Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

March 30, 1956: "This Tartar woman is for me and my blood says take her!" John Wayne's infamous (and reportedly deadly) film THE CONQUEROR opened at the Criterion in NYC.


The Red hair beauty aka The Brooklyn Bombshell, Susan Hayward (1917-1975) died of  brain cancer, allegedly the result of being exposed to dangerous radioactive toxins on location in Utah while making The Conqueror (1956). All the leads from John Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, Pedro Armendáriz, Hayward and director Dick Powell died of cancer. The case is still a scandal.

Many over the decades have argued that was one of the worst casting decisions ever for John Wayne. However, after Wayne had read the script he insisted that it be made. Director Powell tried to convince Wayne that he shouldn’t make it. But no one could say no to John Wayne. Not back then and not once he'd set his mind to a role.

They really went all out to market this movie including Hollywood bread.



But, what is more interesting and almost downright horrifying is the filming location of the production. Around the same time that Wayne was falling in love with the role of Khan, six hours away in the Nevada dessert an atomic bomb exploded. Eleven to be exact.


The worst affected area, however, was right next door. The wind carried the nuclear fallout from those explosions east and much of it accumulated in St. George, Utah, and the surrounding dessert.

The irony, is today St. George, Utah is an upper class retirement community (many closed gated assisted living suburbs) and has one of the best medical caring facilities in the country. I been there several times as it's a short drive from Vegas and near Zion National Park. My dad was thinking of buying a place here to retire, but after some research on property formerly owned by Howard Hughes he decided against it.

The cast, the crew, and the producers knew about the nuclear tests and were worried about the potential dangers from radiation. Wayne brought a Geiger counter to the set to help. It made so much noise, however, that, according to some accounts, Wayne thought the Geiger counter must have been broken.

Several members of production, including Wayne, brought family members to the set during production. All told, production took several months to complete but not before Mr. Hughes had 60 tons of radioactive Utah sand sent back to Los Angeles to shoot some additional scenes on Hollywood sets. He wanted the sand (texture & color) to match.

All of this could have been avoided and, yet again, it almost was. Howard Hughes was concerned about the radiation. So he asked officials at the AEC if there was any reason to worry. The response Hughes received was identical to the one that all American’s received: There is no need to worry.

"The Conqueror" producer Howard Hughes has called his decision to film in St. George the worst decision of his life.

The film is sometimes called "An RKO Radioactive Picture". It was filmed near an active nuclear test site in Utah, where 11 tests had reportedly been carried out in the year before the production landed there. The set was contaminated by nuclear fallout, but the Atomic Energy Commission assured Howard Hughes and the local population that the area was completely safe. Photographs exist of John Wayne holding a Geiger counter that reportedly made so much noise that he thought it was broken. After location shooting, Hughes had tons of contaminated soil transported back to Hollywood in order to match interior shooting done there. Over the next 30 years, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members developed cancer.

People Magazine researched the cast and crew’s health for an article and found that 46 died, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz (who shot himself soon after learning he had terminal cancer), Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, and director Dick Powell. Lee Van Cleef had throat cancer, but died of a heart attack. The count did not include several hundred local Native Americans who played extras, or relatives of the cast and crew who visited the set, including John Wayne's son Michael Wayne.



A "People" article quoted the reaction of a scientist from the Pentagon's Defense Nuclear Agency to the news, "Please, God, don't let us have killed John Wayne". As of June 2011, the article is available in its archive online.

It has however been suggested that many of the cast and crew died of cancer as a result of smoking. John Wayne had smoked 3-5 packs of cigarettes a day since the early 1930s, and many of the other actors and crew members were also heavy smokers.


Sources for the fallout horrors:

RISKY BUSINESS: The Conqueror

The Children of John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Dick Powell Fear That Fallout Killed Their Parents (People magazine; Nov 10, 1980)




That same year, "Film Sparked by Uranium." URANIUM BOOM opened March 30, 1956 in New York (as the second feature to PICNIC). Two star rating in the New York Daily News.





March 30, 1949: Actor Robert Mitchum was released from the county jail after a two-month stay for a marijuana bust in a raid on a house in Laurel Canyon. After Mitchum's arrest, RKO studio chief, Howard Hughes, immediately assembled a powerful dream team to defend him.
'I liked it in jail'


Born March 30, 1908: 33rd governor of Iowa and Eisenhower era civil defense administrator, Leo Arthur Hoegh. After his tenure in government, he went into the fallout shelter business.



TIME magazine


March 30, 1981: the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan occurred in Washington, DC. The event served as the basis for a memorable first season episode of THE AMERICANS. Alexander Haig provided the title: "In Control" - S1:E4, Feb, 20, 2013.



Alexander Haig [1924-2010] (4-star General, Sec of State, Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Ronald Reagan’s "I-am-in-control" top aide) was a member of the MGM board of directors. He yearned to develop a movie career. He supervised the development of the movie Red Dawn and made significant changes to it.


Billionaire ego-maniacs: The supercomputer, codenamed "Stargate," would contain *millions* of GPUs and require several gigawatts of power.


$100 billion AI supercomputer codenamed Stargate