Radium Girls: Those Who Glow in Death - Complete Film History Research Paper - by Samantha Gonzalez - English 110

 

Samantha Gonzalez

English 110

Mr. Lewenstein

1  February 2022

 

 

Radium Girls: Those Who Glow in Death

    In the film Radium Girls women decided to sue the company and ban the use or production of radium. These women were being lied to and gaslit about a product that shortened their lives. And even after the real information was brought to light, the radium company denied any knowledge even though they had plenty of hidden research about the dangers of radium. At first,radium had been used to cure cancer patients with the radiation it contained. As time passed, people used radium as a health benefit and regularly used it for everyday products such as face cream and toothpaste. The Radium Girls painted wristwatches every day to make the dials glow and made a cent for each dial. However, people ended up overstimulating their bodies to the radium which caused irregular blood tests. Radium had many different types of symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, bloody vomit, anemia, cancer, cataracts, abscesses in the mouth, and reduced bone growth. Even after many women had come forward about their illness and how radium affected them, people either did not believe what they said or did not care enough to help them. They couldn’t leave their jobs because they would end up with no money. They were stuck between doing what’s best for their family and doing what’s best for their livelihood. The Radium Girls have been glossed over in America’s labor history after so many people had been affected by radium. It’s important for people to know about this awful moment in history so that it doesn’t happen again and no one is left unheard.

    In the 1900s, radium had been discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie. It was used to cure cancer patients and was given to the public as a miracle medicine. People were enamored by the beautiful glow radium had used it to “lighten up” their lives. The radium companies used radium to make the dials on wristwatches glow in the dark. Most of the workers were female and were exposed to radium every day for two decades. In the 1920s, these female workers became ill due to the radium they had ingested and died after a couple of years. Catherine Donohue, a former radium worker, fought for a full decade until radium was finally banned. At Catherine’s funeral, the girls that worked with her and also had radium poisoning said their last goodbyes. David

Robson remarks, “The scene brought to mind the words of ancient gladiators in glorious Rome: Moritamor te salutamus - we who are about to die salute you,"(Daily Express). This last message holds a greater meaning when read with a different mindset. These women had been suffering for many years with no solution to their illness. Many doctors had misdiagnosed embarrassing diseases to shame them or to keep women quiet. After so many years of neglect, they were finally being heard thanks to Catherine Donohue’s devotion to banning radium. In their final years of life, they salute the one person listening to their pain.

 

    What did the Radium Girls suffer through when they were poisoned? Why did the Radium companies try to cover it up? During the 1920s, money was very hard to come by and radium companies made a lot of money thanks to the element radium. When the female employees first discovered their illnesses, their beginning symptoms were dizziness, bloody vomit, hair loss, and fatigue. These symptoms began to worsen and would shortly pass away.  At first, doctors believed the cause to be the phosphorus in the mixture but they found no phosphorus in their bodies. Although these women became incredibly ill with terrible symptoms of radium poisoning, the companies they worked for denied the accusations in order to avoid lawsuits and bankruptcy.

 

    Radium caused many people, specifically radium female workers, to die due to radium poisoning. The article named The radium girls: Painting luminous dials on clock faces was easy work in 1920s America but a new book shows the terrible price female workers paid mainly focused on Catherine Donohue and many female employees that worked in any radium dial company. The article also briefly talks about Marie and Pierre Curie which discovered radium. The article concentrates on what happened to the women that were exposed to radium during their time working at these radium-filled companies. They also elaborate on how Catherine and Tom Donohue fought radium companies to ban the use and consumption of radium products. The discovery of radium was first founded in 1907 by Marie and Pierre Curie to “cure” cancer patients. Companies for commercial use of radium started in 1917. Somewhere around the1920s, reports of radium poisoning started to rise as more radium workers became ill. It wasn’t until October 23, 1939, that radium was finally banned. Catherine fought “...the case went all theway to the Supreme Court before it was won,” (Robson). We don’t know where radium was found.

 

     The first company Radium Luminous Materials Corporation started in Newark,New Jersey. The company Catherine worked in was at Radium Dial Company of Ottawa,Illinois. This article not only depicts the harm radium caused to the female employees but also shows the discrimination against these women. The women were slowly dying and thec ompanies consistently lied about the facts. The public depicted them as delusional and their illness was due to something else. We are almost certain that if the roles were flipped, everyone would agree that radium was bad and should be banned. After reports were published about the radiation in radium being used to treat cancer patients, people began to believe that radium was a miracle cure and could cure any illness. People were also fascinated by the fact that radium could glow in the dark. People reported that after taking radium, they felt more relaxed and happy.

 

    However, these people had no idea that radium could disintegrate the bones from their jaws and kill them within 5 years. Chronically ill is the inability of a licensed health care practitioner to perform his/her duties (without substantial assistance from another individual). It can happen in a slow amount of time such as cancer or can be born chronically ill. There is a spectrum of chronic illness and can be different for every person. It can be very painful and embarrassing to be chronically ill because they are stripped from their independence, freedom, and privacy. Many tasks that are deemed simple are painful and completely unable to be done which can be very frustrating. A personal example of someone who was chronically ill was my grandpa. He had developed

arthritis into his late 70s and he had trouble holding things or walking on his own. He had become so ill that he had to stay at a hospital with constant pain. He passed away due to this chronic disease. Being chronically ill can be controlled but can never be cured and is a daily struggle with symptoms that shorten people’s life expectancy. Bessie Cavallo in the movie "Radium Girls" works hard to help the people she loves. Bessie is often seen as clueless and less responsible. People often try to keep Bessie quiet and often tell her off.

