Cursed Films: The Conqueror | Episode 25

In this episode, Adam and Charlotte tackle The Conqueror, a film said to be cursed from its very conception. The story of the Conqueror is wrapped up in the story of Howard Hughes, RKO and the United States testing of the atomic bomb. Widely considered one of the worst films ever produced, bad casting, endless reshoots and possibly causing deadly cancer, the Conqueror has left a legacy of what not to do while making a studio film.

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Transcript

Adam: Welcome back. 

Charlotte: Welcome. Another week of perf damage. More stories about movie 

Adam: things, stories about movie things. Tm, 

Charlotte: what are we 

Adam: talking about this week? Last week we mentioned the Conqueror and we thought, Hey, that's a great topic. We should tell the history of the 

Charlotte: conqueror.

Charlotte: Yeah. The conqueror directed by Dick Powell my, my Powell, he's also called the wrong Powell. That's 

Adam: a nickname. I disagree that he's the wrong Powell, 

Charlotte: but that is, it's officially a nickname. Anyways, in our debate over which Powell was superior, we did mention the 

Adam: conqueror and then we said, Hey, that's a great idea.

Adam: Let's do one 

Charlotte: on that. Yeah. Because it's got a really interesting 

Adam: backstory. It does widely considered one of the worst films of all time also. Yes, it is for many a reason. I don't know that it's one of the worst films of all time 

Charlotte: but it's also said to be one of the most cursed films of all time 

Charlotte: and 

Adam: that is where the real story lies. Yeah. 

Charlotte: That is our story today. We're not just gonna talk about how. Bad or not bad, the conqueror is, 

Adam: and how miscast poor John Wayne is in the film. Just so out of his element. Out of his element.

Adam: So if you want to hear about one of the worst films of all time and the Curse that lies with the making of the film. Stay tuned. Stay tuned.

Charlotte: All right, so we're gonna talk about the conqueror, but I think before we get to the film itself, we have to give a little backstory on Howard Hughes and Rko O. Would you agree? Absolutely agree with that. Yeah. The Conqueror was made by Rko O when it was owned by Howard Hughes, 

Adam: but he didn't start out owning Rko O no.

Adam: He inherited his parents' wealth and was a million. At 18 years old. 

Charlotte: Yeah. And he had dabbled in movie 

Adam: making before. He saw it as a business. Always did. 

Adam: So in the book Killing John Wayne, the Making of the Conqueror by Ryan Uin, it says that he released his initial film Swell Hogan in 1926. starring and directed by Matinee Idol, Ralph Graves, He invested $80,000 in making the film. It's a silent film, a sentimental comedy about a Bowery bum who helps orphans, that saw little advancement or return much to the worryman of his remaining family. But you read something different, right? Yeah. When I heard it didn't, I heard it didn't turn a profit.

Charlotte: Sorry. When I looked this up on Imdv, when you mentioned it, it said in the trivia that Howard Hughes's first venture into film production. Upon viewing it after completion, he concluded that it was so bad he didn't want his name associated with it and withdrew it from distribution. As far as is known, it has never been seen by anyone other than Howard Hughes and his editor.

Adam: that kind of tracks with a lot of the other things that does later on in his career.

Adam: I 

Charlotte: would go with the book over IMDB trivia 

Adam: any day. It is hard to find any sort of reference to the plot though. So perhaps it was pulled, who knows? But. Maybe what Ryan is, referring to is that his second release, the same year, 1926, everybody's acting, which is a comedy about four middle age actors jointly adopting an Orphan Baby girl.

Adam: And raising her in the backstage milieu was a success, and so it turned to profit. And maybe that paid for both of them. Maybe so maybe that's what he was saying, that the second one paid for the debacle of the first one. So yeah, he formed a production company called the Cado Company. And we're talking about Howard Hughes? Yes. Howard Hughes. He released several films, the Maden call, , in 1928, the Racket of Film Noir in 1929, which was nominated for, best Picture in the First Academy Awards. , and another film that.

Adam: Two Arabian Knights, one best comedy director at the First Academy Awards for, , Louis Milestone. So two films that he made in 1929 as a producer were both nominated for Academy Awards and won. Won. That's awesome. I did not know that. And then in 1930, this is still all under the Cado company, he, wrote and directed his first film, hell's Angels.

Charlotte: He got. The relatively unknown gene Harlow. And. Skyrocketed her to Superstardom, who was involved with William Powell for some time. They dated for two years up until her death from kidney failure. So there's a correct Powell tie in.

Adam: 

Adam: That also united his two passions, which were filmmaking and aviation at the time. And right. That movie, hell's Angels was one of the most expensive films ever produced at the time, because of all of the crazy practical flying that he did in it. And he had access to a lot of planes and, a lot of like really wonderful pilots.

Adam: So they did some insane stuff in that film. To finish out Cato films, he. Produced the front page in 1931 and Scarface, and then decided that he was done with filmmaking and then he went straight into aviation full-time 

Adam: so in 1943, he got back into filmmaking after, over a decade away from it, with the infamous film, the Outlaw, 

Charlotte: where's He Is, also said to be one of the worst films of all time. 

