The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout (2023) Movie Script

NARRATOR:Interior inn on the park,
London, night.
Howard Hughes.
The billionaire tycoon,
aviator, and film producer
has become a recluse.
Locked in his penthouse suite,
he refuses to bathe.
Sports a long white beard.
Fingernails that protrude
like snakes,
where he sits for hours,
naked,
except for a pink hotel napkin.
Another ritual would dominate
his final years.
A motion picture that he would
play continually
against a homemade
projector screen.
The movie looks part western,
part musical.
A would-be epic, a total farce.
To Howard Hughes,
this film called
The Conqueror
was his final masterpiece.
I feel this tired woman
is for me.
My blood says take her.
The Conqueror in many ways
would be a--
a entirely forgettable picture
today.
Howard Hughes had this idea.
He wanted to make
the Genghis Khan story.
American
and international audiences
loved these big
wide-screen epics.
Howard Hughes was a megalomaniac.
He-- he certainly saw himself
as a conqueror
of the movie business.
The aircraft business.
A conqueror of politics.
A conqueror of the whole world.
John Wayne,
and William Conrad,
and Ted de Corsia.
Uh, even Agnes Moorehead.
Playing Asiatics.
Just because it was accepted,
it doesn't necessarily mean
that it was correct.
It was his creations.
It was the Howard Hughes
presents this,
you know, iconic motion picture
that he believed was
his masterpiece.
NARRATOR:For authenticity,
Hughes chose
the perfect location
to recreate the world
of Genghis Khan.
The Gobi Desert looks like
the area around St. George.
Living in St. George
in the 50s and 60s
was magical.
We heard all aboutThe Conqueror being here
and how the stars were here.
The Conquerorwas a $6 million disaster
that starred John Wayne
as Genghis Khan,
the great Mongolian warrior,
who conquered most of Asia
during the 12th century.
I wouldn't say it's one of
the-- the best films I've seen
or one of my father's
best films.
Of-- of all
the Howard Hughes movies,
this is probably
the toughest movie
to find anything
admirable about.
The Conqueror has been called one of the worst films
of the 1950s,
if not of all time.
If I could describeThe Conqueror in one word,
I would probably just call it
tragic.
Ah, unfortunate.
Ridiculous.
Miscast.
I've heard that
it's a terrible movie.
I don't know if I've seen it
all the way through.
You know,
I wouldn't watch it twice.
The Conqueror was to be Hughes' cinematic masterpiece.
Shot in breathtaking
CinemaScope
and glorious Technicolor.
Why Mr. Hughes,
did you watch this film
over and over,
as if searching for an answer?
Are you thinking
about the people of St. George
as well as your cast and crew?
How they would be linked
in a dark chapter
in American history?
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS NARRATOR:There was a time,
when the cinema was a place
of spectacle and wonder.
When unforgettable films
played on gigantic screens,
that overwhelmed
the imagination.
Now, that time has come again.
Behold His mighty hands.
In the early 50s, studios were trying to create
these larger-than-life epics.
THE ROBE NARRATOR:Here is all the sweep
and spectacle.
BEN HUR NARRATOR:The spectacle, the color,
the excitement.
The human drama.
THE CRIMSON PIRATE NARRATOR:Yes, and a whole new world
of entertainment wonders.
Well, in the 50s, television
made the film industry
very nervous.
They were very, very conscious
of having to counteract that--
that idea
that they were competing
with little images
in a little box
in black and white at home.
So, you had to have
splashy color
and you had to have things
that were big
and felt important.
SHANE NARRATOR:The motion picture unforgettable
for its spectacle and scope.
And the other big factor
at the time was this thing
called the Cold War.
And there was this communist
agenda that was happening
that Americans
were fighting against.
And there was this
whole nuclear program
that was happening,
and it was something that--
that became a very big topic
in Hollywood as well.
THEM! NARRATOR:But born in that swirling
inferno of radioactive dust
were things so horrible,
so hideous,
there is no word
to describe "Them!"
We may be witnesses
to a biblical prophecy
come true.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
It may be said that the Atomic Age is here to stay.
The question is, Are we?
The atomic bomb creates
a temperature
at the center of the explosion
of a 100 million degrees
Fahrenheit,
which is three
and a half times
the temperature in the interior
of the sun.
This heat creates great fires.
Secondly,
it creates tremendous pressures
which push the air
in front of them,
creating winds of 500
to a 1000 miles per hour,
10 times the velocity
of a hurricane.
These winds knock everything
down in their path.
Thirdly,
it produces super radiations
equivalent to tons
and tons of radium,
which would kill all life
within an area
of 10 square miles.
These radioactive poisons
would be carried
and dispersed through the winds.
The dust will settle
gradually everywhere.
The Atomic Energy Commission emerged as a way
to create
a separate government unit
to manage atomic energy outside
of the military.
I graduated University of Utah in 1954
with a degree in ROTC
for the air force
and business management.
I was to learn how
to handle radiological projects
to protect uh, people.
The idea was that if we were
to bomb targets in Russia,
the airplanes would be covered
with radiological contamination.
General Curtis LeMay was head
of the United States Air Force
at that time.
And we were
under the Strategic Air
Command Commission.
The Soviet success with the atomic bomb in 1949
really created a sense
of urgency
for locating a more practical
continental test site.
Because the Pacific
was expensive.
It was logistically complicated
and they needed something
that could be used
more efficiently
than the Pacific.
New Mexico where
the Trinity bomb had been tested
was considered,
but ultimately they identified
two vast areas of Nevada,
one to the north,
Tonopah, Nevada,
and one about 70 miles north
of Las Vegas.
NARRATOR:The US government chose
the Nevada desert
north of Las Vegas
as the site
for their atomic test program.
300 miles away,
another blast was being felt
in Hollywood, California.
RKO, the king of B pictures,
but also prestigious films
such as Scarface, King Kong,
and perhaps the greatest film
of them all, Citizen Kane,
would be purchased
by an aviation pioneer,
millionaire, and dreamer,
determined to shake up
the film industry.
BRITISH MOVIETONE NARRATOR:The goal of aviators is now
the nonstop flight
around the world.
And Howard Hughes has taken
a big step towards attaining it.
Leaving Burbank, California,
the millionaire sportsman
and film producer,
calls at New York
on his way to Europe.
Even in the late 40s and early 50s,
Howard Hughes was a name
surrounded by exoticism.
A mystery figure in one way,
a very famous
highly public figure in another.
Howard Hughes was interested in really three things.
He was interested in aviation.
He was interested in women,
and he was interested
in making movies.
Those three things do not
necessarily make
a good head of a studio.
NARRATOR:Howard fired most
of the RKO staff,
made fewer movies,
and upset the balance
of Hollywood in the early 1950s.
But there was one subject matter
he was determined to bring
to the big screen.
Howard Hughes had this idea.
He wanted to make
the Genghis Khan story.
The-- the story of Genghis Khan--
Is a story of like a Caesar
or you know, a Cleopatra.
This kind of blockbuster
kind of idea.
The agent who was with him
at the time said,
I've got the perfect guy
for you.
This Oscar Millard,
he's an expert on Genghis Khan.
OSCAR:I was in fact such an authority
on Genghis Khan,
when I prudently looked him up
in the Britannica
in the half hour I had
before the meeting,
I had trouble finding him,
because I couldn't spell
his name.
Dick Powell was a figure in Hollywood for a long time.
He was a guy who was
very likeable.
Everyone liked him.
Boy meets girl
He'd come to Hollywood, uh, singer, dancer.
But um,
he started to see himself
beyond being
in front of the screen
and started to think of himself
behind the screen.
Hughes, he ended up getting
to know Dick Powell
and somehow he managed
to convince him
to let him direct
this epic picture
called The Conqueror.
It's a huge project,
and I think he had the most uh,
important qualification
for him getting that role,
was his ability to say yes
a lot to Howard Hughes.
NARRATOR:Interior, bedroom.
Middle of the night,
the phone rings.
A half waken man answers.
Interior, parking garage.
One hour later.
Powell is meeting with Hughes
in the back of his limousine
to go over mundane
production matters
regarding The Conqueror.
To Hughes,
everything must be discussed
in utmost secrecy.
Over the shoulder medium shot,
as Powell watches
the millionaire drive away
into the Los Angeles night.
The 3:00 a.m. meetings in
secret back alley garages
and all of this was being run
like a CIA operation.
Nothing was simple with this guy.
He was concerned that
his conversations
would be overheard.
I know a lot of the backstory from my husband
having been a teenager
working there
and the things he's told me.
He thinks his dad did it,
because it bought him
a nice house
in Mandeville Canyon.
OSCAR:Powell said he would get
Marlon Brando
on loan out from Fox
to play the lead.
Brando was the new magic name
and I had just
heard him deliver,
Friends, Romans, countrymen,
as if newly minted.
Carried away,
I decided to write
the screenplay
in stylized,
slightly Archaic English.
Mindful of the fact
that my story was nothing more
than a tarted up western,
I thought this would give it
a certain cache.,
and I left no lily unpainted.
It was said that
when Marlon Brando
was offered the-- the role
as Temujin,
his biggest objection
was the dialogue.
He couldn't handle it.
And so they started looking
at who else they could get.
And um,
the one of the other names
that they were looking at
was Yul Brynner.
