The Movie That Killed John Wayne

Loren Kantor
Picture Palace
Published in
4 min readSep 19, 2024

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John Wayne played Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

In June 1954, a Hollywood cast and crew flew to Saint George, Utah to make the movie The Conqueror starring John Wayne. The film was directed by Hollywood veteran Dick Powell and produced by Howard Hughes. Wayne played 13th Century Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan who goes to war with the Tartars over the love of a princess. The film is considered the worst movie Wayne ever made. It also likely played a part in Wayne’s death.

Saint George lies in the northeastern part of the Mojave Desert, close to Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon. It’s 137 miles from an atomic testing range at Yucca Flat, Nevada. From 1951–1963, the US military conducted above ground nuclear tests in Yucca Flat. The US government claimed the area posed no health hazard but TIME called Yucca Flat “the most irradiated, nuclear-blasted spot on the face of the earth.”

Howard Hughes took over RKO Pictures in 1948. Early films made on his watch were critically panned and fared poorly at the box office. At the time, historical epics like Julius Caesar and The Robe were in vogue. In desperate need of a hit, Hughes gave the green light to a movie about Genghis Khan.

John Wayne had one project left on a three-film contract with RKO. The first two films were awful, Jet Pilot and Flying Leathernecks. Desperate to complete his contract, Wayne read the screenplay for The

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Loren Kantor
Picture Palace

Loren is a writer and woodcut artist based in Los Angeles. He teaches printmaking and creative writing to kids and adults.