Adam: It's pretty bad. It's not a great film by any means.

Adam: The reason that it's infamous is because of all of the trouble he got into for all of the cleavage. Yeah. Lust in the Dust. Totally different movie, but Awesome.

Adam: A lot of the advertising had to be, altered because Jane Russell's bus line was too low. 

Charlotte: Yeah. This is still when states were in charge of censorship 

Charlotte: so everyone could request different amounts of 

Adam: cleavage. It's pretty funny though, , that's what got people all up in arms was cleavage. Hey, 

Charlotte: no press is bad press in 

Adam: Hollywood, and this will not be the first time that he runs into problems for cleavage in films.

Adam: Yeah, 

Charlotte: Howard Hughes had a cleavage 

Adam: problem. He did some would say an addiction. After the Outlaw in 1948, he formed a another production company called California Pictures with Preston sts, and he produced a ton of wonderful films at Paramount.

Adam: The Lady Eve Sullivan's travels Palm Beach story. And then they started to bicker and fight on a movie called The Sin of Harold Dittle Bach 1944. It starred Harold Lloyd the former Silent Star and it was released in 1944. It didn't do very well at all. So he took the film away from Preston Sturgis and re-edited it and re-released it as Mad Wednesday in 1947.

Adam: That was what drove a major wedge between them. And then in 1950 

Charlotte: on, so wait. So are you saying there's two different versions of this film 

Adam: available? Yeah there are two different versions of the film. I don't know what's available for home video. I've 

Charlotte: never seen that.

Charlotte: I would just be 

Adam: interested to see, I'd be interested in it too, to see what he did to it. I've always 

Charlotte: wondered how a movie would turn out if the same movie was cut by two different people or directors. 

Adam: Yeah. That's my chance. This is something that comes up a lot later. When he runs R k O pictures, he, spoiler alert, takes films away from people and re-edits them.

Adam: Or re-edits and re-edits and re-edits them for years, as in the case of the Jet Pilot we'll talk about a little later. So on the set of the film Vendetta that came out in 1950, Preston Seiss and Howard Hughes called it quits.

Adam: And this was already after he had taken over at R K O.

Charlotte: When I was younger I remember seeing Howard Hughes's name on films and always thinking quality.

Charlotte: And I think it's because it was the Preston Sturgis ones that I must have seen more of because it wasn't until, I don't know much later that I knew about all the crazy, awful bad films that Howard Hughes did. Yeah, I 

Adam: mean if you just look at the run that I just went down, he's got the front page, he's got scar.

Adam: He's got Hell's Angels, which is well thought of. Yeah. And then all of those Preston Sturgis films. So those, that, those are a lot of classics in just the 12 films that I talked about there. That's half of 

Charlotte: them. I don't know. And when I still think Howard Hughes and films, I think a certain level of quality.

Charlotte: I think that's what comes to mind first and not all the batshit crazy stuff. I don't Are you the same 

Adam: way? Yeah. I also think too, that by taking over Rko o when he does, you equate all of that, the good Rko films with him, and he had nothing to do with those. Yeah. I think you're right.

Adam: The Citizen Kanes and the King Kongs and those kind of films 

Charlotte: Akio's such an interesting studio just Yeah, because it it's got an interesting history and why don't we share a little bit of 

Adam: that. Yeah, I think you should. I do also wanna mention that a lot of people at this point had already, he'd already gotten quite the reputation around town.

Adam: As a womanizer and saw that his primary feature as a producer is to have access to young starlets. Ladies. Ladies, Ladies. 

Charlotte: Rko originally started in 1919 is when they were founded and it was called Robertson Cole at the time. They built their first studio in 1921, which they purchased the land from the Hollywood Cemetery Association. And they built their lot right next to United Studios, which rented their stages out to companies like First National and other smaller studios. So it was like 

Adam: a four wall studio. Mm-hmm. Like we have today. 

Charlotte: And Paramount bought United Studios right next door in 1926, and then Rko and Paramount were separated by a fence. 

Adam: That's weird.

Adam: Could you see 

Charlotte: through the fence, do you think? I don't know. See, that's what I wanna know. Yeah. Was 

Adam: it a wood fence? Oh, it'd be great if it was just a fence and you could see through it and you waved to the people on the other side. 

Charlotte: So Rko O didn't become Rko until 1928 they were owned by RCA at the time. And RKO stands for Radio Keith Orio. They wanted the radio in their logo because they wanted everybody to know that they were sound pictures. That was the main reason why they went with that iconic image.

Charlotte: And I think of all the studio logos, that's probably one of my favorites. I don't know about you, 

Adam: Absolut. Just hearing this. It's so iconic. 

Charlotte: Yeah. So good. I don't know what it is about it, 

Adam: that and may be universal are my two favorites. 

Charlotte: Oh. I like the you like Tristar? I like the Tristar one 

Adam: with the horse.

Adam: Yep. Or it, is it again 

Charlotte: that played on the beginning of the film, the Walk? 