Yul Brynner
would've also been a--
quite an interesting character
to kind of had done this movie.
This is business.
They're trying thinking of--
of the box office.
Howard Hughes thought
they're doing a story
about one of the great uh,
figures in the world history.
This would be great to be sold
around the world.
CAMEL CIGARETTES AD NARRATOR:Here's John Wayne.
America's number one dramatic
movie star on location.
As you can see,
making a movie can be pretty
tough going,
but free swinging He-Man parts
are what John Wayne loves
to play
and what the audience loves
to see him in.
Okay, cut.
You got The Beatles and-- and--
and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.
And John Wayne.
He epitomized the masculine American male for,
largely for 50 years.
He was the iconic representation
of the American West.
That characteristic walk.
The slow draw.
Looks like you've got
yourself around it.
The massive brow and physical stature,
embodied everything they thought
the American West should be.
He's known,
and continues to be known
as the big cowboy action star,
who at one time
for a very long time
was probably
the most famous person
in the world.
My father came from Iowa.
He came from the core values
of middle America.
Uh he, appreciated this country
for what it was.
If you were willing
to work hard,
the opportunity was there
to be a success.
When Oscar Millard found out
John Wayne
was going to be starring
in The Conqueror,
he realized that it was going
to be a terrible mistake.
Because John Wayne was gonna
butcher the dialogue.
OSCAR:I called Dick Powell.
He said, Are you sitting down?
Fox suspended Brando.
So, we've got John Wayne.
When he starts mangling
those lines,
he's going to be a big joke,
I said.
He's promised to work
on him with a coach
and tape recorder, Powell said.
He's very enthusiastic.
Swears he'll work
his fanny off.
At our first meeting
for a run through,
Wayne was genial,
complimentary, and drunk.
JOHN WAYNE:In the United States of
America, that this can happen,
it's getting to be
ri-goddamn-diculous.
OSCAR:He dozed off
after the first few pages
and there was no more talk
of his working on the dialogue.
The challenge with The Conqueror
was that
it was a historical film
taking place
in the 13th century,
and they needed to have
these vast, wide open spaces.
Dick Powell had actually found
this area of St. George, Utah,
um, and they felt
this would look
fantastic on camera.
When the location scout said,
We need something, uh,
similar to the Gobi Desert,
maybe about the 12th century.
A man
on the Chamber of Commerce,
he said, Ah.
Uh, I was a pilot
in World War II.
And I used to fly over the hump,
flying gasoline
and supplies to China.
And you know the deserts
that I--
I flew over there,
looked very much
like the deserts we have here,
in a place called,
Snow Canyon.
Immediately, the knew,
Snow Canyon
in the St. George area
was going to be the location
for this film.
Living in St. George in
the 50s and 60s was magical.
We grew up out on the little farm
south of Cedar City.
Small farm,
enough to have a big garden.
Um, we had our chickens
and a cow once in a while,
and a few pigs
when we did our forage group.
Neighbors had sheep
and it was a great place,
we played outside all day,
and I had a great childhood.
My parents had a-- had a--
about a 250-acre farm right
in the center of the valley,
at Beryl Junction.
And loved it.
Every second of it.
I learned how to work there.
I knew every adult in town,
and every child,
and their dogs,
and their horses.
Everybody knew where everybody lived,
and everybody knew
where everybody worked.
And if we got into any kind
of trouble,
everybody knew everybody,
and told their parents
before we got home.
We went, um, fishing
on the weekends.
Swam in ponds with our dog.
Uh, rode bikes,
climbed trees.
When it snowed, we would gather up snow.
We'd put vanilla and sugar in
it and pretend it was ice cream.
The place to go to
when I was young,
and today is
Judd's general store.
Everybody went there,
everybody still goes there.
It's the place to hang out.
We were all called to get up about
2:00 in the morning.
We went to a bunker in Nevada.
We were put in trenches.
We were told to uh,
close our eyes.
Three.
And then put our hands
over our eyes.
Zero.
The light was so bright, I could see through
on the other side
of my hands.
And I could see the guy's feet
through the leather
standing next to me.
And we were told that
this would be uh,
non-effective
to our personal bodies
by the military.
That you dont--
you don't have anything
to worry about.
We had drills all the time,
because we were told
the Russians are coming.
I have just vivid memories of being in grade school
and having the drills,
where we had to jump
under our desk
and cover our head.
There was a turtle
by the name of Bert
And Bert the turtle
was very alert
When danger threatened him,
he never got hurt
He knew just what to do
Please duck
and cover
Duck and cover
He did what
we all must learn to do
You
And you
And you
And you
Duck
And cover
The spring and summer of 1953
were a critical turning point
for atomic testing.
You have hundreds
different experiments happening,
and there's a--
a real sense
of Cold War urgency.
And that is not necessarily
the best way to do science.
Uh, under these hasty
emergency conditions,
and there are some consequences
in 1953.
And most infamously, the--
the Harry shot
that is-- is bigger,
and raises a much bigger cloud
of debris
than was anticipated.
And it also happens at a time
when the prevailing wind
is heading directly
toward Bunkerville
and St. George,
and Cedar City in Southern Utah.
These are the people
who are on the front lines
of atomic warfare.
And the AEC wants
to reassure them
and in the process
reassure the American public
that this continental testing
is so appropriate
and still safe.
When they were doing
the above ground testing
at the Nevada test site.
When they would have
an announced test,
families in the St. George area
would come up here
to the highest bluff
and bring their families
for the evening tests
or the early morning.
And watch the tests that would
be coming up over this bluff.
And bring food, a picnic,
whatever, they would
spend hours.
The kids would play,
they'd communicate
with their neighbors, have fun.
The test had come up
as a big ball of flame
go up into the sky
and then itd dissipate
into a mushroom cloud,
depending on how the wind
was blowing.
It would either go north, south
or drift this way.
And typically, it would come
this way,
because they'd wait
till the wind was blowing
our direction.
AEC REPRESENTATIVE 1:Ladies and gentlemen,
we interrupt this program
to bring you important news.
Due to a change
in wind direction,
the residue from this morning's
atomic detonation
is drifting
in the direction of St. George.
To prevent unnecessary exposure
to radiation,
it is better to take cover
during this period.
Parents need not be alarmed
about children at school.
No recesses outdoors
will be permitted.
There is no danger.
This is simply routine
safety procedure.
NEVADA ATOMIC TESTS NARRATOR:Yes, the very nature
of testing weapons
for national defense
requires we accept
the possibility
of some exposure
to additional radiation.
There is some potential risk.
So a fallout quite simply is
any particulate matter
that is generated
by a nuclear explosion,
thrown into the atmosphere
that then later falls down.
Some of it could fall
straight down.
Some of it could go
extremely high, 30-40,000 feet.
And get pulled
into the atmosphere.
And circle the globe.
Uh, so, these could be
particles of dirt.
They could be vaporized rock.
They could be the particles
of the tower
and other parts of the military
testing equipment.
And they could also be
particles of radiation.
DEFENSE BRIEFING NARRATOR:Radioactive atoms produced
in the explosion
join with the particles
of earth and debris.
The mushroom shaped cloud forms
and climbs higher.
It now contains billions
of highly radioactive particles.
We call them, fallout.
The winds of the upper
altitudes blow on the cloud,
sending it in one
or more directions.
Some of the very light particles
may remain suspended
in the atmosphere for years
and travel thousands of miles
before landing.
But the heavy particles
drop to the ground
within 24 hours.
These are the most hazardous,
because they emit
the largest amount
of nuclear radiation.
A 100 miles from the explosion,
they are about the size
of table salt
or fine sand.
When we would go to school, uh, in elementary,
men would come
in big black suits
and check our thyroids,
with Geiger counters.
And when we'd light it up,
I remember lighting it up once
and asking what it meant,
and being told it meant
that I'd had a dental X-ray.
Well, my mother was an RN
and I knew what an X-ray was.
And I--
back then you didn't go
to the dentist for everything.
And I knew I hadn't had
a dental X-ray.
I remember it in fourth grade,
fifth grade,
all the way through high school.
They would come,
check our thyroids
with their fingers and say,
Take a sip.
Swallow.
Give us a little sip of water
and we did that,
we went back to class.
This is Atomic Test In Nevada.
It's a booklet the government
put out,
one of their propaganda pieces
in '57.
Uh, to kind of assuage
peoples' fears.
So, it tells them
they don't really have much
to worry about.
It's got pictures in it,
like you can see
the little cowboys,
and it just makes it look
like people here,
a bunch of Western yahoos.
You people who live
near Nevada test site
are in a very real sense
active participants
in the nation's atomic
test program.
You have been close observers
of tests
which have contributed greatly
in building the defenses
of our country
and of the free world.
Nevada tests have helped us
make general progress
in a few years
and have been a vital factor
in maintaining the peace
of the world.
Some of you may have been
inconvenienced
by our test operations.
That one always kills me.
I am not scared
I am pretty prepared
I'll be spared
I've got a fallout shelter
It's nine by nine
A hi-fi set
and a jug of wine
Let the missiles fly
From nation to nation
It's party time
in all my radiation station
I'm not spared
I, Temujin,
chief of all Mongols...
And my dad playing Genghis Khan?
Are you serious?
Come on.
