It sounds like a punchline to a joke that hasn't aged well. John Wayne—the ultimate symbol of the American Cowboy—squinting through Fu Manchu makeup to play the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan.
Honestly, if you saw it today without context, you’d think it was a Saturday Night Live sketch. But The Conqueror (1956) was no joke. It was a $6 million epic produced by the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. It also happened to be filmed in a place that was literally glowing.
The story of John Wayne as Genghis Khan is more than just a tale of bad casting. It is a tragedy. For decades, film buffs and historians have argued over whether this one movie was responsible for killing nearly half its cast and crew.
The Casting Choice Nobody Asked For
Why did John Wayne, at the height of his career, decide to trade his Stetson for a Mongol headdress?
Believe it or not, the Duke actually lobbied for the role. Director Dick Powell reportedly tried to talk him out of it. Powell knew the script was... rough. The dialogue was written in a bizarre, pseudo-Shakespearean style that sounded ridiculous coming from a man with a heavy Iowa-turned-Western drawl.
Wayne didn't care. He saw it as a chance to prove his range. He wanted to do something "important."
The result was a disaster on screen. Wayne’s performance as Genghis Khan (or "Temujin," as he's called for most of the film) is widely considered one of the worst in cinematic history. He delivered lines like, "I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, take her," with the same cadence he used to tell a cattle rustler to get off his land.
It wasn't just Wayne. The movie featured Susan Hayward as a Tartar princess and Agnes Moorehead in redface. In a film about Mongols and Tartars, there was almost nobody of Asian descent in a lead role.
Filming Under an Atomic Cloud
While the critics were busy sharpening their knives, a much more literal threat was drifting over the set.
Production took place in 1954 near St. George, Utah. The location was chosen because the red Escalante Desert looked remarkably like the steppes of Central Asia.
There was just one problem. St. George was only 137 miles downwind from the Nevada National Security Site.
A year before filming began, the U.S. government had detonated a series of nuclear bombs as part of "Operation Upshot-Knothole." One of those tests, a 32-kiloton blast nicknamed "Harry" (but later dubbed "Dirty Harry"), sent a massive plume of radioactive fallout directly over the area where Wayne and his crew would spend the next several months.
The Atomic Energy Commission told the locals it was safe. They told the film crew it was safe, too.
John Wayne was so unconcerned that he was photographed on set holding a Geiger counter with his sons, Patrick and Michael. The device was clicking away, but at the time, everyone thought it was just a curiosity. They didn't realize they were breathing in "hot" dust every time a horse galloped past.
The Body Count
The numbers are staggering.
By the late 1970s, the "curse" of The Conqueror became impossible to ignore. Out of the 220 people who worked on the location shoot in Utah, 91 had developed some form of cancer.
Forty-six of them had already died.
The list of victims included almost every major name attached to the project:
- John Wayne: Died of stomach cancer in 1979 (though he also had lung cancer previously).
- Susan Hayward: Died of brain cancer in 1975.
- Agnes Moorehead: Died of uterine cancer in 1974.
- Dick Powell (Director): Died of lymphoma in 1963.
- Pedro Armendáriz: Diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer; he took his own life in 1963 to avoid the pain.
Even the extras weren't spared. Around 300 local Paiute Native Americans were used in the film. While no official long-term study was conducted on them, many "downwinders" in the St. George area reported devastating spikes in cancer rates and birth defects for decades.
Howard Hughes and the 60 Tons of Dirt
If the desert exposure wasn't enough, Howard Hughes managed to make things worse.
When the production moved back to Hollywood for interior reshoots, Hughes wanted the sets to match the Utah location perfectly. His solution? He had 60 tons of that radioactive Utah dirt shoveled into trucks and shipped to the RKO soundstages in California.
The cast and crew were literally rolling around in irradiated soil under hot studio lights.
Hughes was eventually consumed by guilt. He reportedly spent $12 million to buy every existing print of The Conqueror so that no one could see it. He kept it out of circulation for years, watching it over and over again in his private screening room during his final, reclusive days.
Some say he watched it because he missed his friends. Others think he was obsessing over the mistake that might have killed them.
Was it Definitely the Radiation?
It’s complicated.
Epidemiologists have pointed out that John Wayne was a legendary chain-smoker. He famously smoked up to six packs a day. Many other crew members from that era were also heavy smokers and drinkers.
Statistically, in a group of 220 people, you might expect about 30 to 40 cancer cases over a lifetime. Having 91 is undeniably high—nearly triple the expected rate.
Dr. Robert Pendleton, a radiologist at the University of Utah, once stated that the connection between the fallout and the cancer cases among the crew would likely hold up in a court of law. The sheer concentration of specific types of cancer in such a small group is hard to dismiss as a coincidence.
What This Means for Film History Today
The Conqueror remains a cautionary tale about more than just bad makeup. It’s a snapshot of a time when the government was negligent and Hollywood was invincible.
John Wayne eventually admitted the movie was a mistake. He reportedly said the moral of the story was "not to make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you're not suited for."
But the "ass" he made of himself on screen was nothing compared to the price paid by the people on that set.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this, you should check out the 2024 documentary The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout. It does a great job of connecting the dots between the movie and the broader "downwinder" community that is still fighting for recognition today.
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Key Takeaways for History Buffs
- Check the Location: Always look into the history of "downwinder" communities if you're researching 1950s history in the American West.
- Question the "Safe" Narrative: The U.S. government's assurances during the Cold War were often based on incomplete science or outright deception.
- Legacy Matters: The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) is still a major talking point in Utah and Nevada; the story of this movie is a big part of why people still care about nuclear accountability.
Next time you see a clip of the Duke in a silk robe talking about the "will of the gods," remember that the real story wasn't on the screen—it was in the dust under his boots.
To get a better sense of how the "downwinder" community was affected, you might want to look into the archival records of the Atomic Energy Commission from the 1950s or read the personal accounts of the residents of St. George, Utah, who lived through the testing era.