Adam: for the first time in years had six 

Charlotte: years. Yeah. And it was in HD and it was huge. And I it in, it was in 3D actually. And it was in 3d. Yeah. My eyes got misty I was so overwhelmed oh my God. Because Yeah.

Charlotte: I hadn't heard it in so long. I'm sure there's other people out there that get misty eyed over her studio. It's 

Adam: so funny how studio logos are a thing. But we always try to call any production company logo too. Oh, we do? Yeah. That's a game that we play. When we go to the movies, we're like, oh that's SCO free.

Adam: You could just tell from the opening frame. It's oh, I know what it is. 

Adam: Anyway, we digress. 

Charlotte: We digress.

Charlotte: Should be like the name of the subtitle 

Adam: podcast. Actually, it should be Perf Damage. It should be, we digress. We digress 

Charlotte: because we do, we're talking about Rko, right? 

Adam: Yes. Rko. Okay. 

Charlotte: So Rko from then on was in a constant state of transition for 27 years because depending on who owned the studio, who's working at the studio, they all really.

Charlotte: Influenced the kind of films that R K O was making. They never really had an identity, like they never, 

Adam: for the other studios, it's cause they weren't run by a mogul. That's why they didn't have a Louisie b Mayor or a Cohen, or somebody who was like a Zucker. Yeah. Like the leading guy that directed everything that kind of created it.

Adam: Or Warner Brother, they didn't have those people. So it was basically a studio without a leader. It was a corporation from the very beginning. So Howard Hughes in 1948 bought a controlling share in Rko 

Charlotte: 929,000 shares to 

Adam: be exact.

Adam: Yeah. So he wasn't the sole owner of Rko, but he was the controlling owner. So he automatically became the head of the studio. He 

Charlotte: paid 8.8 million for those shares in 1948, 

Adam: which was like 120 million 

Charlotte: And that was in May of 1948. When he took over, he told everyone, don't worry.

Charlotte: All your jobs are safe. Nothing's gonna change. By July three-fourths of the studio workforce was laid off and they drastically cut how many movies were in production, which a lot of studios were doing at the 

Adam: time. Yeah. He just stripped mine. The studio basically. Yeah. But there were a lot of reasons.

Adam: So yeah, he took over 1948 and they cut all those jobs, but it wasn't just financial. He's trying to root out communist or communist leaning people. 

Charlotte: In that book that you were referencing earlier, killing John Wayne, I think he had something in there about Howard Hughes turning in a lot of people that he thought were communists and he took names off of films because of people that he thought were involved in 

Adam: the Yeah.

Adam: A lot of writers. Yeah. he, he's kind of a bastard. He's an asshole. He even produced a movie called I Married a Communist in 1949. It's was an anti-communist film. And that was basically just to root people out, that kind of bristled against what he was saying in the film.

Charlotte: And didn't he accuse people of being communists that he just wanted out and that was just an easy way to get rid of somebody 

Adam: Yeah. Kind of A dick move. Yeah, 

we 

Charlotte: can take off the kind of on that statement. 

Adam: Actually, his time at R K O is really short though.

Adam: It's only six years total. He bought it middle of 48 and was out by the middle of 55. 

Adam: So what we really need to talk about here is how poorly he managed the studio. He went over budget on films. He shelved films that were finished because he didn't like their messages.

Adam: you're saying Basically mismanages it for four years and at the end of four years, he doesn't have any product to put out. So he knows, he's sinking.

Adam: And he wants to get out as fast as he can and think of it. 

Charlotte: Television too is becoming a big competitor at this point, 

Adam: So in 1952, he meets this guy in Chicago who is supposedly a big marketing guru. His name is Ralph Stn. And he represents a syndicate that's in quotations, by the way, which should have been suspect to begin with.

Adam: The STN syndicate who's interested in buying the company from him. And Howard Hughes this is his chance to get out from underneath this. There's no way he's ever gonna turn a profit there. So he sells to these guys. In September, third, 1952, he struck a deal for 7.35 million.

Adam: That's roughly 71 million in modern day money. 

Charlotte: Not much of a loss since he paid 

Adam: 8.8, but in addition to that, he was getting a down payment of 1.25 million upfront. All right, cash. And then the rest would be paid over the course of two years in installments. So he jumps at this 

Charlotte: so why did this syndicate, why did they wanna buy a studio? 

Adam: The syndicate wanted to get into entertainment. 

Charlotte: So did they run the studio better than Howard Hughes?

Adam: Here's the thing. On October 2nd, 1952 Ralph STK was appointed president of R K O Studios. He walked onto the studio lot, and in less than three weeks he walked off and gave it back. The press, found out that Ralph stn basically was a money launderer for the mob. The syndicate.

Adam: The syndicate. That should have been an indicator, don't you think? And whether Howard Hughes knew this or not, he probably did. Probably did. Didn't care. He probably knew. He didn't care. He just wanted out. He didn't 

Charlotte: care's. Be honest. All these guys are corrupt up 

Adam: there. Exactly. So he sold it to the mob.

