GOLD MINING DAUGHTER

COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER (1980)
dir: Michael Apted

GOLD MINING DAUGHTER
#219, December 1980
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

The three-page parody opens with Loretta (Sissy Spacek) as a teenager in the impoverished mining town of Butcher Holler. Doolittle Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones), a young man just out of the army is betting the locals he can drive his Jeep up a hill. The father (Levon Helm) is poor but still manages to buy new shoes every year for his family. Loretta and Doolittle have been dating for a while and he asks to marry her one day. He has to get the blessing of her parents first.

They approve on the condition he never hit her. He gets a better job in Washington and they move there. When they settle down there, she does wife things, and keeps asking for the wedding ring they never got when they were too poor. He goes to a pawn shop to get one, but instead buys a guitar for her, which he tells her to learn to play on account of her singing voice.

He urges her to sing at a bar. It goes over well and they cut a record, which they send to stations all over the country. He becomes her manager.

THINGS YOU COULDN'T DO TODAY DEPT.MAD and a lot of comedians in the late 70s and early 80s constantly made jokes about how Dolly Parton had big breasts.


It lands her a slot on Grand Ole Opry. Being on there she gets to meet her idol Patsy Cline (Beverly D'Angelo) and tour with her.

When Patsy Cline has is injured and later dies in a tragic plane accident, Loretta Lynn becomes the queen of country music. She has a nervous breakdown but gets back up again. >

No actual lyrics of hers are parodied, just the general themes of country music.

The Colonel Homer episode The Simpsons is loosely based on this movie, and also has actress Beverly D'Angelo doing vocals as the country singer.