Dolly Parton's Classic 110-Minute Comedy Is Finding Fans On Netflix 46 Years Later

In 1972, mere months after she won the Best Actress Oscar for "Klute," Jane Fonda experienced some public relations turbulence by visiting North Vietnam in protest of the United States' ongoing "police action" in the country. She was branded with the nickname "Hanoi Jane," which left many in Hollywood wondering if she'd completely derailed her career.

Fonda has never been one to back down, though she was savvy enough to know that, career-wise, if she intended to address hot-button issues that mattered to her, the ideas should be confronted in highly entertaining genre movies. She pulled this off in spectacular fashion by starring in "The China Syndrome," a tense, Academy Award-nominated thriller about a malfunctioning nuclear power plant that may be on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown. Fonda's IPC Films helped get the film made, and it received mostly rave reviews while grossing $52 million domestically against a $6 million budget.

Fonda had survived her PR crisis by making an important and controversial film on her own terms. Thus, she was emboldened to tackle another important topic: the treatment of women in the workplace. She wanted to highlight issues like sexual harassment and the glass ceiling that limited promotions for women. And as the project went through development, she realized it should be done as a comedy. Hence, "9 to 5" was born.

Directed by Colin Higgins (who shares a screenplay credit with Patricia Resnick), "9 to 5" is an uproariously broad satire about three fed-up corporate employees (Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton) who get caught up in a zany imbroglio with their sexist boss (Dabney Coleman). In the wake of Ms. Parton's death, it's unsurprisingly rocketing up Netflix's streaming charts. If you've never seen it, remedy that now.

"9 to 5" was Parton's feature debut, and, to the shock of no one, she was as brilliant an actor as she was a singer-songwriter. The film is basically a three-hander: Fonda's Judy Bernley is a housewife forced to work as a secretary after her divorce; Tomlin's Violet Newstead is a capable employee who keeps getting passed over for promotion; and Parton's Doralee Rhodes is the personal secretary to Coleman's loathsome, sex-crazed Franklin Hart. After a particularly bad day, the trio convene for a night out, which ends in a pot-smoking session where they fantasize about killing Hart. This is all fun and games until Violet accidentally puts rat poison instead of sugar in Hart's coffee. He doesn't drink it, but a series of calamities leads to the women believing their shared fantasies have come to fruition.

"9 to 5" gets sillier as it goes along, and runs a little long at 110 minutes, but the three stars are dialed in throughout, while Coleman is perfection as a sleazebag who keeps trying to coerce Doralee into having sex with him. It all builds to a hugely satisfying conclusion that'll leave you howling and cheering — and, alas, missing Dolly Parton something fierce. She was an unmitigated joy.