Adam: And because of public outcry and all the rest of the people that owned shares of the. They said he had to come back, but there's the best thing. He got to keep that $1.25 

Charlotte: million up front. It would be great if he just saw the writing on the wall. What if he's the one that leaked that information to the 

Adam: press?

Adam: That would be awesome. What a good strategy. Yeah, because he got to keep his down payment. Three weeks. 

Charlotte: Three weeks. Turned to 1.2 million 

Adam: profit. Yep. But then he had to come back and be the boss of the sinking ship, the ship that he sunk.

Adam: Basically. 

Charlotte: He wasn't worried about ships, he was worried about 

Adam: planes. Oh, also, I wanted to mention during this time, RKO was the sole distributor of Walt Disney pictures until 1952. This was the reason that Walt Disney broke off his distribution deal with RKO o because of the bad press, he didn't Oh, interesting.

Adam: He did not want the mob, their bad press to splash into his kid-friendly. Fair. So in 1952, the number one film that Rko distributed was Peter Pan. It was the biggest moneymaker for them. Wow.

Adam: He started Buena Vista pictures that year. Wow. 

Charlotte: I wonder if that would never have happened if Disney wouldn't have become as big as.

Adam: Yeah, I'm not sure. It's interesting to think maybe if the mob hadn't gotten involved in all that bad press Rko. Yeah. Then he would've just stayed an independent with other distributors. 

Charlotte: A back she, yeah. Or a Don Bluth. 

Adam: Yeah. Like a Don Bluth. 

Charlotte: It's Disney though, too. Was smart. Yeah, that's an understatement. 

Adam: If you wanna know more about Disney, see our Technicolor part one episode. Oh yeah, we did. He plays a big part in that. He did.

Charlotte: We've talked a bit about Rko. We've talked a bit about Howard Hughes. Now. I think we should talk about what we came here to talk about one of the worst movies of all time, according to the book, the 50 Worst Films of All Time And How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss The Conqueror.

Adam: I can't wait for that. Oh, yeah. It's gonna be a doozy. All right, Charlotte, before we talk about the conquer, 

Charlotte: oh, here we go. Digressing again, 

Adam: The film that we came to talk about, we need to set up a little background with the relationship between Howard Hughes and John Wayne. Yeah, 

Charlotte: I think that's fair. 

Adam: So John Wayne is the biggest star in Hollywood in 1949 coming off of she wore a yellow ribbon. John Ford had won an Academy award for best director that year for that. So Howard Hughes says, Hey, I need to get this guy in here. We need to sign a deal with John Wayne.

Adam: He had just taken over the studio and it looked really good to get John Wayne in there. They star, right? They're both anti-communists. They're both big right wingers, and so they meshed right away. They loved each other. And so John Wayne says, sure, I would love to come do some films for R K O.

Adam: And he signs with two a three picture deal. So right away they start in 1949 on the film Jet Pilot and the film shoots and then it still shoots and it continues to shoot. Into 1950. It is the film from hell. John Wayne is hating the experience and Howard Hughes saw this as a way to marry his two passions again, aviation and film.

Adam: It's was supposed to really spotlight new aviation technology at the time. So 19 49, 19 50, there's endless reshoots. It gets shelved. But that's okay cuz they go directly into production on flying leathernecks. Which comes out in 1951. It's a big success. Jet Pilot's still on the 

Charlotte: shelf 

Adam: and then John Wayne's like, so what are we doing next?

Adam: This 

Charlotte: wasn't an exclusive deal that he signed with Rko. No. It was just, I will make three pictures with you. Correct. Because he was still making other films around that time. He did The Quiet Man. Yep. In 1952, which was Republic Picture's. Biggest film Honda. 

Adam: Yeah. 1953. Yeah. Island in the Sky.

Adam: 1953. He, yeah, he 

Charlotte: was making, and Rio Grande did, in 1950, he was still making really good films 

Adam: elsewhere. He started his own production company in 1952 with Robert Fellows, a fellow producer. The two of them teamed up and it was called Wayne Fellows Productions. The first movie they made together was Big Jim McClain in 52.

Adam: So that was after flying Leathernecks. And then in 53 he did Island in the Sky. He did, hon, in 53 he did the High and Mighty in 1954 and Blood Alley in 1955. Fellows left in 1954. And so it was just John Wayne as a producer at that point, and he renamed it Bat Jack Productions. 

Charlotte: And Bat Jack. He took from the film Wake of the Red Witch which he started in for Republic Pictures from 1948.

Charlotte: And I read that the name is Misspell. Because the secretary misspelled it or somebody misspelled it in the filing and then they just kept it that 

Adam: way. Yeah. In the movie it's Bat Jack with a K, but she wrote it with a C. With a C and he just left it that way cuz he didn't want to bother changing the name after they filed all the paperwork.

Charlotte: And it's still around and it's run by his daughter, 

Adam: Gretchen Wayne. His son Thomas Wayne ran it before that. And he's the one that got all of the Bat Jack films re-released in the nineties on dvd, which was cool.

