The 1956 film “The Conqueror” is infamous among moviegoers, both for casting John Wayne as the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan and for the suspicious death toll that followed filming downwind of a nuclear test site. Nearly 70 years later, the makers of the documentary “The Conqueror: The Hollywood Fallout” hope to tell the story of the community affected “downwind” in St. George, Utah, near where the film was shot, as their federal compensation for radiation exposure hangs in the balance.
At the time “The Conqueror” was filmed in the Utah desert just outside of town, St. George was 137 miles downwind of the Nevada Test Site, where the federal government conducted more than 900 nuclear tests.
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) insisted for years to residents that there was no danger, and when ranchers’ sheep began dying mysteriously, the federal government blamed it on the negligence of breeders.
But after filming, observers noted the high rate of cancer among those involved in filming: 91 of the 220 crew members developed the disease and 46 died. Director Dick Powell and actors Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead both died of cancer, while Pedro Armendáriz Sr., an accomplished Mexican actor and the only non-white member of the film’s main cast, committed suicide when his cancer became terminal.
Local Paiute Native Americans were used as extras for crowd and battle scenes, but no records were kept of cancer rates among them.
“The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout” director Will Nunez said during a panel discussion Wednesday that he came up with the idea for the documentary in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and at the time he was only aware of the film’s infamy and alleged link to cancer.
“What started as a joke about this terrible movie became something else as I was researching the atomic tests and all that, and my goal was to see how I can try to do this in the most entertaining way possible so that the general public can understand what happened,” he said.
He noted that many of the 1956 film’s more absurd features — such as the flowery, pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue written for Marlon Brando and sounding especially ridiculous in the Duke’s mouth — added a certain levity to what would have been could otherwise have been a downright depressing story.
The film notes that eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who produced “The Conqueror,” may have compounded radiation exposure during filming by having 60 tons of irradiated desert sand shipped to RKO Pictures in Hollywood to film interior scenes.
Epidemiologists have warned of the difficulty of definitively identifying a single cause for cancer. Wayne himself was skeptical of a connection between filming and illness striking the cast and crew, noting late in life that he, Powell and Armendáriz were heavy smokers.
But Hayward and Powell both died at age 50 — a particularly young age to develop cancer — and, as the documentary makes clear, St. George residents who developed cancer during the same period included young children.
Hughes would later say that he felt “guilty as hell” about the film’s production, and as he became increasingly reclusive, he bought every copy and watched it over and over in his hotel suite.
Ultimately, the questions surrounding Wayne’s death, which first surfaced in People magazine, led Utahns to begin investigating a potential connection to his medical history. Declassification of internal AEC documents followed, and fierce lobbying by Utahns won former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) to their cause, resulting in passage in 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which recently expired.
The documentary incorporates a variety of perspectives on the film and its legacy, from Wayne and Hayward’s sons to conservative radio host Michael Medved, who began his career as a film critic specializing in “so bad they’re good” movies. The most moving voices, however, are those of local residents, many of whom remember the film’s arrival in town and continue to lobby against the radiation it helped bring to light today.
In the film, downwind activist and thyroid cancer survivor Mary Dickson notes that the fallout from nuclear testing was not considered an emergency until the Defense Department began to fear that it might have, as one internal document put it, “killed John Wayne.”
RECA was reauthorized in 2022, but its authorization officially expired earlier this year after lawmakers failed to agree on a new extension. A bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), which would reauthorize the law and expand it beyond the 20 covered counties, as well as to children of inhabitants of the leeward regions, was adopted by the Senate with 69 votes in March. However, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has refused to introduce it in the House until now, citing concerns about the cost and whether it has the votes needed to pass in the controlled chamber by the GOP.
Nunez’s documentary comes a few weeks after RECA’s authorization officially expired. Almost exactly a year ago, proponents of the expansion bill hoped to cash in on the buzz surrounding “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic about the physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. Nunez told The Hill he hopes his film, while much smaller, can also help fuel the conversation about the plight of downwinders.
“What I hope is that now that RECA has expired and downwinders want to expand it beyond the 20 counties, this film will help get the message out,” Nunez said.
Ultimately, however, he gave credit to the dedication of affected residents, both for the original law and any progress on reauthorization.
Nunez compared the Downwind community to residents of Love Canal, New York, who pushed for a federal cleanup after the neighborhood became the site of an environmental disaster in the 1970s.
“If you notice, it’s all the women raising hell,” he said.
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