Radium Girls

Posted by PREYASIKUMAR on November 4, 2017 / PREYASI'S AP BIO EXPEDITION

October 20th was the opening night for Tri-School’s — Mercy, Notre Dame, and Serra — fall production of Radium Girls, and my friends and I immediately bought tickets when we first heard about this. Learning that some of my good friends were involved with this production made me even more excited to watch the play! To name a few, Keira Cruickshank played the lead role of Grace Fryer; Klara La Guardia and Grace Tillman played Fryer’s two closest friends, Kathryn Schaub and Irene Rudolph respectively; Gabby Fanucchi played Diane Roeder, and Hillary Tighe played Roeder’s daughter Harriet.

Radium Girls is based on a true story of young women who died from radium 

poisoning in the 1920s after Marie Curie’s discovery of this element, which she called “my beautiful radium”. Radium was initially thought to be a “miracle cure” for any disease or sickness. For example, applying radium salts to tumors would shrink the cancer, leading to radium therapy; radium was put in facial creams to rejuvenate the skin, and people from all around the world wanted to get a hold of it.

Radium was turned into glow in the dark paint, which was used on the dials of watches used by the military in WWI. They were painted by young working-class girls in dial painting studios for the U.S. Radium Corporation. This job paid more than three times the average factory job, so the girls were earning much more than their husbands and fathers back then. In order to get the tip of their paint brushes just right, the girls were instructed to point them between their lips before painting the 

numbers on the watches. Later on, some of the girls began to fall sick, and their faces began to rot, and they weren’t able to understand what was going on. Why was this happening?

The protagonist Grace Fryer, portrayed by Keira, Mrs. Girard’s daughter, pieced everything together and realized that the girls were dying due to the radium in the paint. Many of the sick women did not want to take their pleas to court for fear that they would lose their jobs and their complaints against the U.S. Radium Corporation. However after watching her closest friends’ lives painfully deteriorate before her eyes, Grace was determined to bring justice to all the girls suffering from radium poisoning. Grace faced many hardships, and through her persistent efforts over the course of several years, she was finally able to win the case. She later died horribly, yet happily, knowing that she was able to save the lives of hundreds of other girls who suffered as she and her friends did.

(Pictured above: Illustration published to raise awareness of the dangerous effects of the poison the dial painters were ingesting, radium)

I thoroughly enjoyed the show! I loved watching my friends act in the play. The actors portrayed their characters really well, and the entire production was put together beautifully. This play is so passionate and powerful; I was overcome with emotion as I was transported right into the story. I felt the pain of Grace Fryer as she fought her battles against the poisoning and the corporation; I felt the hopelessness of Kathryn Schaub, who was only trying to help her dying friend, but was met with skepticism from doctors and others she contacted; I felt the anger of Arthur Roeder, who was trying to save his company but could not deny the reality of the radium; and so much more. It was so interesting to learn more about the radioactive element, and to see what the girls had to go through at the time. I understood the power these big corporations have, how they manipulate the public, and go to extreme measures to hide their flaws or any complaints filed against them. I learned how quickly and easily life could change, and I was inspired by Grace’s perseverance through her struggle. I can’t wait to discuss and learn more about this in class!

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Works Cited:

“The Radium Girls – Still Glowing in Their Coffins.” The Spectator, 8 May 2017, http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/the-radium-girls-still-glowing-in-their-coffins/.