I wish you well, Temujin Khan.
Yes, it is odd.
Was it unusual for the time?
No.
Who got the job was
who was the big box office guy?
There's no question that John Wayne had his fans
and followers, who would come
to a movie
even where he's wearing
a ridiculous painted on,
Fu Manchu moustache.
I do think
the general assumption
is that-- that Wayne may have
read the script,
but not when he was sober.
OSCAR:I doubt if he looked
at the script again
until the day before
the cameras were to roll.
When he called me at home,
Oscar, he said,
You got to do something
about these effing lines.
I can't read 'em.
Duke, I replied,
I'd have to rewrite
the entire script for you.
Why didn't you speak up sooner?
He muttered an expletive
and hung up.
She's a woman, Jamuga.
Much woman.
Should her perfidy be less
than that of other women?
It's the dialogue.
I take her with me.
That people loved repeating.
On those rare occasions,
thank God they're rare,
when my wife will be annoyed
with me about something.
I like to say...
You're beautiful in your wrath.
And then again, the line delivery.
Eternal skies,
Yessugai, my father, hear me.
John Wayne's performance
did not draw--
A great deal of critical praise.
At the time, St. George, I believe had
under 30 motels.
So, they not only had
to rent all of the hotels,
but a lot of locals rented out
their homes.
Susan Hayward rented a home
from a local
and the enthusiasm,
especially the young people
was such that they had
to limit autographing sessions
to two and a half hours.
My mother was my mother.
Uh, and that other person,
she had a job
and that job was acting.
Susan Hayward was uh, in many ways
one of the quintessential stars
of the 1950s.
She was beautiful,
she was talented.
She was smart.
She would come
to Hollywood around 1937.
Um, along with a whole lot
of other Hollywood starlets
who were being uh,
tested for the role
of Scarlett O'Hara
in Gone with the Wind.
Scarlett.
What is it?
I love you.
Um, she didn't get the part, but she did stay around.
She was always fighting for--
for the good movies.
Um, but um,
RKO had-- had contracted
with Fox to get her on loan
to do The Conqueror.
It was an absurdity.
Really off the wall.
That-- I think that was--
that was evident to everybody
who was connected with it.
She knew with this was not gonna be great casting.
It would be an odd choice,
but Howard Hughes
didn't really care.
Hughes had personally wanted
to work with her,
because he wanted to--
he wanted to get
Susan Hayward into bed
is what it was.
Susan Hayward decided,
made a conscious decision
not to change her appearance
for The Conqueror.
And that says a lot about her.
She's not gonna changer
her look at all,
to be a Mongolian!
Come on now!
She's not gonna do this.
She's gonna be
the Hollywood actress,
Susan Hayward.
You could tell that this was a smart woman.
She wasn't afraid.
Whether it be for vanity.
Maybe she didn't
wanna see herself--
In that sort of makeup.
But she-- she took a stance.
I know she said at the time,
she said,
I play a red-haired
Tartar princess,
as if some wild Irishman
got lost
on the way to the road
to old Cathay,
which is pretty clever comment.
The one thing that Howard Hughes and Dick Powell did
when they castThe Conqueror was,
they did have a really re--
resounding supporting cast
of people.
Pedro Armendariz was a very
successful actor in Hollywood,
but also he had done
a lot of uh,
Mexico's version of Hollywood
in Mexico's golden age
of films.
He was uh,
a very ethnic-looking actor.
He could fit in to a lot
of really interesting roles.
Whether he was playing a--
a Mexican or an Asian,
or a Turk
or whatever the role was.
I know that John Wayne fought
for Pedro getting roles
and getting the credit uh,
that he deserved.
And there are a lot of scenes
that are Jamuga,
Pedro Armendariz interacting
with Temujin, John Wayne.
Tempting.
Tempting,
but unwise, my brother.
Listen to me.
There are moments for wisdom,
Jamuga.
Then I listen to you.
There are moments for action,
then I listen to my blood.
And Pedro Armendariz actually--
and it is a sign
of a very good actor,
he seems, uh,
a little bit more comfortable
with this
ridiculously stilted script.
Speak then.
- Deny it!
- I will not.
To deny it would give substance to your thought.
This shame might spare you.
Curb that silver tongue.
Speak straight!
But there's Spanish accent there.
And that's a--
a little bit in--
incongruous.
A fair prize, my son,
if my eyes see well.
Fairer than you, my mother.
Agnes Moorehead was cast
as John Wayne's mother.
Even though she was
only seven years older
than he was.
And then Agnes Moorehead,
how did she get there?
Spawn of evil.
Let your slaves have
their sport with her.
I will not have her
within our tents.
We have Agnes Moorehead in this.
Lee Van Cleef is in it.
And uh-- and Conrad
and-- and--
and all these white actors
are in this film,
which was common.
Unfortunately,
it was deemed acceptable
to have yellowface played
in Hollywood at the time.
White men ran studios,
and the culture at the time was
anything other than Anglo
is less than white.
Racism was horribly prevalent
at that time.
John Wayne felt that he could
play Genghis Khan, an Asian.
It shows a lot of ego,
and lack of self awareness,
and lack of empathy towards
the Asian race.
The thing
about the cultural appropriation
in this movie, is there were
Asian American actors
who actually worked
in Hollywood.
I mean, why not?
At least-- at least for some
of the minor roles.
What think of you that, Shaman?
So grave a question demands
a shorter answer.
Let a sheep be slaughtered,
and the shoulder blade
brought hither.
There's not a chance
in the world
they could make a film anything
like this today.
Can you imagine?
The only director who could
have handled this uh, film,
I think successfully
making it delightful
would have been Mel Brooks.
That summer, we would go to the local swimming hall,
where all the other kids went.
And we went to uh,
we went to the morning church
on uh, on Sundays.
The casting crew of The Conqueror
largely had set up houses in--
in St. George's.
They'd rented homes in a--
on a block,
and they all lived
next to each other,
across the street
from each other.
So, they all were sort
of surrounding each other.
And it was a--
a bit of a family atmosphere.
My father never came up to St. George.
And I don't recall us going
back to Los Angeles
to spend time with him.
Yeah, they were going
through a divorce.
And it-- it was uh,
it wasn't a real pleasant time.
It wasn't a pleasant for I--
I think for anybody
in the family.
But I remember John Wayne,
because he lived across
the street.
He was a very personal guy.
I had a-- a scar under this eye.
So, John Wayne saw it
and he asked me what it was.
And I told him I got hit
with a rock
underneath my eye.
And I remember him--
him laughing
and him saying,
Put beef steak on it.
Susan Hayward um,
always had this affection
for John Wayne.
She always thought he was one
of her favorite leading men
and she was attracted to him.
And so, she--
she did make moves on Wayne.
They said at one time
she had a love scene on the set
and she kissed him,
and he said,
she stuck her tongue
in his mouth.
One of the things that
my brother
and I liked to do
was we liked to camp out
on the front yard.
And all I'm gonna say is this,
that uh,
one morning
about 3:00 in the morning,
we saw this figure.
We were both up come running
across the lawn uh,
to the house across the street
where John Wayne was living.
And it was my mother.
And I don't think uh,
she was running over there,
you know,
to get a-- to get a bagel.
When we moved to St. George,
we heard all about The Conqueror
being here,
and how the stars were here.
They were hanging out
at the Big Hand Cafe.
And there were a lot
of pictures at the time
before the Big Hand Cafe
was torn down.
A lot of pictures of John Wayne
and Dick Powell.
And those guys,
and their pictures were
plastered all over the walls.
They were pretty proud of that.
Dick's Cafe,
a renowned restaurant
in St. George,
was not only the chief uh,
dining spot,
but Dick Hammer catered
on location.
A lot of the locals were used
as security guards,
As greensmen.
As extras.
Just about everyone was needed
to be in the film.
We were a movie set town
and we got to be extras.
It was a big deal.
NARRATOR:The cast and crew took part
in a charity softball game
against the local Elks Club
of St. George.
Wayne signed autographs.
Dick Powell entertained
the crowd,
and Susan Hayward kicked off
her high heels
to run around the bases.
A local family, the Smoots,
presented Susan Hayward
with a giant cake
for her birthday.
The whole town
as well as Powell
and Wayne were there,
as Tim Barker recalls.
It was on the set,
and there were pictures of that
with Dick Powell
and John Wayne, and uh,
some of the other principals.
Uh, John Wayne cut the cake
with his Mongol sword.
They had 20 stuntmen.
These stunts were
very seriously dangerous.
We're talking horse stunts,
which the horses are tripping,
falling.
The men are falling
into the sands.
And there were
lots of accidents.
What I found fascinating
about this
and I don't know how they did it
or whether they did it
deliberately,
is all the horses falling down.
And maybe once they--
they had trip wires.
But where was the SPCA?
There was actually a--
a joke on the set at one point
where there was gonna be
a big action sequence
and Dick Powell said,
This is where we separate
the men from the boys,
in this scene.
And John Wayne,
you know, joked back to him
and said,
Well, let's just hope
we don't separate the men
from the horses.
Sadly, a short time later,
there was a-- a big action scene
and Pedro Armendariz had been
thrown from his horse,
and his horse at the time,
um, fell,
and actually landed on top
of him.
So, he was injured
and they--
at the time, they feared
that he may have
even broken his back
and they actually had to, um,
take him to the hospital.