Adam: A lot of those movies were forgotten. They were called the Lost Wayne Films for a long time because they weren't available anywhere. So Gretchen Wayne runs Bat Jack Productions now, right?

Adam: Don't you have a little story 

Charlotte: about Yeah, I do. I was on a conference call once with Gretchen Wayne, and 

Adam: she's 

Charlotte: commander in chief of whatever room she is in.

Charlotte: When she talks, everybody listens. Everybody gets quiet. 

Adam: She's a little ball of 

Charlotte: fire. She's the kind of person you aspire to 

Adam: be. You could tell that she was a. 

Charlotte: Yeah. The family's still really involved in any John Wayne pictures that get work done, which I think is great these people have seen the films go from VHS to D to HD and now H D R, so they're really good at helping you maintain what the film should look like. 

Adam: I think it's a lot better for a family to be involved like that, to shepherd it from format to format than these kind of orphaned films, because then whoever has control over them could do whatever they want to them.

Adam: Yeah. This way they know that they're always gonna look a certain way. And I don't 

Charlotte: know if I jumped ahead and didn't mention this, but when we're restoring a movie or working on it, Reach out to either the director cinematographer or in a case like a John Wayne film, we reach out to Bat Jack 

Charlotte: If we're doing a restoration, we'll reach out to them and see if they wanna be involved and look at it. Yeah. Family members. Which is fun cuz then you get to hear little stories and things about the movie or about their family. Their 

Adam: family. Yeah. 

Charlotte: That's very cool. But we digress.

Charlotte: You get again. 

Adam: So anyway, bat Jack is on fire and he's making all these films while he's waiting for Howard Hughes to sign off on his third film to complete his contract. And 

Charlotte: there's no like end date on that contract. 

Adam: He owes a film to Rko and he's constantly contacting them and Hughes is too busy.

Adam: He won't meet with 'em. Meanwhile, he doesn't need this third film at r k. No, he's doing really well. He's, yeah, he's burning it up everywhere else he just wants it over with so that he can be free and out from underneath that contract. Meanwhile, my Powell, Dick Powell this is that point, the third golden period of his career where he is segueing into directing and he directs a movie called Split Second for Rko o and it is the only film that Rko O releases the year that it was released.

Adam: No way. Yeah, because is it good? It's actually very interesting. It's about the, that's the full polite way of saying No, no. It's about these escape convicts that hole up in the Nevada desert and find out that there is going to be an atomic test the next day. No way. No joke. That is what it's about.

Charlotte: All right. One to watch. I'm watching that. That's interesting. Yeah. Split second just because of the whole thing. That's to come when finally, if we ever start talking about the conqueror, 

Adam: 1953 is the year. Okay, 

Charlotte: cool. I wanna see that. He's not in it, right? No, he's not. 

Adam: He just dressed. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Perfect. Gotcha. Yeah, so he's a director.

Adam: He does that movie and it's the most successful movie because it's the only movie that got released in 1953 from it's their best picture of, they released a couple passive films that they were distributing for other people, but it was the only movie produced at Rko that was released that year through them.

Adam: So Dick Powell is their hottest director at Rko o at that point, and he finds out that there is a John Wayne movie, ode and says, Hey, I wanna be on the next John Wayne movie, whatever it is. Yeah. We don't know what it is. No one has talked about it, what it's gonna be yet except for John Wayne keeps pushing the idea of the Alamo.

Adam: John Wayne wants to make a movie about the Alamo really badly. And so he comes in and he is like, we should do this movie about the Alamo. I think it's gonna be amazing. I think it'll be great. And Howard Hughes is just not interested in it at all. But Howard Hughes is interested in Gingis. he must have read something about Gingis Khan, but he becomes obsessed with the idea and he hires a writer to make a script about Gingis Khan's life. 

It 

Adam: was not a hot commodity. They put it on moth balls, but it's there.

Adam: So Dick Powell is now attached to John Wayne's next. John Wayne is pushing to get his contract fulfilled and this script, there are several conflicting concepts of how it got into John Wayne's hands. 

Charlotte: I read one where he pulled it out of a trash can 

Adam: I think that sounds like a wonderful Hollywood story, but not a real story at all.

Adam: It 

Charlotte: does another, I think it was on Dick Powell's desk. Desk whenever he went in to meet and he's just trying to get a film going. He, at this point, he doesn't care what film it is. So he just picks it up and says, what about this 

Adam: one? Basically, I think that's probably more likely what happened.

Adam: I think so too. 

Charlotte: Maybe his elbow knocked it into the trash can. He picked it up. 

Adam: Who knows? Dick Powell was not hot on this script at all, but he was like, who am I to say no to? John Wayne? 

Charlotte: Yeah. And John Wayne said it's a cowboy story. 

Adam: It's not a cowboy story. That's what John Wayne said. It was. It's an eastern western. 

Charlotte: An eastern western. Oh my. That's good. 

Adam: So anyway, because this was a concept that Howard Hughes came up with in the first place. He green lights it. He says, okay, let's do it.

