What happens when two mighty icons of the 20th century collide? Another fascinating that story that stemmed from a browse around StraightDope.com. But it blossomed into more fun elsewhere on the Web, in the form of a bizarre little entry in cyberspace called UtahGothic.com. I’ve excerpted bits from both here.
I was never a John Wayne fan; in fact I found him annoying, probably because he was all macho right-wingy. “The Outlaw” – produced by Howard Hughes, who also put Wayne in “The Conqueror”, discussed here – was a good film, but more because of John Ford’s direction than anything else. My dad liked John Wayne, though, probably for the very reason I disliked him, and sure enough, when Wayne started to show more emotion around about the time of “Rooster Cogburn”, I started liking him a little bit more and Dad started to like him a little bit less.
Anyway, it seems the Duke got nuked. John Wayne, as Genghis Khan, was split by the atom.

Dear Cecil:
My girlfriend says that half of the film crew and eight of the cast of the movie “The Conqueror” starring John Wayne died of cancer after an A-bomb test in Nevada. It can’t be the truth – that many people – can it? – John L, Santa Monica, California

Cecil replies:
I’m horrified to have to report this, John, but your girlfriend’s claim is only slightly exaggerated. Of the 220 persons who worked on “The Conqueror” on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell. Experts say under ordinary circumstances only 30 people out of a group of that size should have gotten cancer.
The cause? No one can say for sure, but many attribute the cancers to radioactive fallout from US atom bomb tests in nearby Nevada. The whole ghastly story is told in “The Hollywood Hall of Shame” by Harry and Michael Medved. But let’s start at the beginning.
“The Conqueror”, a putative love story involving Genghis Khan’s lust for the beautiful princess Bortai (Hayward), was a classic Hollywood big-budget fiasco, one of many financed by would-be movie mogul Howard Hughes. Originally director Powell wanted to get Marlon Brando for the lead, but John Wayne, then at the height of his popularity, happened to see the script one day and decided he and Genghis were meant for each other.
Unfortunately, the script was written in a cornball style that was made even more ludicrous by the Duke’s wooden line readings. In the following sample, Wayne/Genghis has just been urged by his sidekick Jamuga not to attack the caravan carrying Princess Bortai: “There are moments fer wisdom, Juh-mooga, then I listen to you – and there are moments fer action – then I listen to my blood. I feel this Tartar wuh-man is fer me, and my blood says, ‘TAKE HER!’”
In the words of one writer, it was the world’s “most improbable piece of casting unless Mickey Rooney were to play Jesus in ‘The King of Kings’”.
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.
Many people involved in the production knew about the radiation (there’s a picture of Wayne himself operating a Geiger counter during the filming), but no one took the threat seriously at the time. Thirty years later, however, half the residents of St George had contracted cancer, and veterans of the production began to realise they were in trouble. Actor Pedro Armendariz developed cancer of the kidney only four years after the movie was completed, and later shot himself when he learned his condition was terminal.
Howard Hughes was said to have felt “guilty as hell” about the whole affair, although as far as I can tell it never occurred to anyone to sue him. For various reasons he withdrew The Conqueror from circulation, and for years thereafter the only person who saw it was Hughes himself, who screened it night after night during his paranoid last years.

That’s Straight Dope’s account. Even “funnier” is this one from Utah Gothic.

Did Utah kill John Wayne?

“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 …
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 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.
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” 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 1,350-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 filmmakers 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, 25 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.
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 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.
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.
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 theorise 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.
RJ 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.