He was ended up not being hurt
as badly as they'd feared,
but it was one of those kind
of serious mishaps.
NARRATOR:After finishing shooting
an action scene,
Powell turned to Wayne
and said,
There were no injuries.
Do you think the stuntmen
are getting better?
Wayne replied,
No, the horses
are getting smarter.
The nature of The Conqueror taking place
in 12th century, Mongolia,
you have to hire hundreds
of extras,
who can be made up
to look as close as possible
to those who would be living
in that area of Asia.
The nearest
and most practical people
to hire were 300 members
of the Shivwits Indian
reservation,
not far distant from St. George.
Yes, a 130 degrees.
They're wearing these
Mongolian costumes.
These kind of armor
and these heavy winter
animal skin,
thick, kind of heavy costumes.
These people were very hot.
And hundreds of extras
on horses and things,
they would be out there
for hours in this--
this grueling heat.
Environment of the American West is harsh.
Aridity and weather conditions
that can be extreme ranging
from heat to cold.
And the desert is windy.
It's one of the windiest parts
of the United States.
And the winds can be ferocious
and unpredictable.
So, there would be these vast scenes of blowing,
you know, dirt
and dust swirling around.
And not only was it--
was it bad enough with the--
the natural winds
that were happening.
It was the fact that they were--
they were creating
their own dust
by having these massive
fight scenes
and these horses were
running around
and they were having this--
kicking up all this
dust and debris,
that was literally covering
the actors.
And so they-- they ended up
coi-- calling it
like Utah chili powder,
because it was on everything.
So, they would sit down to eat
and it would be covering
the food they were eating.
NARRATOR:After two months in Utah,
the cast
and crew of The Conqueror,
returned to Los Angeles,
for interior shooting
on the RKO sound stages.
Let there be music and a feast
befitting Temujin,
chief of the Mongols.
I was a harem girl lounging somewhere.
You know, there's a lot
of lounging
when you're in a harem thing.
And I--
I was looking around
and I looked at Wayne, too,
you know, and I thought,
This is really bad.
Genghis Khan, he's not.
Between takes, I'd be there and he'd be there.
He is sitting up on his throne
and just hanging out.
We knew he'd been drinking
in the daytime.
We all felt that he was drinking
his way through that picture.
The costume designer,
Michael Woulfe,
he wanted it to look
as if I were naked.
The censor,
the haze office would decide
that well,
this scene is too racy,
and they'd edit a film
before they would open it
in the city.
My dance number was cut out
of the film,
in Baltimore, in Boston.
I don't know where else.
Woman of Samarkand,
I recognize her by the uh...
There are no finer dancers
under the heavens.
And without compare
in the arts of love.
After them all other women
are like
the second pressing
of the grape.
I didn't--
I thought it was, um,
not good.
There's so many strange things
about this movie.
And about Howard Hughes'
participation.
But one of the things that
apparently he insisted upon,
was they moved tons,
literally tons of desert sand
and-- and brought it
onto a sound stage.
In fact, Howard Hughes and the crew
carried 60 tonnes of this stuff
back to the studio,
so that this deep,
rich red sand
could be spread on the floors
of the sound stage.
When they rebuilt parts
of the village
in Culver City at RKO.
They have a campfire scene.
They would actually shoot that
in the stage.
They'd bring all the sage brush,
the sand, the rocks.
So, when they shot these scenes with these close-ups
of John Wayne,
and Susan Hayward,
and Agnes Moorehead,
and Pedro Armendariz,
it would fit with the film,
so there wouldn't be
a jarring difference.
So, they ended up bringing back
all this radioactive soil back
for a sound stage filming.
They would leave it there for all of the weeks
that were necessary
to film the interiors.
They were exposed to it
in these hermetically-sealed
sound stages
day after day, after day.
JOHN:The Conqueror
was released in 1956.
And there was a big push
for it.
It-- it got a lot of promotion,
a lot of publicity.
Hughes had invested $2 million
or something
in promoting this film.
The critics were not kind.
A John Wayne fan all the way through childhood
and adult life.
The Conqueror,
I cannot say that I ever saw it.
And from what I've heard,
we didn't miss anything.
It was not quite my John Wayne
uh, movie.
It--
It was an incredibly cheesy
movie that you know,
even being young,
we laughed at it.
THE CONQUEROR NARRATOR:For a hundred years,
the children of their loins
ruled half the world.
That's one of the things that's remarkable
about the film is,
it does feel like an epic.
But it's only a--
a 111 minutes long.
And it's has that-- a great virtue
of feeling much longer
than it is.
As bad as they sayThe Conqueror was,
it was not unsuccessful.
The movie cost $6 million
to make,
but the movie made $12 million.
$12 million in 1956
would equate to about
$130 to $135 million today.
So, it--
it was a successful movie.
NARRATOR:The cost to promote
and market the film
erased any profit for Hughes.
NEVADA ATOMIC TESTS NARRATOR:That great flash
in the western sky.
An atomic bomb
at the Nevada test site,
140 miles to the west.
But it's old stuff
to St. George.
Routine.
They've seen a lot of them,
ever since 1951.
Nothing to get
excited about anymore.
I mean, they did 928 tests in that desert.
That's 928 bombs.
More powerful than Hiroshima
and Nagasaki,
that were dropped
on our own country
by our government.
It was a common experience.
When I'd feel that concussion,
I knew exactly where to look.
We'd be working out there
in the field,
and you know,
you could see the mushroom
cloud come up.
My mom would come out to um,
the field,
and she would take us back home.
And make us stay in the house
when that cloud floated
over the valley.
This one time,
I went
and opened up the door.
And looked at that cloud
as it was drifting over
the valley.
And it had an eerie orangish
red tint to it.
You know, so you knew,
that the cloud was hot.
Starting in '53,
there were sheep ranchers
who were noticing
disease effect on sheep.
Sheep that were dead,
sheep that had lesions.
Things that they claimed
they'd never seen before,
and that were happening
in numbers
that were unprecedented.
During lambing season,
our neighbors had piles
of dead lambs.
They were deformed lambs.
And I always thought that
that was normal
to have piles
of dead deformed lambs
during lambing season.
I remember the Bulloch family losing a lot of sheep
and not--
they weren't just dead,
they lost their livelihood.
They lost their way
to make a living.
It was determined that the sheep had died from starvation
and being cold.
Well,
we knew those sheepherders.
We knew them personally.
They weren't starving
their sheep.
Their sheep weren't freezing.
So, it was a low blow.
Those people lost
their livelihoods
and thatd been generation
after generation of farmers.
The Conqueror was the last film Howard Hughes produced.
Before the film's release,
Hughes sold RKO
to General Teleradio
for $25 million.
By 1967, he was the richest man
in America
valued at $1.37 billion.
The fact he bought back
the rights
to his last two pictures,
Jet Pilot and The Conquerorfor $12 million,
led one observer to comment,
It was the show business coup
of the century for Teleradio.
What were you thinking Howard?
Hughes got his wish
when he began an affair
with Susan Hayward.
My mother dated Howard Hughes
for a short period of time.
And Howard Hughes
was a very weird man.
He was really trying
to make an impression
on my mother,
and he came to the house
one time,
and he met my brother and I.
He gave each of us
a silver dollar.
And you know, my mother said,
Give me the silver dollars.
She gave them back to him.
She didn't approve of the fact
of-- of him,
giving stuff to children
that he really didn't know.
NARRATOR:When Hayward discovered that
the wandering eyes of Hughes
hadn't abated,
she terminated
the short-lived romance.
My mother had this uncanny knack.
I understand it now,
but the men she had in her life
were just totally inappropriate.
My mother repetitiously got
involved with men
who you know,
same guy, different face,
that kind of thing.
And uh,
a lot of her relationships
didn't really last that long.
My father had a dairy.
Uh, it was called
the St. George Ice Company.
They were the only ones
that pasteurized milk,
uh, probably south of Provo.
My uncle, Grant Whitehead was a milkman,
that everybody knew
and he was recruited to be
in the Atomic Energy Commission
movie,
that told everybody
this sleepy town.
NEVADA ATOMIC TESTS NARRATOR:Pretty deserted at this hour.
Everything is closed down.
Everyone's asleep.
Everyone that is,
except a milkman.
Been delivering over
the same route for 12 years.
Never missed a day.
They filmed The Conqueror here when I was a teenager.
So, I was often,
I uh, asked to go out
and deliver milk to uh--
to the onsite filming,
but mostly up in Snow's Canyon,
not-- not far from here.
The cows ate the crops.
The kids drank the milk
from the cow,
and adults did.
If radiation gets into the ground,
and then grass grows
on that ground,
and cows eats that grass,
then the milk can have
strontium, uh,
or other radioactive elements
in it.
And that was a fact
that was well known.
Growing up
many of my childhood friends
were getting sick.
I had little Tammy Packer
down the street,
who was probably 8
when I was 7.
And she came to school one day
with her head shaved.
Because she had had
a brain tumor
and had surgery.
Um, she ended up dying,
and you're not used
to your little friends dying.
Four weeks later,
her 4-year-old brother died
of testicular cancer.
Darwin Hoyt was in fifth grade.
And Bruce Stone was
in sixth grade,
when he got sick.