Adam: John Wayne is ecstatic. He, he's not ecstatic to be in this film, this particular film, but he's ecstatic and he looks at it as a challenge. It's different than anything else he's done. He's looking at it as if it's a western, he goes into it legitimately trying to challenge himself.

Adam: At this point he totally remakes his body, he loses a ton of weight, gets on zarine. To lose weight, which was Yeah, that'll do it. Not in a legal substance. Back then it was 

Charlotte: not, it was just like a caffeine 

pill. 

Adam: And it was just give you a little pep prescribed to you.

Adam: And if a doctor prescribed it, that means it's okay to take. It does not conflict with John Wayne's beliefs because it was prescribed to him by 

Charlotte: a doctor. So if the government says there's no danger to nuclear fallout if we're doing nuclear testing down the street, the government said so, so you gotta believe him, right? 

Adam: Absolutely. It's the government, right?

Adam: Why not? Which 

Charlotte: Is exactly what was happening at the same time in the deserts of Utah.

Charlotte: So around the same time that the conqueror is starting to get green, There is atomic testing going on in Utah by the Atomic Energy Commission, which had started testing in this area in 1951. 

Charlotte: So in 1954, they had 11 bomb explosions there, and two of them were particularly dirty. Which means they deposited long lasting radiation over the. They named all the bombs that they dropped for example, there was a bomb named Simon that was a 51.5 kiloton bomb. And in contrast, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was 13 kilotons. So imagine this is four times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That's what they're testing in the desert. There was another one that was done a month later that was a 32 kiloton blast named Harry.

Charlotte: after one of the bomb tests that they had. There were thousands of sheep that mysteriously died, that were downwind from one of the test sites, and the government said, Hey, that wasn't us. That wasn't a nuclear test. This was unprecedented cold weather that caused thousands of sheep to just drop dead.

Adam: Yeah, that sounds likely. 

Charlotte: Yeah. They were consistent with their claims that there was nothing to worry about. And no side effects. And no side 

Adam: effects. Didn't they also say that a lot of the sheep after a lot of this testing were having stillborn babies and babies that were born without coats, all kinds of weird genetic malformations.

Charlotte: So they were testing these big, huge atomic bombs in the desert, 

Charlotte: meanwhile, the government was telling the residents that they had nothing to worry about 

Charlotte: if they dropped a bomb and there was a little bit of particles in the air, all they needed to do was go inside and they would be just fine. Yeah. 

Adam: They had the whole duck and cover thing for children but if you were just indoors, you were fine. Oh. And if you manicured your lawn, then the fallout wouldn't stay there.

Charlotte: yeah. There was something about the blast radius, the blast was coming your way. If your lawn was manicured that there would be less stuff to be flown around and potentially cause injury 

Charlotte: I read that's what part of the whole 1950s manicured front lawns in a neighborhood that came from there. I don't know that's, 

Adam: Yeah. In the fifties, they just had a gigantic propaganda movement in the United States to make everybody at ease with all of the testing and things that were going on. Yeah. 

Charlotte: There were pamphlets that they were handing out, so this was happening in Utah. Meanwhile, the production crew for the conqueror was looking for a place to shoot that would look like the Gobi Desert. They go to Utah and they visited the set of a film, right?

Adam: Yes. It was called A Man Alone starring Ray Maland. They visit the 

Charlotte: set and they see this beautiful orange dirt lining the hills of the desert, and they thought, this is it. 

Adam: This is where we gotta shoot. It looks very exotic because of the color. Of the sand.

Adam: Of 

Charlotte: the sand. If you've been to Utah and you've seen the beautiful orange sand and all the colors. Very, it is gorgeous. 

Adam: Very gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous. So let's blow it up. Why not? Right? So they settle on this area, St. George, Utah. Which 

Charlotte: the government says is safe, even though there was, testing down the street hundred miles away. hundred miles away down the street. Yep. 

Adam: You could be a hundred miles street, a hundred miles away. Downwind from the testing site.

Adam: So they settle on that area. St. George, Utah, largely Mormon population. Also not used to having big stars and productions in their job and Hollywood. Yeah. So they're very excited to have them and very accommodating for them.

Adam: So that was a big deal too, was to have an area that actually wants you there. 

Charlotte: So casting crew gets hired. They got people like Susan 

Adam: Hayward, who was the biggest female star at the time. So you got Moorehead, John Wayne and Susan Hayward heading your big budget. Epic. And they're the two biggest stars.

Adam: Male and female in Hollywood at the time. What could go wrong And then you have a great supporting cast, 

Charlotte: Agnes Morehead Lee 

Adam: Van Clef has a very small row in this. This was very early in his career. Jose Amand, who is also, a big secondary character.

Charlotte: So in addition to shooting there, they hired a lot of locals. There were Indian tribes that were local to the area that they hired both with their horses and without their horses. And they were paying them, I think I read it was like $11 a day or something 

Adam: like that. Yeah. To be the Mongol hoard.

