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. The picture was
directed by
actor/
director Dick
Powell.
The film was principally shot near St. George,
Utah
.
The picture was a critical and commercial failure (often ranked as
one of the worst films of the 1950s), which is remarkable given the
stature of the cast. Wayne, who was at the height of his career,
had lobbied for the role after seeing the script and was widely
believed to have been grossly miscast. (He was so "honored" by
The Golden Turkey
Awards.)
Reportedly, Howard Hughes felt guilty about his decisions regarding
the film's production (see
Cancer
controversy below) and kept the film from view until 1974 when
it was first broadcast on TV.
The Conqueror, along with
Ice Station Zebra,
is said to be one of the films Hughes watched endlessly during his
last years.
Plot
Mongol chief
Temujin (later to be known as
Genghis Khan) falls for
Bortai, the daughter
of the
Tartar leader, and steals her away,
precipitating war. Bortai spurns Temujin and is taken back in a
raid. Temujin is later captured. Bortai falls in love with him and
helps him escape. Temujin suspects he was betrayed by a fellow
Mongol and sets out to find the traitor and to overcome the
Tartars.
Cancer controversy
The
exterior scenes were shot on
location near St. George, Utah, 137 miles downwind of the United States
government's Nevada Test
Site
, Operation
Upshot-Knothole, where extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing occurred during the
1950s. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks on the
site. In addition, Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to
Hollywood for re-shoots. The cast and crew knew about the nuclear
tests—there are pictures of Wayne holding a
Geiger counter during production—but the link
between exposure to
radioactive
fallout and
cancer was poorly understood
then.
Powell died of cancer in January 1963,
only a few years after the picture's completion. 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.
Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with
kidney cancer in 1960 and committed
suicide after he learned it was terminal.
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. 91 developed some form of cancer by 1981 and 46 had
died of it by then.
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."
Notes and references
See also
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