And he died when we were
in eighth grade.
He had his leg amputated,
and he actually lived
till he was in eighth grade.
Darwin died, I believe,
when he was in sixth grade.
I knew that Coleen may had cancer.
I knew that
Mark Bradshaw's mother,
Welwyn, was going to died
because she had cancer.
At my age,
it wasn't until later on
that I started to really
get a grasp
of what had happened.
Because so many of them
were happening around me,
I grew up thinking it was
just normal for people
to get cancer,
and for people
to lose their dads,
and for the little kids to die.
Irma Thomas' daughter, Michelle, was a good friend of mine
and I spent a lot of time
at their house.
And Irma had a hand-drawn map
of St. George.
And she started marking X's
on the houses of people
that had cancer.
And it became very apparent
that like,
wait, there's a lot of people
dying of cancer.
And it was because
of Irma Thomas
that we really started to think,
Wow,
something's going on here.
When Michelle Thomas
contracted cancer,
I thought,
And here's her mom trying
to prove
that that government
gave us all cancer
and then her own daughter
gets cancer.
When the exposure is
to a young person,
the cancer may come then
at any point in their life
in the future,
and many times
the latency period for cancer
is on the order
of 10, 20, 30, 40,
even 50 years later.
There were the questions.
But there was
so much propaganda
that we were safe.
GREGORY:There has been
some exaggeration
says the Atomic Energy
Commission.
The tests do not produce
dangerous fallout.
They said we were fine.
And they wouldn't do anything
to harm us.
NARRATOR:Dick Powell would direct
three more films,
and executive produced,
as well as hosted popular
television shows.
ZANE GREY THEATER NARRATOR:Tonight's star, Dick Powell.
Most important of all
the professional men
who moved to the frontier
was the doctor.
NARRATOR:While directing
a television program in 1962,
Powell's neck
and face began to swell.
And he was diagnosed
with cancer of the lymph glands.
Doctors told Powell's wife,
movie star June Allyson
to prepare for the worst.
Dick Powell was one of the first to kind of succumb to cancer.
Dick Powell was the guy
who was--
he was there
through the entire thing.
He was there probably longer
and in more,
um, danger than anybody.
Because he was sitting
in the director's chair
in this huge boom,
sitting there,
just being hit with this dust
in his face for hours.
My dad uh, frequently wore a-- a mask.
Then when he was talking
to the actors, he--
he-- he took it off.
Some of the actors were only in portions of the film
who could kind of come and go.
Dick Powell was there
all the time.
NARRATOR:Allyson learned that
the nuclear tests
done near the set
of The Conqueror,
after Powell's death.
She was later heard to remark,
Had I stayed longer on
location with Richard,
I might not be alive today
nor the children.
On the set of the second
James Bond feature,
From Russia with Love,
Armendariz was fighting
a losing battle.
He took the part of Kerim Bey,
the Bond ally,
in order to provide
for his family.
Take a look,
you should remember him.
This man kills for pleasure.
Pedro kept the fact
he was dying from lymph cancer
that had spread to his hips
making walking difficult.
He kept working
with regular doses of morphine.
When From Russia with Love
went into the editing phase,
Armendariz was admitted
to the UCLA Medical Center.
He asked his wife, Carmen,
to get a ham sandwich for him
to eat.
She leaves.
Pedro goes into the drawer
in the stand next to him
and pulls out a gun.
When Carmen returns,
she finds him dead
from a gunshot wound
through the heart.
He was 51.
Someone had gotten him a gun
and he-- he took his own life.
I mean, it was terrible.
Everybody was in a state
of shock.
I mean, he had--
obviously had terminal cancer,
and he didn't wanna
deal with it.
I can understand that
completely.
He didn't want to--
He didn't want to exist,
you know,
unless the quality of life
is good.
You know, what is the point?
NARRATOR:When learning
of his friend's death,
Wayne stated,
I don't blame Pete.
I'd do the same thing.
My friends all tell me,
go to him, run to him
Say sweet, lovely things
to him
Tell him, he's the one
Deep in my heart
I know it, but its so hard
to show it
Cause it's easier
Easier said than done
My buddies tell me
Fly to him, sigh to him
Tell him I would die for him
Tell him he's the one
Although, he gives me
a feeling
That sets my heart a-reeling
Yeah, it's easier
Easier said than done
Well, I know
I know
That I love him so
But I'm afraid
that he'll never know
JOHN F. KENNEDY:Continued unrestricted testing
by the nuclear powers
will increasingly contaminate
the air
that all of us must breathe.
The loss of even one human life
or the malformation
of even one baby,
who may be born long
after all of us have gone,
should be of concern to us all.
Easier said than done
They banned atmospheric testing and uh,
the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
was one of the big achievements
of the Kennedy administration.
Tragically, it came too late
for Pedro Armendariz,
and John Wayne,
and Susan Hayward,
and Dick Powell,
and um, so many other people.
A fast ship going in harm's way.
Lousy situation,
Commander Eddington
John Wayne's first
direct encounter
with the scourge of cancer
occurred in 1964.
Uh, he had just completed
filming In Harm's Way
in Hawaii.
He was coughing like crazy.
His wife, uh, Pilar asked him
to go get checked out.
They discovered
a rather large-sized tumor
on one of his lungs,
and diagnosed him
with lung cancer,
and in very short order,
the lung was removed
in its entirety,
along with two ribs.
He had a procedure where
they broke his sternum open
like this.
They took out a lobe of his
lung and sewed him back up.
He was-- he was in the hospital
for six weeks
after the procedure
in convalescence.
He was so swollen up,
he looked like Jabba the Hutt.
I was absolutely just
scared to death.
I just thought that was gonna
be the end of it.
Somehow, he made it
through this experience.
I was just finishing my 199th picture.
Never felt better in my life
And I said to myself,
When this is finished,
I'm going out on my boat.
And then I got nagged into
going for a medical checkup.
They found a spot on the X-rays.
It was lung cancer.
If I'd waited a few more weeks,
I wouldn't be here now.
The whole anti smoking movement was kind of,
just being born in that era.
Smoke now, pay later.
He would get uh, requests
to be a spokesperson.
And ironically,
and interestingly,
he always said no.
And the reason he gave
for saying no,
was that no one had proven
to his satisfaction,
that his cancer was caused
by cigarette smoking.
So, why don't all of you
do yourselves a favor?
Get a checkup.
NARRATOR:It was also during the summer
of 1963,
that Agnes Moorehead's career
began to rise.
Though not
in the recognition factor,
as Wayne or Hayward.
She worked constantly,
and won acclaim
in the comedy television series,
Bewitched.
The Conquerorwas the last thing on her mind.
During a routine checkup
at the Mayo Clinic,
Moorehead was diagnosed
with uterine cancer,
that was spreading.
Alas, there is no peace
even for him
who seeks only
to enjoy his hard-won riches.
And then there were a bunch of other people
that were on the cast
and crew that were not known,
not named actors who would
have cancer
that were-- would die.
This was just happened
to be one of the movies
they made.
Of course, it was the multiple sicknesses
and the ultimate multiple
deaths of similar cause.
That's when people started
to talk about
the likelihood of them being
exposed up on location.
Those of us who had worked
on the picture, the dancers,
started realizing something
really horrible
had likely taken place.
And were we the luckiest people
in the world
not to have been there?
Lucky you didn't go on location,
because these people are dying
that did.
That was the word around town.
My sister and I, uh, were there the whole time.
You know, I was digging
in that dirt.
She was riding horses.
Uh, and uh,
my sister and I had been uh,
cancer-free all--
all of these years.
Yes.
And I consider us both very,
very lucky.
Of the 220 people who were
constantly on location
shooting in Utah,
90 or 91 came down with cancer.
NARRATOR:Agnes Moorehead confided
to close friend
and confidante,
Debbie Reynolds,
I should never have taken
that part.
I think she told
Debbie Reynolds,
who was a friend of hers,
that she had never should have
gone there,
and made The Conqueror.
My father was a delightful person.
His name was Orville Wardle,
and he worked
on road construction.
He had been healthy
his whole life.
Suddenly,
he got very sore muscles.
He went to the doctor.
He was sent up to LDS Hospital
in Salt Lake City.
And the doctor said,
We opened up your dad
and he's completely full
of cancer.
All over lungs,
all over his pancreas,
everything.
There's absolutely nothing
we can do.
We are sewing him back together
right now.
In 1997, dad was diagnosed with leukemia.
They basically gave dad
two weeks to live.
Uh, which was a little bit
of a shock.
Uncle Stan was asking dad
what his uh, symptoms were.
And dad started telling
his symptoms to him.
And Uncle Stan looked at him,
and said,
Those are exactly
the same symptoms
as Grandma Holt.
And Grandma passed away
in about 1967.
At the time, they had no idea
what caused the--
my grandma's death.
But uh, dad and Uncle Stan
felt very, very positive
that it was uh, leukemia.
Very similar to what dad had.
In the summer before my 29th birthday,
I found a lump on my neck,
and it was like the size
of a piece of corn.
And I kept moving it
up and down.
It didn't hurt.
I didn't think anything of it.
Then I got bronchitis
and I got pretty sick.
I went to the doctor
for the bronchitis
and she's feeling my throat.
And she says,
Oh, you have a lump here.
