48: "The Conqueror” - The Most Lethal Film of All Time?

Born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, on May 26, 1907, movie actor John Wayne had one of the most extraordinary film careers of all time. During his half-century in the movies (1926-1976), he either appeared or starred in 184 pictures. While certainly not a record (that belongs to Bess Flowers, the “Queen of the Dress Extras” who appeared in a whopping 1,124 films), Wayne held another, far more significant record: appearing in at least one film for 50 straight years. (Actually, he did not act in a movie in 1975, though both Brannigan and Rooster Cogburn were released in that year. Starting as a prop schlepper on Tom Mix films (along with his lifelong best friend and fellow USC football star Ward Bond) Wayne first appeared as an extra in the 1926 MGM silent film Brown of Harvard, starring Mary Pickford’s brother Jack and William Haines . . . two major stars of the day. During Wayne’s formative years learning the ropes, an up-and-coming director on the Fox lot named John (Jack) Ford kept his eye on the young Hawkeye, thinking that some day he might become a star. When, in 1930, the then 23-year-old Wayne jumped ship and starred in an expensive Western called The Big Trail, directed by Ford’s nemesis, Raoul Walsh, Ford washed his hands of Wayne . . . thus beginning 9 years of cinematic exile in which John Wayne played everything from singing cowboys (“Singing Sandy” to gigolos and pirates. In Ford’s mind, the problem with The Big Trail was not only that Walsh directed the film; it also showed in no uncertain terms that Wayne’s horse (“Duke”) was a better actor than John Wayne. The film was also a total flop at the box office, which didn’t help.

From 1931 - the year after “The Big Trail” - until 1939 (when Wayne finally became a star playing “The Ringo Kid” in John Ford’s classic Western Stagecoach), Wayne worked his tail off trying to learn his craft and get back in Ford’s good graces. He made 6 movies in 1931, 11 in 1932, 11 in 1933, 9 in 1934, 8 in 1935, 7 in 1936, 5 in 1937, 4 in 1938, and 5 in 1939, the first of which was Ford’s Stagecoach. With the coming of WWII, Wayne traded in a horse for a tank and went off to single-handedly fight the Germans and the Japanese. By this point, he was a big box office star and becoming well-known for his outspoken arch-conservatism. And yet, he had no problem costarring in films with the likes of Henry Fonda (Fort Apache) and Kirk Douglas (The War Wagon, In Harm’s Way, and Cast a Giant Shadow), both of whom were outspoken liberal Democrats. Both Fonda and Douglas came to the same understanding with The Duke: never, ever discuss politics with him.

In a career that spans a half-century and 184 films, John Wayne obviously made more than his share of stinkers and cinematic bombs - and often for bottom-of-the-barrel film companies. Perhaps the worst, most ghastly of these atrocities was the 1956 Howard Hughes-produced abomination, The Conqueror. Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendariz, Agnes Moorehead, and a very young Lee Van Cleef, and directed by Dick Powell, The Conqueror tells the story of Mongol chief Temulin, who battles Tartar armies, falls in love with the Tartar princess Bortal, and eventually becomes the emperor Genghis Khan. Producer Hughes (1905-1976) was a billionaire businessman, film producer, director, noted hypochondriac, and world-class eccentric. At one time, he was considered a gifted producer/director, best known for Two Arabian Knights (1927), Hell’s Angels (1930), The Front Page (1931), and the original Scarface (1932). But as he aged, his films became far less frequent, overly costly, off-the-wall, and just plain awful. With 1956’s The Conqueror, he hit rock bottom; he would only make one more film after that: 1957’s Jet Pilot, for which he refused to take a credit. (Actually, the film had been made in the late 1940s but withheld from circulation for nearly a decade.)

John Wayne Holding a Geiger Counter in the Desert

Hughes’ bomb of a picture was shot in the Escalante Desert near St. George, Utah, which was 137 miles downwind from the United States government’s Nevada National Security Site and received the brunt of nuclear fallout from atomic weapons testing in the early 1950s. It turns out that three years before The Conqueror began production (1953), 11 above-ground nuclear weapon tests occurred at the Nevada test site as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole, the ninth series of atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission. Although the area was contaminated by nuclear fallout, the Atomic Energy Commission assured Hughes and the local population that the area was completely safe. Photographs exist of John Wayne holding a Geiger counter that reportedly made so much noise that he thought it was broken. After location shooting, Howard Hughes shipped over 60 tons of contaminated soil back to Hollywood in order to match the interior shooting done there.

