Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Romance of Radium
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
- Original title
- Romance of Radium
- Language
- EN
- Country
- US
- Budget
- —
- Revenue
- —
CinemaSerf
Jun 29, 2025 · via TMDB
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.
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
Pete Smith
Narrator (voice)
André Cheron
Henri Antoine Becquerel (uncredited)
Emmett Vogan
Pierre Curie (uncredited)
Jacques Tourneur
Director
Pete Smith
Producer
Renewing Mikael
Why Won't You Dance?
Dying to Come Back
SHEUT
Harvey
Sana y salva
The Mess He Made
Tin
Undetectable
On the Path
Lie
A Lama from Ulaanbaatar
Girls Night Out
Vinterdag 1914
Failure
The Disease Has Taken the Farmhouse
The Female Side Effect
Beatus Ille
Listen
AI Junko
Safety
The Little Matchgirl
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Happiness
John Henry
Iron Jawed Angels
Radium Girls
Matriculated
K-19: The Widowmaker
Swiped
Brothers
Mr. Turner
RKO 281
Canvas
Firebrand
Prizefighter: The Life of Jem Belcher
The Girl
O.G.
Fire!
Genghis Khan
Oct 23, 1937