Hmm.
Well,
we should probably check it.
I thought, Hm, okay.
So, she sent me
to an endocrinologist
and he took a biopsy
and I was getting ready to go
with my then-husband
to a concert he was playing
when the phone rang.
It was the doctor and he said,
Um, you've got cancer.
My doctor said I had uh,
the beginning of uh,
prostrate cancer.
In 1955,
they excised the prostrate.
It was just the most painful
time of our lives.
We took my dad home
and laid him on the couch,
and we watched him die
little by little.
And he was in terrible pain.
After he was diagnosed with cancer,
dad lived two and a half years.
About 2006, 2005,
my mom was diagnosed
with lymphoma.
Mom lived for about six
to eight months after that.
My sister, three years ago,
passed away
with pancreatic cancer.
So, my sister and my parents
have all passed away
with cancer.
But life is life.
You take the challenges
and go with it.
And I do have to say that
I wouldn't want to wish cancer
on anyone.
I had surgery right away.
They removed my thyroid
and then they had
to remover lymph nodes
around it.
And when my mother
started crying
as they wheeled me
into the operating room,
I thought maybe this is worse
than I think.
Maybe this isn't so good.
So, because they removed
my thyroid,
I had no thyroid hormone,
which meant that I had
to be on thyroid medicine
for the rest of my life.
And I-- I did ask em,
I said, What would have happen
if I just never
took this again?
They go, Well, you-- you die.
And it did make me think,
I've just gotta always be sure
to have extra.
NARRATOR:Interior, Desert Princess Hotel,
Las Vegas, day.
Medium shot.
Howard Hughes is now a recluse
in his Las Vegas hotel,
rarely venturing
from his top floor suite.
He has become consumed
by irrational fears
of germs and diseases.
He would only communicate
through edicts and memos
to select employees.
Hughes by the 1970s
had become an enigma,
surrounded in mystery.
Hughes read with horror
about the continued
atomic testing
near his desert paradise,
and decided to do
whatever it took
to stop the testing.
He sent his top aide,
Robert Maheu,
to meet President Lyndon Johnson
and offer him $1 million
after he left office
if he would stop the testing.
NARRATOR:The tests went off as planned.
Why was Hughes concerned
about atomic testing
in the area 135 miles
from where he produced
The Conqueror?
Before production began on The Conqueror,
RKO would have made some effort
to make sure that the area
was safe.
So, RKO, Dick Powell,
would have had conversations
with the government
about the nuclear testing
program.
They knew of all this, because the location departments,
but they also had
a weather department.
They had other departments
relating to--
to permitting from
the United States government
for shooting on national parks.
So, when they were thinking
of shooting in these areas
near where the Yucca Flats is.
Of course, they were told.
They all knew
that the 1953 tests,
11 tests were done
in Yucca Flats there.
The AEC consistently indicated that the conditions were safe.
They talked less about the fact
that they had done studies
that indicated that the series
in the spring
and summer of '53 had generated
downwind levels of radiation
that exceeded
their own existing standards
for what would be
an appropriate level, uh,
of radiation exposure.
The government told people what they knew
they wanted to hear,
and what they wanted
to tell them,
but they really didn't know
for sure
what the long-term impacts were
of these things.
NEVADA ATOMIC TESTS NARRATOR:There is no danger.
JAMES:The Conqueror was the last movie
that Hughes produced.
And he ended up buying up
all the prints
that were in circulation
at the time
to the biggest movie
he had ever made.
Why?
Some people question as to whether Howard Hughes
did that out of some feeling
of guilt.
That he had somehow brought
these people together in--
in Utah to film The Conqueror,
and that he was somehow
responsible for their deaths.
No one saw the movie for--
for 25 years.
He removed it from distribution.
And the fact that
he was addicted
to watching The Conqueror
again and again,
it was as if only he himself
had the right to feast his eyes
on the splendor
of its wild magnificence.
Well, you say
you got the blues
You got holes in both holes
of your shoes
Yeah
Youre feelin' alone
and confused
You got to keep on smilin'
Just keep on smilin'
Yeah, you're...
You're about to go insane
Cause your womans
playing games,
And she says that
you're to blame
You got to keep on smilin'
Just keep on smilin'
Keep on smilin'
through the rain
Laughin' at the pain
Just rolling
with the changes
Till the sun comes out again
Keep on smiling
through the rain
Laughin' at the pain
Just rolling
with the changes
And were singin'
this refrain
NARRATOR:On the night of January,
the 22nd, 1971,
Susan Hayward awoke to a fire
and a smoke-filled apartment.
She had fallen asleep
with a cigarette in her hand
and a vodka bottle nearby.
She barely escaped
with her life.
Now absent from the big
and small screen
for several years,
she underwent a hysterectomy
to remove tumors
from her uterus.
And then more tumors
were discovered
in her vocal cords and brain.
Too frail and ill to work,
Susan Hayward bravely made
her last public appearance
at the 1974 Academy Awards.
Those nominated for the
best performance by an actress.
I watched it and I found out later
that after she had made
the presentation, uh,
she had a seizure backstage
and had immediately had--
had to go to the hospital.
I got a call from her accountant
and he had talked
to my brother,
and then he called me
and he said,
Tim, uh, your mom's
got a problem.
She's got about $60,000
worth of unpaid bills
sitting on her desk
and she can't--
She's no longer capable of--
of opening up her checkbook
and-- and writing checks.
I said, What is going on?
And he said,
Your mother's in Cedars
of Lebanon Hospital,
and they're giving her
two weeks to live.
She had, uh, adenocarcinoma,
uh, metastatic brain cancer
with multiple tumors.
They were all over the place
in-- in her brain.
I mean, that-- that just got
dropped on me like a bombshell.
And uh,
you know the next thing I know,
I'm-- Im with my brother, uh,
walking in--
into this hospital room
and my mother's in this bed
and she doesn't recognize
either one of us.
She had an aneurysm of the aorta
and it just blew up.
And her death was
almost instantaneous.
I think this is probably
the first time
I've ever really discussed
at any--
at any length and depth
about what
my mother experienced.
I mean, her brain cancer
was horrific.
It was absolutely horrific.
Mr. Shatner--
Ranchers testified they have lost thousands of sheep in Utah
to radioactive fallout.
But they charged
the Atomic Energy Commission
refused to admit it.
He said,
Jack, the easiest thing
we could do
would be to pay for these sheep.
But if we paid for 'em,
every woman that got pregnant
and every woman that didn't
would sue us.
NARRATOR:Newly declassified documents
and minutes
from the Atomic Energy
Commission meetings
during the 1950s
warranted congressional
hearings in 1979,
due to pressures
from the citizens
of Southern Utah.
Chaired by
Senator Edward Kennedy,
the hearing exposed a government
that was indifferent
and callous
towards its own citizens.
Documents show that
the US government
covered up the known dangers
of fallout path of atomic bombs.
If you read the minutes of The Atomic Energy Commission,
from the very beginning,
they knew it wasn't safe.
And they would have arguments.
I mean those minutes
read like high drama.
There would be a commissioner
who said, Sheep are dying,
people are starting
to get sick,
and there was one commissioner,
who just shouted at him.
People have got
to live with the facts of life.
And parts of the facts of life
are fallout.
Commissioner Murray,
we must not let anything
interfere
with this series of tests.
- Nothing.
- Nothing.
I thought she was dead.
Not hardly.
NARRATOR:For his final film The Shootist,
Wayne portrayed a man
dying of cancer.
He comes home
to settle scores.
Shooting took place
in Carson City, Nevada,
which was at the opposite end
of the testing site
where the wind blew
towards St. George, Utah.
And where he filmed
The Conqueror
20 years earlier.
The story is about an aging gunman
who's trying to hole up
and die quietly from
a particularly vicious cancer.
You have a cancer.
Advanced.
How much time do I have?
Two months.
Six weeks.
There's no way to tell.
The character, in trying to do the right thing,
decided if he gets killed,
it's not such a bad thing.
Going out in a blaze of glory
is better than going out
with cancer.
And I'm-- Im pretty darn sure
that that's correct.
That that is the way
John Wayne would have enjoyed
going out.
I would not die at death
like I just described.
Not if I had your courage.
It's the finest performance he ever gave as an actor.
He's a human being.
He's not a cardboard cutout.
Uh, it was a hard film for me
to look at for a long time,
because it was so close
to reality,
but um, he does a great job.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. John Wayne.
That was rough, yeah.
He had um,
lost a lot of weight
and was in pretty bad shape.
He had a tuxedo,
but he had another suit,
one of his other suits
underneath the tuxedo,
so that--
so it wouldn't hang on him.
He actually wore a complete
other suit of clothes
underneath it.
Pretty-- pretty remarkable.
I was in uh, Westwood.
It was the same day
that he had to go
into the hospital,
UCLA Medical Center.
I saw him on the street.
And I walked up to him
and I introduced myself.
And I said,
That you won't-- probably
won't remember this,
but you gave me a picture
of yourself
and signed it, you know,
Put beef steak on your eye.
And he goes,
You're-- youre one of
Susan's boys, aren't you?
I said, Yeah.
And so we-- we chatted,
you know,
for a while on the street.
And he said,
I've gotta go
into the hospital today.
This was after my mother
had passed away.