Over the next 30 years, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members developed cancer. Forty-six died: Among the deceased were:

John Wayne, who passed away at age 72 from respiratory arrest and gastric cancer.
Nicknamed “The Brooklyn Bombshell,” Susan Hayward, once one of Hollywood’s biggest female stars, Hayward (born Edythe Marrenner), succumbed to brain cancer at age 57 on March 14, 1975.
Pedro Armendáriz, a legendary Mexican star known as “The Clark Gable of Mexico,” was a top box office attraction from 1935 to 1960. During the production of his 128th and final film, From Russia With Love (1963), he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Ever the working actor, he had the schedule of production altered so he could finish his scenes in a timely fashion. He then went home and committed suicide. He had just turned 51.
Agnes Moorehead: originally a member of Orson Welles’ famed “Mercury Players,” Ms. Moorehead starred in some of the most historic radio dramas of the 1930s, and then went to Hollywood to have a leading role in Welles’ Citizen Kane. She received her greatest critical acclaim in Welles’ second film, The Magnificent Ambersons. An ebullient and versatile character actress, she was impossible to typecast. Of course, she was immortalized as Elizabeth Montgomery’s flamboyant witch-mother, Endora, on the popular TV show Bewitched. She died at age 73 from uterine cancer.
Lee Van Cleef: The ultimate Western anti-hero, Van Cleef became an international star in 1965 when Italian director Sergio Leone cast him as the tough but decent Cal Mortimer opposite Clint Eastwood in For a Few Dollars More. Van Cleef died of throat cancer at age 64.
Dick Powell: a man who could do it all . . . musicals, film noir, Preston Sturges comedies, produce and direct. The Conqueror was the 3rd of 7 films he would direct. Dick Powell died of lung cancer at age 58 on January 2, 1963.

Critical reception for The Conqueror was uniformly negative. New York Times reviewer A.H. Weller called the film "an Oriental 'Western'" with a script that "should get a few unintentional laughs." Weiler wrote that John Wayne gave an "elementary" portrayal of Genghis Khan while "constantly being unhorsed by such lines as, 'you are beautiful in your wrath.'" The New Yorker’s John McCarten called the film "pure Hollywood moonshine ... You never saw so many horses fall down in your life. Still, even though their tumbling is far superior to the antics of the actors, it presently becomes tiresome." One must keep in mind that originally, the script was written with Marlon Brando in mind. The flowery Shakespeare-like phraseology might have worked for Brando; coming out of the mouth of John Wayne, it was a disaster. And while the film turned out to be one of the top-ten best-grossing films of 1956, it still lost a ton of money, due largely to the many, many millions of dollars Howard Hughes spent on bringing his film to the silver screen.

As mentioned at the outset, of the 220 crew members, 91 (comprising 41% of the crew) developed cancer by 1980, while 46 (or 21%) died from it. When this was learned, many assumed that filming in Utah and surrounding locations, near nuclear test sites, was to blame. Some victims also believed their habitual tobacco use contributed. Hughes would later say he felt “guilty as hell” about the production of the movie, and as he became increasingly reclusive and farther away from reality, he bought every print of it and watched his film on a continuous loop in his hotel suite. The film wasn’t seen publicly . . . until Paramount Pictures purchased RKO’s entire film library in the 1970s.

Throughout the remaining 16 years of his life, Howard Hughes was often heard to moan that he felt “guilty as hell” about the production of the movie, and as he became increasingly reclusive, spent more and more time propped in bed watching it 2, 3, even 4 times a day. Ultimately, questions surrounding Wayne’s death in January 1979 began surfacing, first in People magazine. Questions about Duke’s death ultimately led Utahns to begin investigating a potential connection to their medical histories. The declassification of internal AEC documents followed, and strenuous lobbying by “downwinders” won former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) to their cause, culminating in the 1990 passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which which provided for compassionate payments to persons (or payments to their surviving beneficiaries) who developed diseases listed in 28 CFR 79 as a result of their exposure to radiation from US atmospheric nuclear-weapons testing.

Overseen by both the Departments of Labor and Justice, RECA. did a fine job for more than 30 years; a fitting legacy from Duke Wayne. RECA was reauthorized in 2022, but its authorization formally expired earlier this year after lawmakers failed to agree on a further extension. A bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), which would reauthorize the law and expand it beyond the 20 counties covered, as well as to children of downwinders, passed the Senate with 69 votes in March. However, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has declined to bring it to the House floor thus far, citing concerns about cost and whether it has the votes to pass in the GOP-controlled chamber.

One can purchase a DVD or Blu-ray version of The Conqueror from Amazon.com for anywhere from $17.95 (DVD) to $32.98 9 (Blu-ray) in 2026. My recommendation is not to waste your money on a truly awful film when you can see it for free in its entirety on a Russian YouTube presentation. But do remember: this is a monster of a movie with an absolutely lethal backstory.

John Wayne’s pre-Ghengis Khan character, Temujin, pretty well sums up the picture in a mere five words:

“WHAT VENTURE IS WITHOUT HAZARD?”