Posted By: Frank_Nitti
Did Genghis Khan Nuke John Wayne?? - 10/01/10 07:31 PM
THE CONQUEROR is a 1956 CinemaScope epic film produced by Howard Hughes and starring John Wayne as the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Other performers included Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and Pedro Armendáriz. A film rightfully forgotten by all parties involved. But this is the...REST OF THE STORY (paul harvey tribute) you might not have heard.
The exterior scenes were shot on location near St. George, Utah, 137 miles (220 km) downwind of the United States government's Nevada Test Site. In 1953, extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing occurred at the test site, as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks on location, and in addition Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to lend verisimilitude to studio re-shoots.[1] The film-makers knew about the nuclear tests[1] but the federal government reassured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health.[2]
Powell died of cancer in January 1963, only a few years after the picture's completion. Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960 and committed suicide in 1963 after he learned it was terminal. Hayward, Wayne, and Moorehead all died of cancer in the mid to late 1970s. Cast member actor John Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. Skeptics point to other factors such as the wide use of tobacco - Wayne and Moorehead in particular were heavy smokers - and the notion that cancer resulting from radiation exposure does not have such a long incubation period. The cast and crew totaled 220 people. By 1981, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died of the disease.[2] Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, stated, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30 some cancers to develop...I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law."[2][3]
The exterior scenes were shot on location near St. George, Utah, 137 miles (220 km) downwind of the United States government's Nevada Test Site. In 1953, extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing occurred at the test site, as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks on location, and in addition Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to lend verisimilitude to studio re-shoots.[1] The film-makers knew about the nuclear tests[1] but the federal government reassured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health.[2]
Powell died of cancer in January 1963, only a few years after the picture's completion. Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960 and committed suicide in 1963 after he learned it was terminal. Hayward, Wayne, and Moorehead all died of cancer in the mid to late 1970s. Cast member actor John Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. Skeptics point to other factors such as the wide use of tobacco - Wayne and Moorehead in particular were heavy smokers - and the notion that cancer resulting from radiation exposure does not have such a long incubation period. The cast and crew totaled 220 people. By 1981, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died of the disease.[2] Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, stated, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30 some cancers to develop...I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law."[2][3]