Adam: And they weren't really on the payroll, so they were never actual No. Considered part of the production. They were paid in cash at the 

Charlotte: end of the day. Same with a lot of the locals who provided the food, the craft service, even construction, bus drivers to bus in the Oh, yeah.

Charlotte: The stars. 

Adam: I mean, You hire a lot of locals to do all of the support work type stuff. Because you have to, you can't bring everybody with you. It's 400 miles from Hollywood to this location. So anyway they're about to start production and the production is plagued from the very beginning.

Adam: No. That's why they consider this a cursed production. First of all, when they went out and looked at it was early, February, so it was not as hot as it is in the heart of summer when they actually shot the film. So temperatures were upwards of a hundred degrees on set causing the water wells that they were using to give everybody water on set to dry up and causing all the actors to get heatstroke.

Adam: And many were hospitalized. they said that people would be sitting there on their horses and they'd just suddenly fall off their horse because they passed out. That's funny. Not funny. Yeah. And the only actual structures that they had to house the people in between shots are these makeshift tents.

Adam: And the wind, was insane. And so it's blowing all this radioactive fallout filled dust through, onto people's faces, in their mouths, in their eyes. They said that the dirt was a constant issue not only being blown around, it was in their food and they were ingesting it, and it would get in their water and they would drink it.

Adam: And so a lot of this dust was internalized. 

Charlotte: Everybody was really worried about fallout and possible radiation in the area. And there's a story that at the beginning or the first day on set, John Wayne shows up with a Geiger counter and he's there with his two teenage sons, and he flips on this Geiger counter and.

Charlotte: It's said to have cracked so loudly that John Wayne assumed it was broken and just turned it off. 

Adam: Hey, nothing to see here, guys. Lee. Nothing to see. Oh, 

Charlotte: this one, this broken? Yeah, this one 

Adam: just doesn't work. Broken. Yeah. There's no way that it would peg out like that. No. Couldn't happen. So it wasn't 

Charlotte: a secret to everybody that was showing up to the set what had been going on.

Charlotte: And then you've got all the locals who know the story about the sheep or , have their own concerns about what's going on. 

Adam: It was a concern. Howard Hughes actually went to the government and asked, Hey, is it safe to shoot here? And the government said yes.

Adam: So did he show up on set ever? Howard Hughes never showed up on set. Not once in the three months that they shot in that desert. There are germs 

Charlotte: in them there. Deserts. 

Adam: Yeah. There's a lot of dirt. And he doesn't like dirt. No, he doesn't. Susan Hayward at this point had just broken up with her husband and she fell into deep alcoholism.

Adam: And she was renowned for falling in love with her costars. But at this point, John Wayne had just gotten remarried to a woman named Pilar Paulette. And so he was very happy. They were basically in their honeymoon stage. And so Susan Hayward decides she's going to have an affair with John Wayne because he's her co-star and she's the most because everyone wants her.

Adam: Exactly. She's the most desirous woman in Hollywood. Anytime they have a kissing scene, she tries to shove her tongue down his throat. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Didn't he complain to his agent? 

Adam: I felt that. I think he complained to Dick Powell. Yeah. He was like, every time we kiss this woman tries to shove her tongue down my throat.

Adam: He was not having it. But it all culminates in a night where she gets off and she drinks herself into a stupor and ends up showing up at John Wayne's rented house, pounding on the door. That's a great idea. Demanding Pilar come out so she can fight her for John Wayne's affections.

Adam: Just ridiculous. 

Charlotte: And what did Pilar. 

Adam: I think John Wayne went out there and was like, you get outta here, you pilgrim. Yeah. Hey Pilgrim, you get outta here. 

Charlotte: Pil, gret. Pilgrimme. Pilgrimme. I like pilgrimme. Hey pilgrim. Get off my lawn. 

Adam: You've got to the count to 10.

Adam: I 

Charlotte: don't think he'd even give her 10. Probably not. I think John Wayne would be a count to three. Count to 

Adam: three guy. Yeah, definitely. He's a count to three or, 

Charlotte: so what else happened? I know there's more 

Adam: Craziness from the set.

Adam: You wanna hear some tales of the debacle? Of course. Howard Hughes would talk to Dick Powell over the phone. He never showed up on set, which we mentioned before, but he would give him notes all the time by phone. And one of the notes he gave him was that he had to have a live panther in one of the scenes because it was exotic and it would really sell the fact that they were not in, the United States shooting in Utah.

Adam: So they get this live panther to set, which is supposedly trained, and they sit it right down next to Susan Hayward in the a hundred 

Charlotte: degree windy. Conditions. 

Adam: And at some point, something she was wearing got the Panther's attention and it swatted at her, almost hitting her in the face. And it ended up catching her arm and injuring her.

Adam: And she had to go to the hospital. I think that it wasn't as trained as they claimed it was. That was the issue. Yeah. They just 

Charlotte: fed it really well so that it maybe wouldn't eat someone 

Adam: pretty much, and then hope for the best, basically.

