'The Duke and his cancers'...

John Wayne, ‘the Duke’, was an American icon indeed who appeared in

over 200 films spanning five decades.  Wayne was a heavy cigarette

smoker most of his life.. and even did commercials for Camels, which

was his favorite brand, even commenting about how they ‘had never given him any throat irritation’. Ironically Wayne suffered from lung cancer in 1964… but later developed stomach cancer in 1979….the latter actually being blamed for his death, not the smoking. But were the two related? You might think so… but in 1956, Wayne was shooting a movie near St. George, Utah…. the chilling tale and results of that film are below.

The Conqueror  was a 1956 American CinemaScope epic film directed by Dick Powell and written by Oscar Millard. The film stars John Wayne as the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan and co-stars Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and Pedro Armendáriz. Produced by entrepreneur Howard Hughes, the film was principally shot near St. George, Utah.

Now this next sentence is most important:

The exterior scenes were shot near St. George, Utah, 137 miles (220 km) downwind of the United States government's Nevada National Security Site. In 1953, 11 above-ground nuclear weapons tests occurred at the site as part of Operation Upshot–Knothole. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks at the site, and Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to match the Utah terrain and lend realism to studio re-shoots. The filmmakers knew about the nuclear tests but the federal government assured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health.

But the future deaths by cancer would be staggering in their numbers.

Director Powell died of cancer in January 1963, seven years after the film's release. Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960, and killed himself in June 1963 after he learned his condition had become terminal. Hayward, Wayne, and Moorehead all died of cancer in the 1970s. Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. Skeptics point to other factors such as the wide use of tobacco — Wayne and Moorehead in particular were heavy smokers, and Wayne himself believed his lung cancer to have been a result of his six-packs-a-day cigarette habit. 

The cast and crew totaled 220 people. By the end of 1980, as ascertained by People magazine, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died of the disease. Several of Wayne and Hayward's relatives also had cancer scares after visiting the set. Michael Wayne developed skin cancer, his brother Patrick had a benign tumor removed from his breast, and Hayward's son Tim Barker had a benign tumor removed from his mouth.

Despite the suggestion that Wayne's 1964 lung cancer and his 1979 stomach cancer resulted from nuclear contamination, he believed his lung cancer to have been a result of his six-packs-a-day cigarette habit.

Wayne’s actual death certificate signed at the UCLA medical center listed the cause

of death as respiratory arrest due to a consequence of gastric cancer.

And so ended the life of a true American legend.