And uh, I said,
You know, best of luck
to you, Mr. Wayne.
And then that was it.
Cancer returned unfortunately
to John Wayne's life in 1979
and he was diagnosed
with stomach cancer.
By the time they figured out what he had,
it was really pretty far gone.
And he was in the hospital
for six weeks.
And he was slowly dying.
He was dying,
but you would never know
that from this man.
He had bedsores the size
of my palm
that just ate right
through his skin,
separating flesh.
You couldn't-- couldn't heal it.
He was just in total pain.
And never complained about
any of this stuff.
But he keep--
keep going on, you know.
And my brothers and sisters
and I thought,
You know, this guy is uh,
bulletproof.
He just willed himself
to wake up
and say goodbye to his kids.
And then-- and then he um,
he left.
He went.
Flied away
Flied away
I was assigned by People Magazine
to photograph Irma Thomas,
because of the leukemia rate
in St. George, Utah.
Irma was extremely committed
to her vision
and to explain to the world
what this--
what had happened
in St. George.
Because no one was listening
to her,
and then in the middle of that,
she told me this great story
about how John Wayne had--
had made this movie
called The Conqueror
in St. George.
I had a very good friend,
Michael Wayne,
John Wayne's oldest son.
And I thought,
This is something
I should talk to Michael about.
And so I called Michael,
and I said,
Did you make a movie calledThe Conqueror,
Howard Hughes' movie?
He said, Yeah.
In fact, I got sick on the set
and Patrick was there.
And I went,
This is an amazing story.
He really at that point
was very excited about it.
Didn't think much of the movie.
He couldn't quite figure out
why did dad was playing
a Mongolian.
Michael gave me all
the daily notes
that you have on the show
and the crew list.
And so we started investigating
that crew list.
We systematically went down
from the director of photography
to the different departments
and we went one by one,
you know,
to see who had contracted
cancer at this point.
And it basically hit me
like a ton of bricks.
We had to really get
more information
and that's why we went
to Washington,
you know,
to see what we could get.
And the Atomic Energy Commission
didn't wanna talk to us.
They just slammed the door
in our face.
It was a cover-up
and we had hit a brick wall.
My partner on-- on the story
was Karen Jackovich
and we decided that,
we should go to
the Freedom of Information Act
and they cooperated
a little bit,
so we figured
we had enough information
to go to bed with it.
NARRATOR:A few months
after Wayne's death,
a People Magazine article linked
the deaths of the cast
and crew of The Conqueror
to the atomic tests
and the radiation
that envelops St. George.
There was a general awareness by everyone,
that it may have been more
than just, you know uh,
coincidence that uh,
all of our uh, parents,
our relatives,
uh, had come down with cancer.
I mean the numbers are--
are pretty high.
What were the implications of this fallout?
A reasonable-thinking person
would have
to assume that it had some
effect on what happens
to these people's lives.
Including your father?
Well, yeah, my father
was there, sure.
The People Magazine article
that came out was huge.
And I always loved the line
in there,
the official who said,
Oh my God,
I hope we didn't John Wayne.
You know, they didn't care
about all the other people
who had been killed
all those years before,
but they didn't want it
to have been John Wayne.
It was the first time
I'd ever heard that our cancer
and John Wayne's cancer
might be tied together.
I remember we were
in this pitch Cold War,
so uranium was at a--
a premium, you know,
and everybody was you know,
We're gonna get rich.
And we had Geiger counters
on the set
and we turned
these Geiger counters on,
and they would rattle like,
we're standing
on a uranium deposit.
And we were so excited.
We thought we're gonna find
the richest uranium
or whatever it be.
We come to find out later
that that was fallout from tests
that were going on up north.
And the wind would blow
all of this, uh,
radioactive fallout down here.
I was glad that they--
and grateful that they had tied
that together.
Because that catapulted us
into more
of a national spotlight.
The story seemed to hit a nerve
within the media that,
you know,
Did America kill John Wayne?
If it took John Wayne to get things rolling
and noticed, then I'll be it.
We'd all flown up to um, Utah
to uh,
scout a location for the film.
And nobody ever told
anybody that,
there was any radiation
up there.
Or that anything
had been tested.
And so, um, they--
we spent months in that area,
and there were dust storms.
Horrible dust storms
and we had to wear masks
a good lot of the time.
Yeah.
And a lot of the crew, as you said,
- have died of cancer.
-Mm-hmm.
And a lot of the stars
in the film.
Youre expectations a lot people?
Yes.
Now, this is just horrifying.
Well, did John Wayne really die,
because of
the excessive exposure
to radioactive fallout
while on location?
When he was uh,
very well known
even at that time
to be a very heavy smoker,
as were some of the other cast
and crew members.
How does one determine that?
NARRATOR:Five years before he died,
John Wayne gave an interview
to biographer, Michael Munn,
where he discussed
the connection
between The Conquerorand cancer.
True to his patriotic roots,
he denied a connection.
All I can tell you
is that I smoked,
so did Dick Powell,
so did Susan Hayward,
so did Pedro.
And I guess you can say that
in those days,
at least 50%
of the population smoked.
As for developing
nuclear weapons,
we had to.
Russia had developed
its own atom bomb
and when Stalin was alive,
he was mad enough
to threaten the world.
As for The Conqueror,
the lesson of that film is
don't make an ass of yourself
trying to play a part that
you aren't suited for.
In recent years,
there has been growing concern
that cases of cancer occurring
in the state of Utah,
may be related
to the nuclear tests
in the neighboring state
of Nevada in the 50s and 60s.
Today,
a major scientific attempt
to study the possible cause
and effect relationship
is published in the New England
Journal of Medicine.
The study finds that
the leukemia rate for children
living in areas which received
heavy fallout
was two in one half times
the rate for children
not exposed.
Dr. Lyon, you are 80% convinced based on your study,
that there is a link
between leukemia
and the children,
and the atomic test.
Is that correct, sir?
I'd say
that's a correct statement.
What keeps you from being
100% sure?
The nature of epidemiologic
research
which makes it hard for us,
particularly
in a case like this,
where we would--
did not have precise follow-up
of all the individuals
in the study, uh,
to know whether this--
this occurred,
because of the radiation
or was some other chance factor.
Did not study any possible link
involving adults?
Is that correct?
That's correct.
And we didn't do that,
because we simply
don't have a group of people,
uh, of adults in the state
of Utah, who are not exposed.
A lot of times we forget
that every girl is born
with every egg
she's ever gonna have.
A radiation exposure
to a woman who is pregnant
has the potential
to impact the woman
who is pregnant,
her fetus or embryo,
and if it's a fetus
with fully-formed ovaries
then the ova that will become
that woman's grandchildren.
Our youngest child, Bethany, was just
a beautiful, delightful child.
The minute she was born,
I just couldn't get enough
of this child.
I loved everything about her.
Bethany started to complain
that her legs hurt
and she didn't wanna play.
She was lethargic
and the doctor said to me,
I can promise you nothing's
wrong with this child.
She's just constipated.
And so, I just--
My mom and I just packed her up
in the middle of the night,
and took her to the ER,
and they started
to do some tests.
And I was down in the library
and they called me back
to her room.
And when I hit the end
of the floor,
I could see these doctors
lined up outside of her room
and it was just like I was being
sucked down a hollow.
There were just lined up
to talk to me.
And I just up curled up on--
on her bed,
cause she wasn't back yet,
and put a pillow over my head,
and I just said, I don't--
I-- I can't.
I don't wanna hear it,
I don't wanna hear it.
She had neuroblastoma
stage four.
I was devastated,
cause I knew it meant
that she would die.
She had a tumor the size
of an orange
in her little tiny tummy
and a nine-hour surgery,
and seven hours of radiation,
and was off-treatment
making medical history.
And she was gonna get to go
back to school.
And then she got sick again.
We went to Salt Lake
and found out she had
acute monoblastic leukemia.
But at the same time,
my sister was really sick.
She had melanoma that had
spread everywhere.
And so Bethany
and I went to the hospital
and said goodbye to Cathy,
and we went to Salt Lake
and they wanted to start chemo.
And I said,
Well, we need to go home first
and then we'll come back.
Got home about 2:00
in the morning,
and the hospital called
about five minutes
after I got home and said,
Cathy was in a coma.
So, I went to the hospital
and I just crawled on the bed
with Cathy,
and I just said,
Right, you're just gonna have
to come
and take Bethany with you,
because I just can't let her go
by herself.
You're gonna have to be there
with her.
Cathy died.
Without ever even making a move.
Bethany spent a month
on chemotherapy
and she died a month later.
She was 6.
The night before she died,
she said to me,
Oh mom, there's Aunt Cathy
dancing on the table.
So, I knew Cathy had come
to take her.
I was secretary
to Mayor James G. Larkin.
In 1978,
the Atomic Energy Commission
invited the mayor of St. George
to bring a bus full of people
to the Nevada test site.
I had the opportunity
to go out there.
An arts magazine I was freelancing for
called me and said,
There's a photojournalist
coming to town
who's been photographing
and taking histories
of downwinders.
And we want you
to do a piece.
So, I spent time with her
and she would tell--
She started telling me
about all the diseases
that were caused
by fallout exposure.
And she ticked them off
and she got to thyroid cancer.
And I just stopped and said,
Oh, I had thyroid cancer.
