Secrets Behind the Scenes of 1980’s Star-Studded ‘9 to 5’ as Beloved Film Celebrates 45th Anniversary

Well, hello Dolly. That’s what Hollywood said to Dolly Parton when she made her movie debut in the 1980 comedy 9 to 5!

Directed by Colin Higgins, the hilarious farce stars Dolly (Doralee), Jane Fonda (Judy) and Lily Tomlin (Violet) as three secretaries who kidnap their obnoxious criminal boss, Franklin M. Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman), and basically run Consolidated Companies by themselves for weeks until proof of Hart’s illicit activities arrive. Sterling Hayden is the chairman of the company, and Henry Jones is the president.

Fonda told The Canberra Times in 1981 that she developed the concept for 9 to 5 based on “a very old friend of mine who had started an organization in Boston called Nine to Five, which was an association of women office workers. I heard them talking about their work, and they had some great stories. And I’ve always been attracted to those 1940s films with three female stars.”

Higgins and Patricia Resnick penned the script, but 9 to 5 wasn’t a comedy at first — it was a drama in which the secretaries actually kill their boss! “But anyway, we did it, it seemed too preachy, too much of a feminist line,” Fonda reveals. “It suddenly occurred to [producer] Bruce [Gilbert] and me that we should make it a comedy.”

Each secretary’s “murder the boss” plan becomes a fantasy sequence in the film.

Knowing how hard women work in the office, Fonda wanted a “screenplay which shows you can run an office without a boss, but you can’t run an office without the secretaries!”

And that’s when they thought about Dolly and Tomlin!

“We had Jane for sure, because it was her idea to do the film and it was her production company,” Resnick told Rolling Stone. “It was written for Dolly and Lily, but we did not have them under contract. We really wanted them, but we did have some backup ideas in case they turned us down.

“For Lily, it was Carol Burnett, and for Dolly, it was Ann-Margret. But I had Dolly, Lily and Jane in my head the whole time, and we were really hoping that’s who it was going to be.”

Dolly agreed on one condition — she could write the film’s theme song.

One of the best movie themes ever, Dolly’s song “9 to 5” earned her two Grammys and a Best Original Song Oscar nomination (in what some considered a shocking snub, she lost to Fame).

Ironically, Scottish singer Sheena Easton released a song titled “9 to 5” around the same time but changed the title to “Morning Train (9 to 5)” before it hit American radio stations.

When Dolly first presented the theme song to Gilbert, she sang it a capella and accompanied herself with a beat tapping her acrylic fingernails on her chest, which sounded like a typewriter and can be heard in the final version of the tune. Quips Dolly, “You gotta have falsies to do this, and the nails have to be artificial as well.”

Since it was her first movie, Dolly thought 9 to 5 would be filmed in order like a stage play and arrived having memorized the entire script, not just her own part … much to the amusement of Fonda and Tomlin. Says Dolly, “I just assumed you had to.”

When Tomlin asked, “How were you in my part,” Dolly replied, “Oh, I was great!”

Dolly’s Best Original Song was the only Oscar nomination for the movie.

But it was a hit at the box office. Filmed for $10 million, 9 to 5 earned more than 10 times that, raking in about $103.3 million, making it the second highest-grossing film of the year (behind The Empire Strikes Back).

9 to 5 is also the first female-driven film to gross more than $100 million.

Naturally, studio bosses desperately wanted to make a sequel. “We tried for a long time for a sequel,” says Tomlin. “There were two or three scripts, but they weren’t what we wanted.”

Resnick adds, “People would love to see the three of them together again.”

“For years there was talk of a sequel or a remake, but as Dolly always says, ‘It’s 9 to 5, not 95!’ Doing a remake with them … that ship has probably sailed.”