Romance of Radium

Unrated

10/23/193710m

Theatrical Release (US)

Overview:

Romance of Radium is a 1937 American short film directed by Jacques Tourneur, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This short film tells the story of the discovery of radium and how it is used in medicine. In 1937, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject (One-Reel) at the 10th Academy Awards

Director:

Jacques Tourneur

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$0.00

Key words:

radium
short film

Cast

Pete Smith

~ as ~

Narrator (voice)

Margaret Bert

~ as ~

Nurse (uncredited)

André Cheron

~ as ~

Henri Antoine Becquerel (uncredited)

James Conaty

~ as ~

American Scientist (uncredited)

Eddie Hart

~ as ~

Photographer (uncredited)

Emmett Vogan

~ as ~

Pierre Curie (uncredited)

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

CinemaSerf
Written 6 day(s) ago
6
It’s odd to hear Pete Smith delivering a more straight narrative, but he does it quite authoritatively as we see a few historical scenarios that illustrate just how the accidental discovery of an element that glowed in the dark led Marie Curie to discover this highly toxic element that was amongst the rarest on earth. It needed a mammoth degree of refining from it’s source ore to yield the tiniest amount of it’s salt but this process revealed, somewhat miraculously, that despite it’s lethal qualities it also had remarkable curative powers, too! It’s quite a revelatory short feature this that demonstrates just how much luck and sheer determination, especially at times in history when technology didn’t exist, was involved and the significant levels of danger faced by those who experimented with this newfound chemical. Indeed, throughout it’s development there were many fatalities amongst the scientific community as the potential of radium was explored. Many of these science features can be terribly dry and uninteresting, but this one stays quite watchable for ten minutes.