JOHN THE CONQUEROO

I did not know that!

My friend N emailed me this fun factoid about Genghis Khan, which immediately brought to mind the 1956 film about the Mongol invader, The Conqueror.  I saw the film starring John Wayne and Susan Hayward with my favorite relative, Aunt Jessie.  I must have been eight or nine and she would have been in her 60s.  I adored her.  She was always happy (which made her unique in my family).  She wore sensible shoes and two-piece suits that she knit or crocheted herself.  She smelled lightly of Evening in Paris, which may be the reason why I love lily of the valley to this day.  Aunt Jessie was said to have had many admirers, but she never married.

After graduating from the Katherine Gibbs School, Aunt Jessie worked as an executive secretary to the head of C. S. Hammond & Company in Maplewood, New Jersey.  This is what bright, ambitious women (but not too ambitious, as that might scare the men away) did in the '50s.  When she retired, Aunt Jessie gave me a copy of the Hammond’s World Atlas, Classics Edition, published in 1956--the same year The Conqueror was released.  

I can actually date my first blushing and squirming experience to a risque’ scene in The Conqueror.   John Wayne, catastrophically miscast as Temujin, the Mongol warrior who will eventually become the Emperor Genghis Khan, attacks a caravan of his mortal enemies on the steppes.  Inside one of the carriages is Susan Hayward, the Tartar princess Bortai.  Astride his rearing horse, Temujin throws back the billowing white curtains of Bortai’s carriage, takes one look at her mane of copper hair, emerald green eyes, and luscious red lips, and he does what any red-blooded Mongol warrior would do:   He rips off her white silky toga-thingy to expose her ample bosom.  Thanks to the Hollywood censors, we never actually see her ample bosom, but we know it’s there.  And that knowledge mortified me!  Aunt Jessie, proper spinster that she was, just rolled with it, presumably because she had had many admirers, and this was familiar territory. 

The Conqueror was directed by Dick Powell and produced by Howard Hughes.  The idea of John Wayne, the ultimate Marlboro Man, with Fu Man Chu facial hair, made up so his eyes seem slanted, is prima facie farcical.  But Wayne needed one more movie to finish out his contract with RKO, and he insisted on getting the part and playing it like a cowboy from the Caucasus.  Powell tried to talk him out of it, but who could say no to the Duke?  

The rest is tragedy.  Despite its stellar cast, The Conqueror was a total flop at the box office.  So much so that the film was awarded a Golden Raspberry and listed as one of the 50 worst films of all time in 1978.  Perhaps even more painful than the miscasting of Wayne is the screenplay.  Here’s a choice example of deathless dialogue from Temujin (Tip:  you want to imagine Wayne’s unique cadence and Iowa twang here):

I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, take her.  There are moments for wisdom and moments when I listen to my blood; my blood says, take this Tartar woman.

But there was even worse fallout from the film.  Literally.

The movie was shot on location in 1954 in Snow Canyon in St. George, Utah, about 140 miles downwind from a nuclear bomb testing site in Nevada run by the Atomic Energy Commission.  Of the 220 people involved in the film, 91 contracted cancer and 46 died of the disease.  This number doesn’t include the extras and numerous American Indians who played Mongolian warriors and may have also contracted cancer in later years.  Powell got lymph cancer and died in 1963.  Pedro Armendáriz, a Mexican actor who played Khan’s sidekick, shot himself in 1963 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Hayward died of brain cancer in 1975.  Wayne died of stomach cancer in 1979.  His son Michael died in 2003 of cancer.  His other son Patrick is a cancer survivor.  

John Wayne on the Set in Snow Canyon

A People magazine article in 1980 quoted Robert Pendleton, director of radiological health at the University of Utah, saying radioactivity from previous blasts "probably" lodged in Snow Canyon. The article also attributed this unforgettable quote to a scientist from the Pentagon’s nuclear defense agency:  “Please, God, don’t let us have killed John Wayne.”

They may have.  The government has been less than forthcoming about the cancer risks associated with its testing program.  Eleven bombs were detonated at the test site in Nevada in the spring of 1953, killing thousands of sheep only months before The Conqueror was shot nearby, as the wind blows.  An AEC press release blamed the sheep's deaths on “unprecedented cold weather.”  One can only wonder what lame excuse the AEC came up with to explain why so many of the cast and crew of The Conqueror succumbed to cancer-related deaths.

John Wayne and Sons on Set Holding a Geiger Counter, Crackling with Radioactivity

Maybe they tried to blame it on John the Conqueroo.   Also known as High John de Conquer, John the Conqueroo is the root of the St. John’s-wort plant.  In southern black American folklore, the root is used to cast or break evil spells.  Willie Dixon sings about it in Hootchie Coochie Man:

I’ve got a black cat’s bone. 

I've got a mojo tooth.

I've got a John the Conqueroo.

I'm gonna mess with you.

In any case, somebody sure messed with John the Conqueror.

Epilogue:  Aunt Jessie, like the Duke, died of cancer, but I can assure you it had nothing to do with The Conqueror.  And I don't think she was related to Genghis Khan either, but you never know.

Keep it real!

Marilyn