New Doc Spotlights Cast Who Died of Cancer After Shooting John Wayne Film Downwind of Nevada Test Site

Posted on: July 3, 2024, 01:45h. 

Last updated on: July 3, 2024, 01:53h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas.

From the time it came out through the 1990s, “The Conqueror” — starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan — was known as a bad choice for its cast because it was horrible movie that flopped. Since then, it’s become known as a bad choice for a different reason.

John Wayne and Susan Hayward starred in the “The Conqueror,” and are among the half of its cast and crew who developed cancer afterward. In the background is one of 11 blasts from Operation Upshot-Knothole, conducted at the Nevada Test Site a year before the movie began filming downwind of the site in 1954. (Images: National Nuclear Security Administration/IMDB/Wikipedia)

Of the 220 people who worked on it, 91 developed cancer, and 46 of them died from it, including both its top-billed stars, John Wayne and Susan Hayward. Make that 47 if you count Mexican actor Pedro Armendáriz, who shot himself to death when his cancer became terminal.

An ad for the new documentary, out in selected theaters now. (Image: Red Hound Entertainment)

A newly released documentary, “The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout,” illuminates the negligent production choices and government deception that robbed many in Hollywood of decades of their lives. It also examines the affected “downwinder” community in St. George, Utah, near where the film shot.

“My goal was to see how I can try and do this in the most entertaining way possible, so that a general audience can understand what had happened,” Will Nunez, director of the new documentary, said at a Hollywood panel discussion this week, as reported in The Hill.

Blasts from the Past

More than 100 explosions were conducted in the air above the Nevada Test Site, now called the Nevada National Security Site, from 1951 through 1963. Another 828 explosions were conducted underground until 1992.

Though no atomic bombs were known to have been exploded at the Nevada Test Site in the summer of 1954, when “The Conqueror” filmed 137 miles downwind of it, at least 50 had been by then — including 11 as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole from March through June 1953.

The poster for the original movie. (Image: RKO Radio Pictures)

A case for an exclusively fatal link to the still-radioactive sand is difficult to prove for the cast and crew, considering how commonplace smoking was prior to the Surgeon General’s famous 1964 report. Wayne, Hayward, Armendáriz, actress Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell were all reportedly heavy smokers.

However, Hayward, Armendáriz, and Powell all died in their 50s — young for cancer — and it wasn’t in their lungs. (It was in Hayward’s brain, Armendáriz’s kidney, and Powell’s blood.) And Wayne, who lived until age 77, died of stomach cancer.

And the rate of cancer among the residents of St. George at that time was an undeniable three times the national average. The victims included men who developed prostate cancer in their 30s and young children who developed leukemia.

Wayne is taught how to operate a Geiger counter with his two sons during a break in filming on the set of “The Conqueror.” (Image: The Guardian)

Box Office Poison

The producers were aware of the possible radiation dangers associated with filming where they did. In fact, one photo from the set shows Wayne being taught to operate a Geiger counter with his two sons.

And, before his death in 1976, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who produced “The Conqueror,” reportedly said he felt “guilty as hell” about the decisions he made on the production.

Those decisions included importing 60 tons of irradiated sand directly from the Utah desert to his RKO Pictures soundstage in Hollywood to shoot the film’s interior scenes.

In their defense, however, all suspicions were pooed-pooed by all the so-called scientific authorities of the day. The Atomic Energy Commission, especially, assured locals and visitors that the nuclear explosions posed no health dangers at all.

Even when sheep began mysteriously dying under the fallout trail, they had the audacity to blame it on rancher negligence.

It was only questions brought up after Wayne’s 1979 death, in a People magazine article, that encouraged Utahns to begin investigating the connection between their proximity to the Nevada Test Site and their medical histories.

Tireless lobbying by downwinders won over former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R), who spearheaded the 1990 passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The $100 million compensation package offered $50,000 each to the families of all residents of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona able to link cancers and other diseases to their fallout exposure.

The deadline for applying passed only last month. And a bipartisan bill to extend it, sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), passed the Senate with 69 votes in March, but was spiked by Mike Johnson (R-La.), who thought it was too expensive and lacked the required Republican support to pass the House.