The Radium Girl

Researcher's Summary:

The ‘Radium Girl Revue’ was a novelty revue presented by the company of British theatrical producer, George Foster in theatres between November 1915 and September 1916. The revue was staged at (amongst many more) the Victoria Palace in London, the Stratford Empire, the Empire, Wigan and at the London Coliseum. The play was based on a book written by Worton David with lyrics by A J Mills and music by Benet Scott. The central character is Zigani, a fraudulent Egyptian fortune teller from New York City. The action starts when a couple seeks Zigani’s advice as they are about to get married. The fortune teller (who had been bribed by Slick Sal, a jealous rival for the affection of the male character) warns the fiancé about her betrothed’s shady past leading to a split. Zigani quickly repents his involvement in their devastating breakup and resolves to bring them back together. Not content with this plotline Zigani also has an announcement to make: ‘a life-giving fluid – a kind of radium that will electrify the whole world.’ And the thing he wants to do with this discovery is to turn ‘Miss Innocent Lamb’ into a new kind of revue artist. Miss Innocent Lamb, a simple country girl, is persuaded to go along with the plan and drinks his ‘marvellous fluid.’ Here the script is rather intriguing: ‘She drinks. Gong. Black out. Radium effect during which she is seen wakening to life.’ It isn’t clear what the radium effect was. She wakes up and sings the song ‘The Radium Girl’. The treatment also causes her to go rather wild in the pursuit of pleasure and dancing and she creates a great deal of mischief for everyone. The final scene (each scene was described as a ‘scintillation’ which is term used to describe a flash of light produced in some materials when it absorbs ionizing radiation) is at The Radium Ball. Again little evidence survives to say what that involved in terms of staging but the Coventry Evening Telegraph described it as being in black and white. Whilst little evidence has been unearthed about The Radium Girl Revue in Britain it is possible that its staging was influenced by the Ziegfeld Follies of 1915 which ran for a total of 105 performances at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway between 21 June and 18 September 1815. Here the song ‘My Radium Girl’ was performed by Charles Purcell and the Radium Girls and the scene was set in ‘Radiumland’. Surviving material makes clear that this scene was a black background contrasting against the actor’s white clothes to create a black and white effect. It is tempting to suggest that The Radium Ball of the British production was based on a similar arrangement. The Radium Girl Revue was described by the Lord Chamberlain Office as a ‘lively but utter nonsensical revue’ and based on the script that seems a rather fair assessment.