Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Norma Rae
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1979 · FILM

Norma Rae

A determined southern textile worker with little formal education takes on a corrupt factory system by leading a dangerous unionization effort, risking everything to improve working conditions for her fellow laborers.

The story of a woman with the courage to risk everything for what she believes is right.

Directed by
Runtime
110 min
Drama
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory marked by intolerable working conditions. Her concern about the situation motivates her to become the key associate of a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they embark on the difficult and potentially dangerous effort to unionize her factory.

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 21

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Sidney LevinShot by John A AlonzoScored by David ShireDesigned by Walter Scott Herndon

Box Office

1979 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 4.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$22.2M

Budget$4.5M
Worldwide gross$22.2M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Norma Rae - Eine Frau steht ihren Mannde

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating. Sign in to add what you know.