparently a single mother of four and caring for her mother as well. Her attempts to impress the upper-level managers and ensure her promotion are stymied, however, by Hart's blatant theft of her suggestions and presentation of the ideas as his own.
Doralee, his personal assistant, is constantly sexually harassed by Hart, though she continually protests that she has no interest in him and is quite in love with her husband. He has been conspiring for some time to engage in an affair with Doralee, and in the meantime has convinced most of the staff that he has, in fact, consummated such an affair. The female staff, as a result, shuns Doralee despite her attempts to be friendly; Judy especially is offended by the rumors, and although she is initially charmed by Doralee's warm offer of assistance and friendship, she pushes Doralee away when she hears of the alleged affair.
Judy is a divorcee whose new job is her first; her husband left her for his secretary, which is the source of her frosty attitude towards Doralee. Although she attempts to convince her co-workers that she knows how to do her job, she has difficulty operating any of the equipment: even the Rolodex seems beyond her skills. Hart was initially charming and friendly during her interview, but she sees his true colors when he demeans her intelligence after she loses control of the copy machine. She is sensitive and soft-spoken, but when Hart orders one of the other secretaries fired for the minor crime of disclosing her own salary and guessing at his, Judy resolves to do something about the situation.
The ladies begin to form a tight bond after Violet is passed over for her promotion in favor of a man, Doralee discovers the rumors Hart has been spreading about her, and the other secretary is fired all in the same day. All three leave the office early in their outrage, and end up at Doralee's apartment eating and sharing the marijuana joint which Violet's son gave her in an attempt to help his mother relax. As they smoke and eat, Judy fantasizes about pursuing Hart through the office with a shotgun like a big game hunter and mounting his head on the wall; Doralee dreams of treating Hart as a piece of meat ("giving him his own medicine") before lassooing and tying him up; and Violet imagines that she is Snow White, but rather than being poisoned, she poisons Hart and tips him out the window of his office.
The next day, Violet is rudley ordered by Hart to fetch him coffee; while preparing the coffee, she is told by a co-worker "we're out of Skinny & Sweet" (an artificial sweetner). Violet says "I know, I got some at lunch today" and pulls a fresh box from the cupboards. However, in her distraction and anger at having to fetch Hart's coffee, she accidentally pours rat poison into the coffee rather than Skinny & Sweet (the boxes of rat poison and Skinny & Sweet are similar in size, shape, colour and design, which leads to Violet's mistake.) Hart is knocked out by falling off his defective chair before drinking any coffee, spilling it on the floor; he is then discovered by Doralee who informs the others. Violet discovers her mistake and, finding the cup empty next to the chair, presumes Hart was poisoned. Violet all but drags Judy to the hospital, meeting Doralee there, as she apparently accompanied the ambulance and their stricken employer.
At the hospital, Hart is told he will have to have an X-ray examination to ensure his cranial health; he refuses, saying he doesn't wish to pay further hospital bills. He leaves unseen by the girls, his room taken by a man with severe heart problems, who then dies. The man who dies was accompanied by a policeman and detective, who had been waiting for him to testify in a criminal case. Seeing them outside what they believe to be Hart's hospital room, the three girls assume that Hart's 'poisoning' has been reported to the authorities. When the corpse of the other man is seen being wheeled out of the room, Violet panics, impersonates a doctor, and steals the body out of the hospital, dumping the corpse in the trunk of her car and driving off as soon as the others reach her. After Violet crashes the car, Doralee goes to retrieve a crowbar from the trunk in order to free the bumper from the wheel; the corpse's head has apparently become uncovered, because she can see that it is not really Hart at all.
Many adventures later, the corpse is deposited in the toilets of the hospital in a wheelchair, and the three return to work. In the toilets of the corporation, they discuss the previous night's escapades; they are unaware of a sycophant lurking in the stalls, taking notes. Hart receives the information with glee and decides to blackmail Doralee into submitting to his harassment. Instead of succumbing to his threats, Doralee ties him up with telephone cord, and leaves Judy to guard him in order to get Violet. Judy lets him free, taken in by a ploy, and then shoots the doorway around him when he goes to find a working telephone.
