Anyone wondering about the odds against the talents of three stars of varying personal style meshing for a movie with a message about working women can relax. With Nine to Five, Jane Fonda's got her third consecutive hit. Dolly Parton's made a lollapalooza maiden voyage into movies and Lily Tomlin's bounced back a winner. Stars don't get any brighter than Fonda. Easily one of the most famous (or infamous, depending upon your political views) women in the world, her life subdivides into relentless segments of worthy endeavors:

marriage to Tom Hayden (her second husband), mother to Vanessa and Troy, Oscar-winning producer/actress, political activist— and now owner/operator/instructor of an enormously successful Beverly Hills health spa that after only a year is expanding to new locations. Fonda's intense self-discipline, like that of her sometime co-star, Robert Redford, often represents her attempt to make meaningful the fame and fortune she's realized. For Fonda, Nine to Five—like Coming Home and China Syndrome, her previous productions—is not only a comedy

about the fantasies of female office workers, but a statement about equal pay for working women presented in an entertaining way. Nine to Five's director and co-author, Colin Higgins, laughingly laments, "Every time I'd try to insert a 'message" into the movie, Jane would say,'Cut it and keep the laughs.'" Sexual harassment is also a serious concern of the comedy. Fonda rest) calls that although the stature of her superstar father might have shielded her to an extent, one director proposed that the only way she would be cast in his film

was to prove that she was capable of achieving an orgasm. "Men can be real clever," Fonda says ruefully. "I didn't fall for it, but it disturbed me a lot. I cried myself to sleep for weeks. "Although I was never really a secretary," she adds. "I did work as a 'flunky' in several situations—and in one of them my boss, a man, wanted me to be his girlfriend. When I refused to be laid. I was laid off." For Fonda, the political visionary, secretaries are "the potent labor force in the'80s that won't be kneeling down to the George Meanys." Dolly Parton is known to carry a gun around her Tennessee home. Dead-serious

about sexual harassment, Parton insists that she's telling "the honest truth" when she says: "A lot of times I could have put myself into a position—if sex was what I was selling and that's the only way I could get a song sold. But my personality was always quick enough so i never would let anybody get me on the spot—or put themselves in too bad a situation. I never wanted to embarrass them, or to act like I was playing hard-to-get. Whenever i thought some guy's attention was getting out of hand, I'd always make a joke. "But I have been

treated with respect," she emphasizes (while acknowledging the Parton catalog of "big-boob" jokes)."because I respect myself. I present myself in a manner so that I don't leave myself open for men to come onto me. You'll always have people who do try something, but I'm lucky. I've got all my brothers and my dad and my uncles—plus I know how men are." For Lily Tomlin, who's Nine to Five's comic center, the problems of working women are a not-too-long-distant memory. Before she succeeded in Laugh-In the Detroiter worked in a variety of temp jobs, even doing accounting ("it paid much better"). Tomlin's recall invariably

includes memories of the clothes she was wearing—"I think," she says of one NY job, "I was wearing something very Village-y, still a beatnik. while everyone else was in teased hair. When I stayed late once, my boss— with whom I'd never exchanged 20 words—invited me into his office. It was the day of the Bay of Pigs." she specifies, presumably not meaning to make any other connection. "He told me an involved allegorical story and then, when I didn't see the connection, asked: "Do you want to make love?' I said no, and he said he'd see me in the office. "But I did have a terrific experience with George Schlatter,

the Laugh-In producer. He has a great sense of humor about himself. Some sex harassment is very subtle. George and Peter Sellers and I were doing a show and we were discussing a skit. Peter went in and talked to George in his office. Then I came in; I thought some line of dialogue should be changed because it was sexist. George pulled me down on his lap and tried to pacify me. I said, "I want you to call Peter back in here, hold his hand and put him on your lap. He'd never think of treating Peter any way but professionally, yet men instinctively do these things without being conscious of them."