The 1956 movie “The Conqueror” is infamous among cinephiles, both for its incredibly bad-headed casting of John Wayne as the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan and for a suspicious number of deaths that followed its filming downwind of a nuclear test site.
At the time “The Conqueror” filmed in the Utah desert just outside the town, St. George was 137 miles downwind from the Nevada Test Site, where the federal government conducted more than 900 nuclear tests.
After the movie was shot, observers noted the high rate of cancer among people involved with the filming: 91 of 220 crew members developed the illness, and 46 died. Director Dick Powell and stars Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead all eventually died of cancer as well, while Pedro Armendáriz Sr., an accomplished Mexican actor and the only nonwhite member of the film’s main cast, died by suicide when his cancer became terminal.
Eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who produced “The Conqueror,” may have exacerbated radiation exposure during filming by having 60 tons of the irradiated desert sands delivered to the RKO Pictures soundstage in Hollywood to film interior scenes.
I' have no doubt that John Wayne's cancer was more likely due to his incessant cigarette smoking for over 50 years rather than any short term exposure to radiation. He constantly smoked and it eventually killed him. Not hard to connect the dots there. Same thing happened to my father. Smoking led directly to his cancer/death.
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