Comments on: The Mistake That Killed John Wayne

By: dawn

dawn — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:38:23 +0000

Wow – never heard of this! Interesting.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:59:39 +0000

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.

By: gwdMaine

gwdMaine — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:20:36 +0000

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.”

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:03:09 +0000

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.

By: Sheldon Siegel

Sheldon Siegel — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:55:11 +0000

Well at least it prevented them from making the planned sequel, “The Conqueror II – This Time It’s Personal”.

By: Eden

Eden — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:37:01 +0000

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.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:50:46 +0000

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.

By: Don

Don — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:44:59 +0000

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

By: Marty

Marty — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:31:55 +0000

Wow, that was a good one…the post not what happened to all those people.

By: shambo

shambo — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:37:20 +0000

but, but… the duke is why I stopped smoking.

Guess its time to light em up.