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]

john wayne was diagnosed with cancer a couple years after the movie was completed, and had surgery to take most of his stomach out due to the cancer. the second one was most likely his heavy smoking.

It was originally thought that Marlon Brando would play the role of Khan, but John Wayne, at the height of his popularity then, ended up with the part.

What if Brando had done the movie, got cancer and died before being able to make "The Godfather"? We probably wouldn't be meeting here, talking about movies and such.

Geez, John Wayne died for our sins.

i could see john wayne as don corleone

" I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. Now, you just go outside and enjoy yourself, and, uh, forget about all this nonsense. I want you – I want you to leave it all to me pilgrim"

Wayne's casting as Khan has to be one of the worst castings ever.

It is truly horrifying to think of how our government deliberately misled soldiers and civilians about the dangers of radiation and fallout--all to prepare us for a "winnable" nuclear war. Here is an excerpt from the Nuclear Weapons Archive concerning Upshot-Knothole:

This operation exposed exercise personnel to nuclear tests, and thus radiation, more aggressively than previous ones. Observation by troop formations were conducted at what was calculated to be the minimum safe separation distance, with many personnel being exposed to multiple tests. Under current occupational radiation exposure limits (0.3 rem/week and 5 rem/year) this would would limit maximum exposures to 3.3 rems over the 11 week operation. Approximately three thousand soldiers reached or exceeded this limit, with 84 exceeding the annual limit (the highest recorded exposure was 26.6 rem). These exposures do not produce observable symptoms, they simply increase the lifetime risk of cancer a small amount.

The effect on the downwind civilian population, taken together, was much worse. Uphot-Knothole released some 35,000 kilocuries of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere (for comparison, Trinity released about 3200 kilocuries of radioiodine). This produced total civilian radiation exposures amounting to 89 million person-rads of thyroid tissue exposure (about 24% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests). This can be expected to eventually cause about 28,000 cases of thyroid cancer, leading to some 1400 deaths.

I saw the movie in the "nabes" when I was a kid. Unforgettable scene: Hayward, confronting a leering Wayne, says in her haughtiest manner: "How is the leader of the Mongols prepared to treat a royal princess?" Wayne's wearing an oriental bishop's miter and has his eyebrows shaved to slant, but he's still the Duke. He replies: "By day, the pelts of my sheep shall keep thee warm. And my night, the heat of my body shall protect thee from the desert winds."
I fell right on the floor of the theater after that one.

I don't remember this particular movie but sure can't see JW in the part. I remember Wayne (along with many other stars) had a very small part in a Biblical epic (Greatest Story Every Told????) He only had a small part but was totally miscast. Anyone remember that movie?



TIS

TIS, that movie was "The Greatest Story Ever Told". (take a cigar out of petty cash).

Wayne was a better actor than generally given credit for BUT there were some roles he should have passed on. Genghis Khan was definitely one of those.

It all goes to show how important it was to initially beat the Germans to the nuclear bomb, I guess, TB? And then the day after the US beat the Germans to it they had to worry about the Russians...

You're right, Frank--fear of a German A-bomb put the Manhattan Project on a crisis footing. But, just before the end of the war, the US captured Werner Heisenberg and his team, and found that they hadn't even come close. They'd built a primitive reactor and it had never gone critical.

There were no "secrets" of nuclear fission after 1939--only technological issues, such as how much fissionable material was needed for a bomb, how to produce it, and how to trigger a chain reaction in a millionth of a second. Even before the first test, most Manhattan Project scientists predicted that another power--probably the Russians--would be able to build and test their own bomb within 3-5 years of a US success. It took them 4 years. They got help from spies, but all it did was to shave about 12-18 months off their effort by eliminating some trial and error.