GLOW

3.29 / 2012

‘Glow’ is loosely based on the story of the Radium Girls who worked at The Radium Dial Company, New Jersey in the 1920’s. Grace Fryer works with 70 other women at the factory, painting numerals on clock dials using luminous blue-green radium paint. They point their paintbrushes with their lips, unaware of the harmful effects of the contact with radium, (later discovered to be the cause of cancer in many of the women).

The film is dedicated to the five women who were dying from the effects of radium while they challenged the prevailing view of the 1920s, that radium was considered to be safe, even beneficial. As a result of the tribunal where the ‘Radium Girls’ won the case, employment laws were permanently altered, and for the first time allowed an individual the rights to sue a corporation.