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Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields
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Movies

The Most Compelling Real Life Stories Brought To Film

The Oscars and the hubbub of awards season now settling into memory and looking back on 2012, it was a very good year for glorious portraits of actual individuals in action. As we celebrate the success of Best Picture Argo (such an understatement!) and fellow nominees Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, it seems a perfect time to take a look back at some of the other most compelling real life stories brought to film.
Image of Lisa Elin
Lisa Elin
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Published: Feb 27, 2013 06:43 pm

This article is over 11 years old and may contain outdated information

Norma Rae

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Director: Martin Ritt

Sally Field in Norma Rae

Before 1974, life in the textile mills of – well, probably anywhere, but here we’re talking North Carolina – were something out of a Dickens novel. Earning $2.65 per hour under intolerable conditions, thirtysomething Crystal Lee Sutton had finally had enough, and teamed up with union organizer Eli Zivkovich, to the great chagrin of virtually everyone in her world.

Sutton and Zivkovich have been renamed to Norma Rae Webster and Rueben Warshowsky, and the backstory has been tweaked for drama, but fact underpins all, and the legendary scene wherein Norma Rae launches her personal version of “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore” is verbatim.

Soulful, passionate, sensitive, and determined, Norma Rae shows us the gumption ~ and what it takes to maintain it ~ to say, “Enough. Things must be better.” And trust that you know what, they just might be.

Sumptuous.

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Lisa Elin
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