The Dollmaker is a 1984 American made-for-television drama film starring Jane Fonda and based on the 1954 novel written by Harriette Arnow.

The film is the story of a family that moves from their rural home in Appalachia to Detroit, Michigan, where the father intends to find work in a factory.

Gertie is hesitant to leave their home; her husband Clovis believes that it will bring the family a regular income and better way of life.

What Gertie finds is a new place to exist, rather than live, and the family settles down in a tar paper shack by the railroad tracks in an industrial neighborhood.

The event that breaks Gertie's passivity to her situation is the death of her youngest daughter, who is killed by a railroad car.