The
Conqueror is one of those legendary cursed Hollywood movies.
It was a bad idea from the start. The brain child of eccentric billionaire
and aviator Howard Hughes, the historical
epic cast John Wayne as Temujin aka Genghis
Khan. It was doomed for failure.
Box office crash
and critical derision aside, The Conqueror
has a more troubling legacy. Its main players seemed to kick the bucket
early. Veteran character actors Pedro Armendariz
(suicide) and Lee Van Cleef (natural causes)
were causalities. However it was the deaths of the three leads and its
actor turned director that raised eyebrows. Susan Hayward,
Dick Powell, Agnes Moorehead
and the duke himself, John Wayne, all died
from cancer.
Was this a macabre
coincidence or was there some other factor? Something that not only
affected the cast and crew of the movie, but involved everyone in the
southern Utah area it was filmed
In 1954 St. George
buzzed. Two hundred cast and crew members had arrived to begin work
on the big budget Hollywood feature. Hughes had decided to film the
epic story of Genghis Khan under the aegis of his recently acquired
RKO studios and the dusty climes of southern Utah would fill in nicely
for Mongolia.
The rural Utah
townsfolk weren't use to having such tinsel-town luminaries invade their
drab agricultural lives. Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendariz, Dick Powell
(the director) and John Wayne would be hanging with the
commoners. Hollywood dollars would be flowing into the small community.
It took the town's mind off of other problems that had sprung up recently.
Atomic
Bombs and Dead Sheep
Local prospectors
had been reporting finds on their geiger counters that indicated large
caches of uranium. The problem was that once they began digging, the
uranium never turned up. Also, local ranchers had been suffering a spate
of mysterious livestock deaths.
 |
| The
"Dirty Harry" bomb. A 32 kiloton device exploded May 19,
1953. This is the bomb suspected of tainting "The Conqueror"
location in Snow Canyon. |
Many suspected
it may be due to the atomic bomb tests a short distance away at Yucca
Flats in Nevada. However, the feds assured locals the tests were perfectly
safe. Any fallout would be minimal and dissipate quickly. And everyone
knows the government would never lie to its own citizens. That would
be unethical.
On may 19, 1953
the Atomic Energy Commission set off "Dirty Harry,"
a 32 kiloton nuclear device about 100 miles away from St. George. The
bomb was one of 126 test fired on the Nevada range from 1951 to 1963.
Unfortunately for Cedar City and St. George residents, the winds were
particularly bad for this test. What no officials admitted was that
St. George had been pummeled by 1230 times the permissible fallout
level and had stayed that way for an alarming 16 days! Sheep begin
to die. Cattleman were alarmed. The AEC gave Utah Congressman Douglas
Stringfellow a tour of the 1350 square mile test site.
Good lackey that he was, Stringfellow told residents the tests posed
no danger to the citizens of southern Utah. We had to keep the world
safe from Communism.
When producers
considered shooting The Conqueror in southern Utah they were
concerned about about nuclear fallout. Government experts assured Powell
and the producers that radiation levels were safe. The script called
for several giant battle scenes. Electric fans were set up to insure
the fight scenes had a certain dusty, wind-blown realism. The film-makers
certainly did not want blast their cast and extras with irradiated dirt.
Hayward brought
her nine-year-old twins. Wayne arrived with his two sons, Michael
and Patrick. The shooting schedule called for almost daily
battles. Cast and extras rolled in the dirt, and were hit by dust clouds
from the giant wind machines. It was such a constant that the food provided
by craft services (a kind of traveling cafe for the crew) was coated
with dust. That damned dirt got everywhere.
Because the government
had given the area its seal of approval, no one worried about what
the soil, that seemed to work its way into the hair, clothing and
bodies of everyone working on the film, contained. Strontium 90,
cesium 137, radio iodine, and plutonium were just not things one
considered while making a Hollywood blockbuster.
There were still
some shots needed to complete the movie after shooting in St. George
finished. To match the location shots, Hughes shipped over 60 tons of
Utah dirt to Hollywood, contaminating some Los Angeles studio.
The premiere of
The Conqueror unfolded before the unbelieving eyes of the nation.
The critics hooted at the laughable spectacle of John Wayne posturing
as the tartar warlord. Filmgoers stayed away in droves. Hughes, indignant
at the philistines reaction to his epic, pulled the movie from theaters.
