If you’ve spent any time digging through the dusty corners of Hollywood history, you’ve probably heard about The Conqueror. It’s that 1956 epic where John Wayne—the ultimate American cowboy—played Genghis Khan. Honestly, it sounds like a bad joke from a late-night sketch show, but it actually happened. The cast of The Conqueror wasn’t just a weird collection of stars in the wrong roles; they were part of what many people call the most cursed production in the history of cinema.
It’s easy to laugh at the "yellowface" makeup or the clunky dialogue. However, the story behind the people on screen is much darker than just a bad casting choice. We're talking about a production filmed downwind from a nuclear test site. When we look at the cast of The Conqueror, we aren't just looking at actors in a flop. We’re looking at a group of people whose lives were likely changed by a single, disastrous location scout.
Who Was Actually in the Cast of The Conqueror?
Most people only remember Duke. But the cast was actually stacked with mid-century heavyweights. You had Susan Hayward playing Bortai. She was a powerhouse, a four-time Oscar nominee at the time (who would eventually win for I Want to Live!). Seeing her as a Tartar princess is... a lot to take in. Then there was Pedro Armendáriz as Jamuga. Armendáriz was a titan of Mexican cinema, a guy who worked with John Ford and was basically royalty in the industry.
Then you have the supporting players. Agnes Moorehead, who most of us know as Endora from Bewitched, played Hunlun. Thomas Gomez was there. John Hoyt was there. Lee Van Cleef, the legendary "Bad" from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, even had a small role as Chepei.
It was a big-budget Howard Hughes production. Hughes was obsessed with it. He spent roughly $6 million—a fortune back then—to make this happen. He wanted a spectacle. What he got was a tragedy.
John Wayne as Genghis Khan: The Elephant in the Room
Let’s be real. John Wayne as the Mongol leader is the primary reason this movie is still discussed. It is widely considered one of the worst casting decisions ever made. Wayne reportedly lobbied for the role himself after reading the script by Oscar Millard. He wanted to show range. He wanted to be more than just the guy on a horse in Monument Valley.
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The result was awkward. Wayne didn't change his accent. He didn't really change his gait. He just delivered lines like "I feel this Tartar woman is for me" with the same drawl he used in The Searchers. It’s painful. But for the cast of The Conqueror, the bad reviews were the least of their problems.
The St. George Connection: A Toxic Backdrop
The movie was filmed in St. George, Utah. It’s a beautiful area, full of red rocks and dramatic vistas. It looks like the Gobi Desert if you squint. But in 1954, when they were filming, St. George was only about 137 miles downwind from the Nevada National Security Site.
The government had been detonating nuclear bombs there for years. Specifically, "Upshot-Knothole" happened just a year prior. The cast and crew were working in red dust that was, quite literally, radioactive.
They weren't just there for a few days. They were there for weeks. They breathed it. They ate in it. Howard Hughes, in a move that seems almost villainous in hindsight, actually shipped 60 tons of that dirt back to Hollywood to finish filming on a soundstage so the "look" would be consistent. He basically brought the fallout home with them.
The Grimmer Statistics
By 1980, People magazine ran an investigative piece that sent shockwaves through the industry. Out of the 220 cast and crew members who worked on the film, 91 had developed cancer.
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- John Wayne died of stomach cancer in 1979.
- Susan Hayward died of brain cancer in 1975.
- Agnes Moorehead died of uterine cancer in 1974.
- Dick Powell, the director, died of cancer in 1963.
- Pedro Armendáriz took his own life in 1963 after learning his kidney cancer was terminal.
Is it a statistical anomaly? Scientists have argued about this for decades. Dr. Robert Pendleton, a researcher at the University of Utah, famously said that with a group of 220 people, you might expect about 30 cancer cases. Seeing 91 is a "monstrous" deviation. Some people point out that many of these actors were heavy smokers, which is true. Wayne smoked six packs a day. But the clusters of rare cancers among the crew—even those who didn't smoke—point toward the dust.
Howard Hughes and the Guilt Factor
Howard Hughes was a complicated man. A genius, a pilot, a recluse, and a total obsessive. After the movie flopped and the reports of illness started trickling in, Hughes reportedly felt an immense amount of guilt.
He didn't just ignore it. He actually bought every single print of the film for $12 million. He kept the movie locked away in a vault. He refused to let it be shown on television or in theaters. For years, the only way to see it was if you were Howard Hughes.
Legend has it that in his final years, while he was sequestered in hotel penthouses, he would watch The Conqueror on a loop, night after night. Was he looking for clues? Was he punishing himself? We’ll never know. The film wasn't seen by the public again until Paramount Pictures bought the rights from his estate in 1979, shortly after his death.
Why the Movie Failed Beyond the Casting
It wasn’t just the "John Wayne as a Mongol" thing. The script was genuinely weird. It tried to sound "ancient" and "epic" but ended up sounding like a parody. Lines like "Thou art beautiful in thy wrath" don't sound great coming from a guy who looks like he belongs in a saloon in Dodge City.
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The pacing was off. The editing was choppy. Even without the radioactive controversy, The Conqueror would have been a footnote—a "what were they thinking?" moment in 1950s cinema. But the tragedy of the cast of The Conqueror elevated it into a dark legend.
Navigating the Legacy Today
When you watch the movie now, it feels like a ghost story. You see Lee Van Cleef looking young and sharp. You see Susan Hayward’s incredible red hair against the Utah sky. You see John Wayne trying his absolute best to be a different kind of hero.
It’s a reminder of a time when Hollywood didn't have safety protocols, and the government didn't always tell the truth about environmental hazards. The "Downwinders" of Utah and Nevada suffered for years, and the cast of The Conqueror became the famous faces of that suffering.
Actionable Insights for Film Historians and Fans
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this specific era of Hollywood or the tragedy of this production, here are a few ways to get the full story:
- Watch the Documentary: Look for The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout. It’s a 2023 documentary that interviews descendants of the cast and local residents of St. George. It provides a much more human look at the disaster than the tabloid stories.
- Read the People Magazine Archive: The 1980 article titled "The Children of G-I-S Who Died" is the definitive starting point for the cancer cluster investigation. It’s a masterclass in investigative journalism from that era.
- Check Out "Killing for Land": This book by Darwin Holmstrom offers a broader context of the nuclear testing in the American West and how it intersected with pop culture.
- Analyze the Performance: Watch The Conqueror not as a movie, but as a period piece of 1950s ambition. Notice how the actors handle the physical environment—the dust is everywhere in every shot.
The cast of The Conqueror deserved better than a bad script and a poisoned set. They were professionals who thought they were making the next Ben-Hur. Instead, they became a cautionary tale about the high cost of the "spectacle" and the dangers of ignoring the environment for the sake of a shot. It's a heavy legacy for a movie that was once just a punchline about a cowboy in a funny hat.