At Hart's home (his wife being away for a two-month holiday), the three imprison him with a system of pulleys and ropes attached to a garage-door-opener assembled by Violet. While Hart is imprisoned, the three look for something with which to reverse-blackmail him, and find the perfect thing: records of company stock being sold for Hart's personal gain, which was supposedly being stored in an old warehouse. They merely have to wait until documents confirming his guilt can arrive from somewhere in a week or so, and they will have Hart at their mercy.
But there is a wrinkle: head office informs Violet that due to the start of "the computer changeover", they won't be able to send her the needed warehouse invoices for 4-6 weeks - and Hart will need to be confined the entire time. But this proves to be less difficult than originally thought, as the girls quickly discover that no one in the office wants to see or deal with Hart. Using the fact that Doralee can forge Hart's signature, the three girls take control of the company, improving working conditions, and hence productivity, by 20% over the ensuing six weeks.
One evening, while she is guarding Hart, Judy receives a visit from her ex-husband, Dick, who has ended his affair with his secratary, and hopes to make up with Judy. However, those hopes are dashed when he sees Hart tied up, and he's led to think Judy has a new hobby; bondage. Judy pretends she really is into all of it and sends Dick packing.
Hart gets free on occasion, though never successfully thwarts the restrain system, until his wife arrives home early and frees him. Doralee learns of this, and encourages Judy to suppress Hart; however, he takes Judy hostage with Doralee's gun, and when she arrives takes Doralee hostage also. Meanwhile, Violet goes to check the warehouse; sure enough, Hart has reinstalled stock in the warehouse.
However, when the four return to the office, the girls resigned to their fate, the Chairman of the Board of Directors arrives looking for Hart, having noticed the 20% rise in productivity (even the curing of an alcoholic) and wishing to promote him to Brazil for a few years. Hart is gotten rid of, the girls are in control of a department... a classic happy ending.
In the epilogue of the film, we learn that Doralee left the company and became a country-and-western singer; Violet was promoted to Vice President; Judy quit the company when she married the Xerox representative; and Franklin Hart Jr. was abducted by a tribe of amazons in the Brazilian jungle and was never heard from again.
Television series
The movie inspired a sitcom version which aired from 1982 to 1983 and from 1986 to 1988. The show, which aired on ABC (1982-83) and in first run syndication (1986-88), featured Parton's younger sister, Rachel Dennison, in Parton's role; Rita Moreno and Valerie Curtin took over Tomlin and Fonda's roles, respectively. In the second version of the show, Sally Struthers replaced Moreno.Trivia
*The movie's theme song, "9 to 5", became one of Parton's biggest hits of the decade. It was nominated for several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Song. It won the 1981 People's Choice Award for "Favorite Motion Picture Song", and two 1982 Grammy awards (for "Country Song of the Year" and "Female Country Vocal of the Year".)*At the same time, newcomer Sheena Easton was enjoying her first major hit in United Kingdom with a song also titled "9 to 5". Due to the success of Parton's song, Easton was forced to rename her recording "Morning Train (9 to 5)" for its North American release.
*This was Dolly Parton's first film.
*In the middle of the film, Dolly Parton and her colleagues send a nosy secretary to the Aspen Language Center in Colorado to learn French. The particular TWA 747 shown in the film later was used in reality on the ill-fated flight of TWA 800, which exploded off of Long Island, NY.
*In her autobiograhy, ''My Life So Far'', Jane Fonda wrote that Dolly Parton committed the entire movie script to memory prior to the commencement of shooting, not realizing that she only needed to know her own dialogue.
Possible sequel
In a TV interview broadcast on BBC1 in the UK in 2005, the movie's stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton all expressed interest in starring in a sequel. Fonda said if the right script was written she would definitely do it, suggesting a suitable name for a 21st century sequel would be ''24/7''. Parton suggested they had better hurry up before they reach pensionable age. In the DVD commentary, the three reiterate their enthusiasm, Fonda suggests a sequel should cover outsourcing, and they agree Frank Hart would have to return as their nemesis.Musical theatre
On an interview aired 30 September 2005 of the CNN's ''Larry King Live'', Parton revealed that she was writing the songs for a musical stage adaptation of the film ''9 to 5''. A workshop for the show is expected to start in summer 2006 with the play to premiere in fall 2007.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/30/lkl.01.htmlExternal links
*Dollymania: The Online Dolly Parton Newsmagazine