The film remained unseen except by the crazed aviator. Hughes, in his
madness and hidden from the world, sat in his secluded Las Vegas sanctuary
screening the movie on an almost daily basis.
So that's how it
would have remained; a forgotten, ill-conceived movie vaguely remembered
by the unlucky few who had forced themselves to sit through it during
its initial release. A single blemish in the fifties during the golden
age of John Wayne. However, twenty-five years after its making, certain
information would come before the public that would bring The Conqueror
back into the limelight. Facts that showed the fallout (literally) from
The Conqueror went tragically far beyond the simple consequences
of a truly bad movie.
Folks
Start Dying
 |
Pedro Armendariz |
Pedro Armendariz
had been a familiar face to Americans for many years. He had co-starred
with John Wayne in the Three Godfathers and Fort
Apache.
He was also a bone fide star in his native Mexico. Early in June 1963,
Armendariz had finished shooting one of his most memorable roles
as Karim Bey in the second James Bond movie From Russia With
Love. He
was guest of honor at a June 9 party given by the film producers. Nine
days later, Armendariz shot himself in his bed at the UCLA Medical
Center. The actor had committed suicide rather than face a protracted
death from lymph cancer. Armendariz had also co-starred with
John Wayne in
The Conqueror.
His was not the
first cancer death related to the film. Six months earlier, Dick
Powell had succumbed to stomach cancer. The popular actor had served
as director on The Conqueror. He was producing the popular
TV show that bore his name at the time.
Many deaths were
to follow. Agnes Moorehead died of uterine cancer in 1974.
Susan Hayward contracted brain and lung cancer in 1972. She
would battle the disease until finally dying in 1975.
 |
Susan Hayward |
John Wayne
spent
many years battling lung cancer. He had his first cancer operation in
1964. Having thought he beat "the big C," the Duke would go
onto to make films for a decade and a half. Ironically, his last film
was "The Shootist." Made in 1976, it was the story
of an aging gunfighter who discovers he has cancer. Wayne finally gave
up the ghost on June 11, 1979, the last of the major players from "The
Conqueror."
At first, no one
gave these deaths a second thought. Wayne had smoked four packs
of unfiltered Camels a day, while Hayward had a two-pack-a-day habit.
However, the release of AEC documents through the Freedom of Information
Act shed more light on the cause of all these cancer deaths.
The southern Utahn
downwinders suit against the AEC caused people to take a second look
at "The Conqueror." A 1980 report revealed 91 crew
members had contracted cancer, about half of them had died from the
disease. This didn't take into account the indian extras that had subbed
for the Mongol horde. No one has ever studied their cancer death rate.
Twenty-six years
after its making, "The Conqueror" was back in the news.
Did
Utah Kill John Wayne?
 |
The Duke |
Is the beehive
state responsible for John Wayne's death? Certainly, its irradiated
dirt may have had something to do with it. But if Utah is the killer,
it has plenty of accomplices.
Howard Hughes is
a major suspect. Memos from Hughes seem to indicate that he was aware
of the risks of shooting in the shadow of Nevada's Yucca Flats testing
range. Many theorize the guilt he felt from that film may have contributed
to his paranoia over the Nevada atomic bomb tests. Hughes was a vigorous
opponent of the tests and spent considerable cash to get them stopped.
He was one of the bigger thorns in the AEC's side.
R.J. Reynolds shoulders
a large portion of the blame. Four packs of cigs per day couldn't have
helped the Duke's health.
The Atomic Energy
Commission may be the main villain in all of this. They spent years
covering up any culpability in the alarming cancer rates around the
Yucca Flats test range. They have only ever accepted a grudging responsibility
for the epic suffering of Nevada and Utah downwinders despite overwhelming
evidence of the sickness and death the tests caused. Over 15,000 cancer
deaths could be related to the 11 years of open air atomic bomb tests
in Nevada, according to a recent Department of Health report. Another
20,000 non-fatal cancer cases may also be related.
The toll was not
only among the stars of "The Conqueror." Wayne's
sons, Michael and Patrick also developed health problems that may be
related to the tests. Patrick had a benign tumor removed and Michael
suffered, but recovered from skin cancer. Both were instrumental in
setting up the John Wayne Cancer Institute. On April 5, 2003,
Michael Wayne died following a operation. He had the disease Lupus.
"The Conqueror" death toll keeps mounting.
