There is the intimation, through the script and Tommy Lee Jones' excellent performance, that Doolittle was always anxious to get out of the whole "coal mine, doing time, or moving on down the line" conundrum by taking up the latter. What fascinates me is what he saw in a 13 year old girl to think she'd be good for his future. Either he was incredibly prescient or just very lucky.
shareAfter watching this movie dozens of times, I never felt that Doo thought she was a meal ticket. I felt that he set his eyes on her and fell in love. She certainly couldn't have given him any indication that she would support him at 13. My dad, who was a big fan of Loretta Lynn's told me that he knew from the first time he saw my mom that he wanted to marry her. She was 18, he was 22.
shareHe wanted wealth if not fame, but never planned to sit back and take it easy. He had a work ethic - if the film is accurate. When he had done all he could for her career and the real pros took over, he went to work as a mechanic - pretty much just to feel productive and manly.
You know me. I'm the same as you. It's two in the morning and I don't know nobody.
I don't think Loretta was ever a meal ticket, considering that by the time her first record hit they'd sustained their marriage for about 12 years, and while we may never understand what he saw in someone so young, I believe wholeheartedly they were totally in love. And as was said in a recent post the 'Miss Being Mrs' video was certainly heartwrenching.
shareIt couldn't have been the least bit easy, especially having been so young and with a bunch of kids, and Loretta off touring, but their bond seemed quite genuine, even through their ups and downs. People nowadays seem to want instant gratification for everything, including the sacred bond of marriage.There's a song that Loretta recorded after Doo died called "I Miss Being Mrs" It's so heartwrenching when you hear it and think about all they went through. I can only pray I am so blessed if and when I get married.
shareYeah, I hope I'm so blessed too. Except for the emotional abuse, bitch-slappin', and cheating, I want a marriage just like them!
I wish Cotton was a monkey, I wish Cotton was a monkey...
I hope you are blessed when you get married, but I hope you don't have a marriage like theirs. Please don't. While they may have loved each other, there was a lot of abuse going on, too. I read a Reader's Digest article about her a while back and she said in that article that there was one time when she and Doo were fighting and, if I remember right, she'd gotten tired of being hit so she slammed a pan of hot creamed corn upside his head and he refused to clean it off, wearing it like that for three days just to show everybody what she'd done to him. So, yeah, I hope you don't have a marriage like that.
http://www.rd.com/content/loretta-lynn-honky-tonk-queen/
I believe they were in love and if not for Doolittle, Loretta would not have been a star. Doo pushed her to perform in the beginning when she was so shy.
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Maybe not at first but I sometimes get the impression that maybe she was later on. Even now she'll talk about how Doo "put her to work", told her that it was time to record another album etc. What stuck out to me in her book is how she went back out much too soon after health issues because "Doo hates me missing shows".
shareThe harder he worked, the "luckier" he got. Seems to work that way a lot.
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