Did One Film Spell Doom for John Wayne’s Health?
John Wayne’s time on the set of The Conqueror may have had deadly consequences, with the film’s location and production choices linked to a shocking number of cancer cases among cast and crew.
For decades, punters saw John Wayne as the bloke who could take on anything. He was a mainstay at the box office, rarely copping it on screen, and seemed to bounce back from just about anything. When he beat cancer in the early ‘60s—what he called “licked the ‘Big C’”—and got back to work after losing a lung, it only added to his legend. Wayne was known for his heavy smoking, fondness for a drink, and a reputation that kept both respect and a bit of fear in the hearts of his colleagues. But even he couldn’t dodge fate forever.
His last big role in The Shootist was a fitting swan song, with Wayne playing an ageing gunslinger trying to find his place in a changing world. The character’s battle with terminal illness mirrored Wayne’s own struggle off-screen. The Oscar winner and Hollywood mainstay died in 1979, aged 72, from stomach cancer. Some reckon the roots of his illness go all the way back to a single film shoot.
Filming Near Fallout
At first, it sounds a bit far-fetched. But when you look at the numbers, it’s hard to ignore. The Conqueror, filmed in 1956, is infamous not just for being a flop, but for its location—right near nuclear test sites. No one thought much of it at the time, but by 1980, more than 40% of the crew had developed cancer, and nearly 50 had died from it. The film’s reputation took a hit, but the real damage was far worse than a few bad reviews.
It’s impossible to pin all the blame on that one production, but it’s not a stretch to reckon things might have turned out differently if Howard Hughes, the eccentric mogul behind the film, had made other choices. Hughes fancied himself a big shot in Hollywood, putting his cash behind plenty of projects—sometimes just for the credit. He’d already worked with Wayne on The Flying Leathernecks in 1951, and they had a loose plan to team up again. But delays kept piling up, and Wayne was left in a bind.
Behind the Scenes Drama
Wayne wasn’t shy about his frustration.
“His delay was really getting me into deep fucking water,”
he told Michael Munn. With Warner Bros breathing down his neck and threatening legal action, Wayne had to act.
“I was fucking mad, and I wrote to Howard and told him that it was his studio’s responsibility to have scripts ready for me on the dates he had promised,”
he explained.
Eventually, a visit to RKO’s head office changed everything. Wayne spotted a treatment for The Conqueror and thought it looked interesting. When he found out Dick Powell was set to direct, he was in.
“I kind of took him by surprise, and he said, ‘Are you serious?’ I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ So he said, ‘OK’, and we shook hands on it.”
That handshake sealed the deal for what would be Wayne’s only film with Hughes as producer—a decision that, in hindsight, may have cost him dearly.
Legacy of a Risky Shoot
The Conqueror stands out for all the wrong reasons. Not only did it flop with audiences, but its legacy is clouded by the health crisis that followed. While no one can say for certain that the film was solely responsible for Wayne’s illness, the sheer number of cancer cases among the cast and crew is hard to ignore. If Hughes had moved faster or chosen a different location, things might have played out very differently for Wayne and many others involved.