Beverly D’Angelo Reflects on Playing Patsy Cline in ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’
Before she became known for her role as Ellen Griswold in the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies, Beverly D’Angelo delivered a memorable performance as country star Patsy Cline in the 1980 film Coal Miner’s Daughter, a biopic starring Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn.
And before D’Angelo was an actor, she was a singer.
D’Angelo recently told journalists at the TCA Summer Press Tour in Pasadena, California, “When I started singing, I sang with the legendary Ronnie Hawkins, who was a rockabilly before they came up with that name, in Canada. And he said, ‘You know, Bev, you should check out the Patsy Cline songbook.’ So I knew about those songs way and sang them way before I played Patsy Cline. I came to that movie as a singer more than an actor. I’d just started acting. I think it’s like the third movie I did. I sang my way into it. And so I would say that for me it was more like an homage. It wasn’t about trying to sound exactly like her. It was more to find like the similar resonances, and it was an actor’s journey for a singer. So it’s an homage I’d say, for me.”
Beverly D’Angelo as Patsy Cline in ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter.’ Courtesy Everett Collection
Known for hits like “Crazy,” “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “She’s Got You,” Cline had tremendous appeal outside of the country music genre.
“I think one thing that’s amazing that I believe is true, again, with the hindsight, is that it’s the audiences that made Patsy Cline considered to be a crossover. It was her audiences that listened to her and said this is more than just a country tune. This is more than just a country singer,” D’Angelo says.
In April, D’Angelo joined a number of great female musicians at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for the Walkin’ After Midnight: The Music of Patsy Cline tribute concert. That concert will air on PBS Nov. 22 as part of its Great Performances series.
Yee-haw! 🤠 @GPerfPBS has gone country in its new special “Patsy Cline Walkin’ After Midnight” coming November 22 on @PBS! 🌟 Filmed at the iconic @theRyman, this tribute concert features stars like Beverly D’Angelo, @Wynonna, Grace Potter, @MickeyGuyton, and more. #TCA24 pic.twitter.com/CG2lCQVOId
— PBS Communications (@PBS_PR) July 17, 2024
“I think that was one of her real gifts as an artist is that she really could take on any song and make it like her own song where you go there’s no other way to sing it. There’s no other way to phrase it,” D’Angelo says. “I know. I felt that at the tribute.”
Cline died in a plane crash March 5, 1963. She was 30 years old. She left behind not also an incredible catalog of timeless music, but a confidence that would go on to influence generations of women in music.
“She was womanly, and she was in charge,” D’Angelo says. “And you could just feel she was doing exactly what she wanted to do. That, I think, was very compelling.”
Remind 
Queens of Country
November 2019
Get your toes-tapping as we give a nod to the queens of classic country music.
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