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In 1956, the Duke starred in an epic biopic about Genghis Khan called “The Conqueror”—a casting decision that probably qualifies as one of history’s greatest mistakes in and of itself. Personally, if we were cast as Genghis Khan in a film that required us to pretend Utah was the Gobi Desert and forced us to spout lines like, “I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, take her!,” we’re pretty sure the shame would kill us. Sadly, however, it was more than shame that killed dozens of people involved in the movie’s production.
Turns out, much of the filming for “The Conqueror” was done in Utah’s Snow Canyon, about 150 miles downwind from a U.S. nuclear testing facility.
Wayne, along with director Dick Powell, costars Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz, and Agnes Moorehead, and additional cast and crew members, lived in the shadow of this fallout for three months. The first signs of trouble cropped up in 1963 when Powell died of lymphoma and Armendáriz killed himself after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. More cancer deaths followed: Moorehead in 1974, Hayward in 1975, and John Wayne in 1979. Although the Duke’s passing was popularly attributed to his years of smoking, People magazine later muckraked records showing that no fewer than 91 of the 220 people who worked on “The Conqueror” had contracted cancer—and more than half of those had died.
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Comments (11)
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whoa! I’d never heard of that. Great post!
posted by Tricia on 7-29-2008 at 6:08 am
but, but… the duke is why I stopped smoking.
Guess its time to light em up.
posted by shambo on 7-29-2008 at 7:37 am
Wow, that was a good one…the post not what happened to all those people.
posted by Marty on 7-29-2008 at 8:31 am
I thought the History Channel had pretty much investigated this theory and proved that the prevailing winds and the level of fallout in the area was no where near the magnitude needed to cause cancer. I’ll do a search on the site but I would trust their investigation over People Magazines
posted by Don on 7-29-2008 at 9:44 am
Not sure if the causation is logic.
Given 100 average American back in 1956, how many will contract “cancer” (article doesn’t specifiy what types).
Of those who get Cancer, how many eventally die of their Cancer
I wonder how my of any outlier the movie cast data really is.
posted by Robert on 7-29-2008 at 9:50 am
I read about this in a Howard Hughes bio. He owned/ran RKO at the time and also had tons of government contracts. He knew about the nuclear testing yet said nothing about the sand he knew was being trucked in.
posted by Eden on 7-29-2008 at 10:37 am
Well at least it prevented them from making the planned sequel, “The Conqueror II – This Time It’s Personal”.
posted by Sheldon Siegel on 7-29-2008 at 10:55 am
Balderdash! This reads too much like a 1950s Civil Defense shockudrama to make us fear “the bomb”. Besides, when one has to quote People magazine as a source for anything there is a credibility issue. I would thinking sucking down 5 packs of cigarettes a day was enough to do in the Duke.
posted by Doug on 7-29-2008 at 11:03 am
Excellent post. I’d never heard this either, but the 91 out of 220 figure is a statistical anomaly that can’t be ignored.
A quick search turned up an interesting article from the Straight Dope website. The website link will take you to the entire article; here’s a piece:
“The movie was shot in the canyonlands around the Utah town of St. George. Filming was chaotic. The actors suffered in 120 degree heat, a black panther attempted to take a bite out of Susan Hayward, and a flash flood at one point just missed wiping out everybody. But the worst didn’t become apparent until long afterward. In 1953, the military had tested 11 atomic bombs at Yucca Flats, Nevada, which resulted in immense clouds of fallout floating downwind. Much of the deadly dust funneled into Snow Canyon, Utah, where a lot of The Conqueror was shot. The actors and crew were exposed to the stuff for 13 weeks, no doubt inhaling a fair amount of it in the process, and Hughes later shipped 60 tons of hot dirt back to Hollywood to use on a set for retakes, thus making things even worse.”
posted by gwdMaine on 7-29-2008 at 11:20 am
Ninety-one out of 220 is way, way anomalous. The average person’s chance of cancer is 1 in 8, meaning that only 25-30 people (assuming no other risk factors) should have been diagnosed. Even adding in smoking and other era-specific factors, the numbers are extremely high.
posted by Joanna on 7-29-2008 at 3:59 pm
Wow – never heard of this! Interesting.
posted by dawn on 8-9-2008 at 7:38 pm