The Peculiar Truth about the Movie that Caused Cancer

• Howard Hughes ran RKO Pictures in Hollywood, and he wanted a movie blockbuster. So he produced a historical epic about the great Asian leader Genghis Khan. The project was titled The Conqueror. Actor/director Dick Powell was hired to helm the picture.
• Actors considered for the lead role included Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner. However, the producers made an odd casting choice to play the Mongol legend — All-American cowboy figure John Wayne. There was nothing remotely Asian about him.
• On the first day of rehearsal, he showed up drunk. The dialogue was stilted and unnatural. Wayne hated it, couldn’t recite much of it, and spoke in his famous drawl, not even attempting to sound or seem Mongolian. He supposedly drank heavily throughout the entire production.
• John Wayne wasn’t the only culturally inappropriate casting decision. Susan Hayward was a famous Hollywood actress known for her red hair. Yet she, too, was cast as an Asian. No attempt was made to alter her appearance, though. She wouldn’t permit it.
• Mexican/American actor Pedro Armendariz had third billing as Khan’s military leader, but his Latino accent kept slipping out.
• Agnes Moorehead played Khan’s mother despite being only seven years older than John Wayne.
• Also in the film were respected Hollywood actors Lee Van Cleef and Joseph Conrad. They portrayed Mongols as well, despite having no such characteristics.
• Exterior filming took place in rural St. George, Utah located 100–150 miles downwind of nuclear test sites.
• The US military detonated hundreds of atomic bombs in southern Nevada during the 1950s. The fallout from the enormous mushroom clouds sent radioactive particles on the eastbound winds — straight toward St. George.
• Filming for The Conqueror included a great deal of horseback riding in the desert that constantly kicked up sand. Actors and crew were often coated in dust.
• When the production moved from the exteriors of Utah to the RKO sound stages in LA, Howard Hughes insisted that tons of desert sand be transported, too, to match outdoor scenes.
• No one realized the dirt was radioactive.
• 1956: The Conqueror hit theaters. John Wayne hated it. Critics hated it. Audiences saw it anyway, but not in great numbers. Financially, Howard Hughes broke even. Not a hit, not a flop.
• Back in rural Utah, farm animals became deformed and died in droves. Dairy cows produced milk that sickened children. Some died. Cancer became far too prevalent in the community. The government assured citizens that bomb fallout was not the cause.
• An invisible dragon was slaying St. George. It attacked the film’s actors, too.
• 1962: Dick Powell contracted cancer of the lymph nodes. He was the first member of the film production to die.
• Pedro Armendariz appeared in the James Bond movie From Russia With Love while battling terminal cancer. Shortly after filming, he took his own life.
• John Wayne’s cancer developed in 1964. One of his lungs was surgically removed. He survived but later died from stomach cancer in 1979.
• Susan Hayward battled brain cancer until 1974. She made her last public appearance at the Oscars and died weeks later.
• Agnes Moorhead developed uterine cancer. She died at age 67.
• Forty percent of the cast and crew got cancer. Many of them regretted ever appearing in The Conqueror.
• Howard Hughes became a recluse in Las Vegas. He reclaimed every copy of the film and took it out of circulation. No one ever determined why, although some speculated he suffered a guilty conscience.
• Howard Hughes never made another motion picture.

Dan publishes ‘The Peculiar Truth’ every Tuesday. His newest novel is The Valley of Fire.