They Couldn't Conquer Cancer

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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          This week, two events intersect . . . well, in this column, they will. The Oscar nominations for films released in 2022 were revealed (once again, I was “overlooked”) and this Friday will be the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. government detonating the first in a series of nuclear bombs at a Nevada test site. How do the two events intersect? That brings us to the “Curse of The Conqueror.”

          This 1956 film was notable because it featured one of the worst casting decisions of all time: John Wayne as the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan. He starred opposite Susan Hayward, who played the captive princess and love interest, Bortai. The movie was directed by Dick Powell, who had begun his big-screen career starring in musicals like Gold Diggers of 1933) then had transitioned into tough-guy roles in several film noir gems (like Murder, My Sweet) and then transitioned into a producer and director.

          The producers of The Conqueror, who included the eccentric mogul Howard Hughes, decided that the best location for shooting the picture was in St. George, Utah. Now here is that intersection: At the time, there wasn't anything particularly alarming about this small town aside from the fact that it was around a hundred miles away from an atomic bomb test site in Nevada. The federal government told filmmakers that it was safe for shooting there so the cast and crew poured into the town, filling every hotel and motel. They even cast locals as extras. They had no idea that the nearby Snow Canyon, which was used as one of the main filming locations, had become a radioactive hot spot. Eleven atomic bombs had been tested the year before filming, blowing contaminated air downwind to Utah.

Several years later, cast and crew members began to be diagnosed with cancer, and the connection was made back to The Conqueror set. Powell died in 1963 from lymphoma. Agnes Moorehead (who was also Endora in “Bewitched”) died of cancer in 1974. Hayward passed away in 1975 from brain cancer. Wayne expired in 1979 from stomach cancer, after having survived lung cancer a decade earlier. Pedro Armendáriz took his own life when he was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer. Lee Van Cleef died of throat cancer. Out of a cast and crew of 220, 91 contracted cancer, and 46 of those died from some form of the disease.

In 1980, the magazine People did an article on The Conqueror curse. It quoted Dr. Robert C. Pendleton, director of radiological health at the University of Utah, who said he feared the radiation in the area was directly tied to the cancer deaths of those on the film set. "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic," Pendleton said. "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. With 91, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up even in a court of law."

Well, not so fast. True, all the elements of a good medical mystery are here. Several above-ground atomic tests were run at Yucca Flats in Nevada from January 1951 to 1953, including 11 in 1953 under the name “Operation Upshot-Knothole.” The Conqueror was shot from May to August of 1954 in Snow Canyon State Park, located 11 miles northwest of St. George, Utah, which is downwind of Yucca Flats. To make matters worse, Howard Hughes shipped truckloads of dirt from the site back to a Los Angeles studio for reshoots.

The movie premiered on February 22, 1956, in Los Angeles, and less than seven years later, Dick Powell died of cancer. The rest followed year after year. What Dr. Pendleton said made sense, yes? But since that People article in 1980, other writers have done some basic research. According to the National Cancer Institute, at the time the article was written, the overall incidence of being diagnosed with cancer in a person’s lifetime (age-adjusted) was about 40 percent. As it happens, this number still holds today. Thus, in a cohort of 220 people, 88 would be diagnosed with cancer at some point. If anything, given the heavy smoking habits of many in the movie business at the time -- including Powell, Moorehead, Armendáriz, Hayward, and Wayne at up to five packs a day -- 91 is completely within the expected range. That must have been some smokin’ film set!

By the way, since 1950, Utah has had one of the lowest cancer mortality rates in the country. Moreover, Washington County—supposedly ground zero for the fallout—has one of the lowest cancer mortality rates in the state.

          Was The Conqueror cursed? Yes, the moment it cast John Wayne – or Marion Morrison from Winterset, Iowa – as Genghis Kahn.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including the just-published The Last Hill, with Bob Drury, and the forthcoming Follow Me to Hell. To purchase or pre-order copies, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.