Redbook Magazine had-- had done
an article
while Bethany was um,
on treatment.
And I was invited
to the first radiation victims
conference in New York.
I had no clue that these things
were going on.
We stayed one night.
They put us up
at a very nice hotel
and that night they fed us steak
and lobster.
Then I thought,
Well, why would
they feed us that?
They could have given us
hot dogs and hamburgers
and we would've been fine.
That's when she started
questioning me.
She's like, Well, when?
And I told her.
Well, where'd you grow up?
I said, Salt Lake.
Did you drink milk?
I said, Oh yeah,
and sometimes we'd go
to my grandfather's
and we'd drink it straight
from the cow.
And she just kind of stopped.
And she said,
I wanna interview you.
You got thyroid cancer
from testing.
When we got out to the test site,
it was barren desert.
But there were many, many
huge craters.
Way bigger
than I had ever imagined.
But the whole time,
they were convincing us
about how important the work
was out there,
how safe it was,
how good it was.
And I look back at it now
and it was just a PR program,
where just they tried
to shut us up.
No, no, no, no.
I grew up in Salt Lake,
not Southern Utah.
And she said,
You people are so naive.
You think it stopped
at borders of counties
and states.
And that's when she showed me
the map by Richard Miller
of everywhere that fallout
had gone.
And it was like being punched
in the gut.
And I thought, Oh my God.
I'm-- I'm one of them.
I'm a downwinder.
One of our congressman,
Jim Hansen,
when I sat down
and talked to him,
he had the audacity
to say to me,
Sometimes small sacrifices
have to be made.
And he knew the minute
he'd said it what he'd said.
And I'm going, The sac--
the small sacrifice you're
asking is my daughter.
And it wasn't your sacrifice
to make.
All of the people in St. George that were leaders,
they all knew that we were
gonna go out there
and be wined and dined,
and fed a bunch of garbage
to try to get us to be quiet.
And it did the opposite.
I am going to shout it
from the rooftops.
I'm not going
to be silent anymore.
Then we got organized.
You and your family must take cover.
Mr. Udall,
what is the basis of the claims
your clients are making?
Uh, their claims are based
on the fact that they were
US citizens.
Who were not warned
about what the government
was doing.
And that it was dangerous
to them
and this was inflicted
upon them.
The sub committee says
Congress should pass
a special law.
Warren Hatch finally came to me and said,
So what's your wishlist?
I said, Very good.
It's about time.
NARRATOR:In 1991,
the US Congress finally passed
the Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act,
also known as RECA.
Today, the House
of Representatives
restores our nation's honor
by holding
the American government
responsible
for Cold War abuses,
which stained
our collective consciences
by causing death
and injury to its own people.
Looking for the black gas
Switch up your seal
NARRATOR:The bill would provide
tiered compensation
for individuals affected
by nuclear testing
from onsite workers
to those living
in downwind communities.
The areas covered by the bill
are limited
to just 22 counties.
Also listed are the diseases
that would qualify a candidate
for payment.
The compensation is capped
at $50,000.
No children
or grandchildren are eligible.
The downwinder community
are lobbying Congress
to expand the bill,
both geographically
and generationally.
And they don't recognize
any second generation cancers.
I would like to amend the bill.
People got $50,000.
So, is that
what a human life's worth?
$50,000.
It doesn't cover your chemo.
I filed seven times
for my dad's compensation
for my mother to get that.
They said you can't prove
that your dad lived
in Southern Utah.
I went through the downwinder
questioning period
and so forth,
and ended up collecting $50,000.
Yes, it was a good amount,
but I would much rather have--
have my parents, you know,
still have them.
I am personally flabbergasted
at the fact
that anybody would think
that handing my mother a check
for $50,000
replaces my dad.
But what it does do
is it admits guilt.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act
was a-- a step.
It was an important step.
It never went far enough.
NARRATOR:A group that did not
initially benefit from RECA
was the Shivwit tribe.
We had a lot of native Americans
but a lot of the people
that lived here
didn't have any records.
Didn't keep records.
Couldn't really prove
where they were.
And so the compensation
was difficult to get.
I believe that a lot of them
got sick, uh,
after the movie.
It was difficult to find out
what happened to them.
We weren't able, I don't think,
to go to their tribe
and get the information
that we needed.
NARRATOR:The Harry test deposited
more radioactive fallout
over areas of the United States
than any other test.
With the largest accumulation
having fallen in the vicinity
of St. George, Utah.
The issue of fallout is--
is relevant today, uh,
as it's ever been.
Radiation can last
for tens of thousands of years.
The Trinity test,
the world's first atomic test
generated radiation
that circled the globe.
There was radiation detected
in milk in Chicago.
So, from the very beginning
of the nuclear age,
everyone involved was aware
that radiation moves.
NARRATOR:The National Cancer Institution
has determined
that the entire population
of the US in the 1950s
received on average
a dose of thyroid radiation
around 20 times greater than
normal background radiation.
Their report also states
that this radiation could
result in an added 10,000
to 75,000 cases
of thyroid cancer.
The vast majority of downwinders
will never know they were.
They'll never know.
Um, but there were a lot more
of em
than anybody ever thought.
NARRATOR:In 1992,
the United States ended
a nuclear test moratorium.
The US Congress apologized
to the downwinders
on behalf of the nation.
Beth, your tree needs some water.
Bethany, I miss you everyday.
Every single day.
The whole cemetery is full
of people
that have lost their lives
from what our own government
did to us.
There's a lot of sorrow
and suffering that were--
was unnecessary right here
that didn't need to happen.
And we're not so nave as
to think people don't get sick,
but not in the numbers.
And now the second generations
and the third generations
is not normal.
If something's wrong,
you don't just walk by
and let it happen.
You fix it.
We're losing the history
of what happened
at the test site.
We're losing the stories,
because people are dying.
We have to tell our stories.
If we don't tell our stories,
nobody's gonna care.
We have to talk about
what happened to us,
because to me,
story is like
the most powerful tool we have.
You can have all the facts
you want
and give them facts,
but it's the story that's gonna
get to them.
NARRATOR:Howard Hughes did not live
to see the downwinders fight
for justice prevail.
The great aviator died
in a flight back
to the United States
for medical treatment.
That he died while
on an airplane,
where he was perhaps
the happiest,
seems like a fitting end
to one of America's most
enigmatic figures.
HUNLUN:My son,
a miracle has been wrought!
You live!
BORTAI:I know the nature of this man.
No torture will persuade him
like a woman's gentleness.
JAMUGA:Will bring sorrow between me
and him,
and disaster upon his people.
TEMUJIN:There are moments for action
then I listen to my blood.
NARRATOR:Several years
after Howard Hughes' death
and over 25 years
after it was filmed,
The Conqueror would finally
be re released.
Most would agree it was not
worth the wait.
I take you for a wife.
I think the legacy of The Conqueror,
if anything is,
as bad as a movie it was,
if it did anything,
it helped create a movement.
It certainly did raise
the profile
that something was going
on in St. George
and in
the surrounding community.
The fact that it was filmed in Utah,
downwind of where
this nuclear fallout came
from this nuclear testing,
that makes the movie relevant
and interesting,
and that backstory to that
is probably more fascinating
than the movie itself.
Coming to terms with The Conqueror
and the nuclear tests,
might remind us that some
of the nuclear dangers
that we were being terrified
about as little kids
have not entirely disappeared.
NARRATOR:Whatever happened
to the 60 tonnes of sand,
that were shipped
from Snow Canyon
to Studio 15 on the RKO lot?
Opinions differ.
I remember a few years back, we went over to RKO Studios
and there was still a big pile
of this dirt on the backlot
at RKO, and we went there
and it was still radioactive
from, you know,
two decades before.
So, it was kind of spooky
and scary.
Michael Wayne went with me.
It was the middle of the night
when we went to the back lot
and it was still hot.
I believe,
as the guy that went in there
with a Geiger counter,
that--
That um, it's still there.
Later I was told
and read that,
all this was removed
and brought to the Baldwin Hills
right over the La Ballona Creek
in Culver City
where it is now.
Where is it there?
We--
Nobody knows what the sand
is there.
Not only was it taken
to Culver City,
it was dumped out
in Simi Valley, where my uh--
my youngest daughter lives.
Where do you get rid of it?
I mean,
where are you gonna put it?
My dad's idea was how
about when those big caves
where you dug out the arraign?
How about putting the stuff
back in there?
Makes sense to me.
Well, you say you got
the blues
You got holes in both
of your shoes
Yeah
You're feelin' alone
and confused
You got to keep on smilin',
just keep on smilin'
Yeah,
you're about to go insane
Cause your woman's
playing games
And she said that
you're to blame,
You got to keep smilin',
just keep on smilin'
Keep on smiling
through the rain
Laughin' at the pain
Just rollin' with the changes
till the sun comes out again
Keep on smilin'
through the rain
Laughin' at the pain
Just rollin' with the changes
and singin' this refrain
Singin' in a honky tonk cafe
Nobody's hearin'
what you play
Yeah
They're too busy drinkin'
anyway
You got to keep on smilin'
Brother, keep on smilin'
You say you found a piece
of land
Gonna change from city boy
to country man
Yeah
Try to build your life
with your hands
And just keep on smilin'
Keep on smilin'