 

    People don’t believe in what Bessie stands for and she is often left to stand for herself by herself. After Bessie’s sister was diagnosed with radium necrosis, she made it her mission to inform others about the dangers of radium. In addition to informing her former  colleagues at the radium company, she sues the radium company for endangering their employees. Something Bessie should have considered before dealing with the lawsuit was the backlash she would have from the public. People believed radium to be a safe element and was even used to “cure” people. In the film, we see people harassing Bessie for her allegations by throwing bricks at her window and calling her names. A high point in the movie was when she tried to use the man who discovered radium as a witness of hidden research. However, this man lied to the jury and said they had nothing to do with any knowledge of radium’s danger. This caused people to question Bessie’s statement and caused her to be at risk of losing the case. Bessie does her best to sue the radium company because she has seen the effects radium does on someone's body. Bessie's sister Josephine is slowly dying due to radium necrosis and there is nothing she can do for her sister. All she can do now is avoid others from going through the same thing her sister is going through. Bessie Cavallo is hard-headed and a very determined person. Even after she had been offered enough money to support her family to keep her quiet, she declined it because she is determined to stop the radium company from hurting any more employees and/or customers. She doesn't think about her decisions thoroughly in the movie. She randomly quits her job with no backup plan and is left with no income. Her family has no job and is rapidly losing funds for the lawsuit. She also asks a witness to the stand that later backfires against her.

    

    Although she had little power, she did everything she could to get rid of radium. The ingestion of radium caused many physical issues to the female employees. Before the first day of court, Josephine is getting ready in front of the mirror. Bessie just finished eating and calls out to Josephine and said, “Jo, will you be ready in five minutes? I don’t want to be late for our first day of court.” She lightly touched her cheek when suddenly she started to feel a pain in her jaw. She spits out a piece of her jaw along with blood. She is immediately sent to the hospital leaving Bessie alone. This scene closely compares to a real-life situation that Mollie Maggia went through. She didn’t know how serious her injuries were until she had taken a piece of her jawbone that had been spit out onto her hands. After she had gone to her doctor, more of her jawbone was removed with a small touch from the dentist. Mollie was one of the first radium girls to die from radium poisoning at the age of 24 years old. Similar to the movie, Mollie was also wrongly diagnosed with syphilis making it hard for her to talk about her symptoms. However, unlike the movie, Mollie’s jawbone fell out before she knew the dangers of radium poisoning. Although the name from the movie is not the same as the real people, the real-like situations are true to the story. The radium harmed those who used it. Not only did bones disintegrate, but people also started feeling nauseous and dizzy. The movie does a good job of displaying the symptoms of radium poisoning and of what could happen to the workers.

 

    The movie critic Roxana Hadadi liked that the directors had a great idea to bring to light the moment in America’s labor history that is rarely talked about. However, she believes that the movie itself lacks a lot of potential. According to Roxana Hadadi, the fact that the focus was mainly on the sisters’ lives creates a distracting interruption. Many of the added films from the 1920s had no context that didn’t add to what was happening in the movie and lacked a lot of facts that could have enhanced the movie. In addition, they didn’t use the story of a real-life person or names that are historically accurate. Roxana Hadadi concludes this article with what she liked and did not like about the movie including the resurfacing of a great moment in labor history. She specifically directed this article to people who have never seen the movie, want to know what type of movie “Radium Girls” is, and do not know what happened during that time. She does a very good job at explaining the historical facts about radium and what happens during the movie. In my opinion, she holds some bias because as a woman, she could better understand what the woman went through, however she is direct on what could be improved in the film itself. As much as I did enjoy the movie, I do agree with Hadadi that the story could have been broader. The directors lacked any prior information on how radium was found or how it became so popular. They also could have branched out to focus on not only one family that was affected by radium.

 

Works Cited

BEHE, REGE. "'Radium Girls' improved workers' rights." Tribune-Review / Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, May 28, 2017. ProQuest,
https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/radium-girls-improved-workers-rights-women-who/docvi ew/1903044630/se-2?accountid=38876.

Grady, Denise. "A Glow in the Dark, and a Lesson in Scientific Peril." New York Times, Oct 06, 1998, pp. 4. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/glow-dark-lesson-scientific-peril/docview/431065973/se-
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Hughes, Kathryn. "DRIP, DRIP, DRIP, ...agony of the Radium Girls." Mail on Sunday, Jun 26, 2016, pp. 34. ProQuest,
https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/drip-agony-radium-girls/docview/1799430751/se-2?acco untid=38876.

Robson, David. "The radium girls: Painting luminous dials on clock faces was easy work in 1920s America but a new book shows the terrible price female workers paid." Daily Express, Jun 30, 2016, pp. 13. ProQuest,
https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/radium-girls/docview/1800398831/se-2?accountid=3887.

Radium Girls. Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler. Cine Mosaic Productions 2018

Vaughan, Don. “Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought for Their Lives in a Killer Workplace.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2011,
https://www.britannica.com/story/radium-girls-the-women-who-fought-for-their-lives-in-a-killer-workplace.