The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter

The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter is a 1980 documentary film and the first movie ever made by Connie Field about the American women who went to work during World War II to do "men's jobs." In 1996, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The film's title refers to "Rosie the Riveter", the cultural icon that represented women who manned the manufacturing plants which produced munitions and material during World War II. Connie Field got the idea for the film from a California Rosie the Riveter reunion, and, with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other charitable sources, conducted interviews with many hundreds of women who had gone into war work. Out of these she chose five representatives—three black, two white—all marvelously lively, intelligent, and articulate women who recall their experiences with a mixture of pleasant nostalgia and detached bitterness. The reminiscences are intercut with the realities of the period – old news, films, recruiting trailers, March of Time clips, and pop songs such as “Rosie the Riveter.” These often serve to highlight the disparities between how women were portrayed in wartime media and the actual experiences of these five women.