“Radium City,” directed by Carole Langer, came out in 1987, and in 2017, London-based author Kate Moore published a nonfiction book about the women who labored in dial-painting factories in both New Jersey and Ottawa, Illinois.
The release of “Radium Girls” brings the story of the real-life dial-painters-whose courageous actions laid the groundwork for worker protections in the United States-to the big screen, though it has been told in documentary and book form before. The Cavallo sisters, along with other dial painters who have fallen ill, take the company to court on behalf of Jo and the other women who have become sickened by ingesting radium. The cause, they eventually figure out, is radium, a finding American Radium vehemently denies despite having research to the contrary. Set in 1925, the movie stars Joey King and Abby Quinn as Bessie and Jo Cavallo, composite characters inspired in part by three real-life sisters who worked in the dial-painting factory in Orange, New Jersey: Quinta Maggia McDonald, Albina Maggia Larice and Amelia “Mollie” Maggia, who was the first dial-painter to die when she passed in September 1922.īessie, an aspiring actress, and Jo, who wants to be an archeologist, are employees of the fictional American Radium Factory whose dreams are derailed when Jo falls ill.
New York-The story of the women who were sickened painting watch and clock dials with radioactive glow-in-the-dark paint in the early 20th century is being retold in a feature film.ĭirected by Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler, “Radium Girls” opens Friday in select theaters and also can be screened virtually.
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