Adam: Mm-hmm. Uh, Yeah. So Susan Hayward almost died by Panther attack on set. She probably wouldn't have noticed though, cuz she was loaded pretty much the entire time they shot this thing. Another thing that happened, Jose Amand, one of the co-stars, fell off of his horse and broke his jaw and had to miss several days of production and then came back with his jaw wired shut.

Adam: So all of his dialogue afterwards had to either be cut or was reduced to Montes, laic, utterances just ugh, grunts because he couldn't talk through the wired jaw. Yeah, that was interesting. John Wayne, halfway through, due to the dexedrine, started to get jittery so jittery that it was apparent on film and paranoid.

Adam: So he would start to forget his lines. He would just paraphrase everything in his John Wayne swagger. Yeah. At a certain point he approached this as a challenge, but then was afraid that he was gonna come off looking foolish on screen. And so he just kind fell into his own ways and just became the swaggering cowboy that we all knew. But in yellow face, 

Charlotte: yeah, we haven't even really mentioned that.

Charlotte: But if he's playing gang is con, I think you can put two and two 

Adam: together. Yeah. I don't think we need to dwell on that. It's just one of the other. That just makes his miscasting so awful in this film. Yeah, and we'll just leave it at that. 

Charlotte: There's a quote in the book, the 50 worst Films of All Time that talks about his dialogue.

Charlotte: They said Wayne does most of his communication through a series of grunts. Perhaps the director forgot to explain to him the difference between a Mongol and a 

Adam: Mongolo. Oh, ouch. Yeah. I don't think they could write that today. No, 

Charlotte: I don't. This is a direct quote. From 1978. 

Adam: Yeah. Hilarious. In a non pccy way. 

Charlotte: Absolutely. Non pc.

Charlotte: This book is 

Adam: brutal. Yeah, they're pretty rough on things. So the film shot in the desert for three months, these people ate, drank, and were pelted with sand for all that time. And then it was over and they all thought they were free until Howard Hughes decided to look at all of the footage and decided he wanted reshoots.

Adam: And so he called everybody back and they started shooting on Rko in Culver City. And he didn't like the sand that they had down when they were recreating the villages and. 

Charlotte: He loved the sand. They loved the sand in Utah because it had that 

Adam: orange color. He said it didn't match. It just didn't match.

Adam: And everybody would just be taken out of the film by the fact that the sand is a different color. And you know what he did? I know he went and had 60 tons of radioactive sand from the desert, shipped to Rko, so the trucks traveled 400 miles there to get the sand and then 400 miles back to Rko,

Adam: and no one knows what became of that sand after they were done with it. It's in 

Charlotte: a park in Culver City somewhere. 

Adam: How hot is Culver Studios right now? So after endless reshoots, do you know what Howard Hughes. What he shelved it, he lost interest in the film altogether and wouldn't sign off on all the edits. So it was edited and edited. And then he left the studio in the middle of the edit he sold in 1955. This movie doesn't come out until 1956,

Adam: so he basically abandoned it. And oh, by the way, jet Pilot still hasn't come out at this point. It's still sitting in the vault.

Charlotte: When they were talking about premiering the conqueror, John Wayne had this big idea that he wanted it to in Moscow. What, why Moscow? Because the action of the movie was supposed to take place in present day Russia. 

Adam: Oh, yeah, I

Charlotte: I guess he thought that would, help relations between the US and Russia. So Rko reached out to the Russian embassy in Washington and they demanded to see the film. So they see it at a private screening and they say 

Charlotte: Net, yet they say net to the whole idea. A lot of people were aware of this in Russia and apparently the film was banned there. Not only did they not want the premiere to be done there, it was banned in Russia. 

Adam: See their mistake was they showed the film to them, so I can understand that one. Yeah. They 

Charlotte: thought that the love affair between a Mongol and a tartar would prove too inflammatory for Russian audiences.

Charlotte: So apparently this film had several premieres in 30 different capitals around the world, and in addition to that, there were a lot of promotional gimmicks that Rko O did.

Charlotte: So there were standies of John Wayne made that sat at the traffic control department in different cities that said, John Wayne, the conqueror says you can conquer auto accidents by driving carefully.

Charlotte: It's a weird tie-in, but they get weirder. There's another where there's a tie-in for different women's cosmetics and one said women's wear things to attract your conqueror cosmetics, the lipstick that conquers all day long. 

Charlotte: Apparently there was one at dancing schools Conquer the most difficult steps and even appliance stores. The conquerors of their field. So apparently this was all over the place. They were all about these promotional gimmicks to advertise the film.

Charlotte: There was even a swimsuit tie-in that was inspired by the film, the C Nymph Swimsuits Company. They developed a gold cotton swimsuit called the Conqueror Swimsuit. Wow. There was a tie made by the company called The Wilson Brothers, and it's sold for $2 and 50 cents a tie called The Conqueror. 

Adam: Who would've thought it would've inspired so much clothing? So much, and lipstick, because these people are not wearing a lot of clothing in the film. Didn't 

Charlotte: matter. It's just like you've seen those ads. I have one with Burt Lancaster where he is advertising a stutz and hat.

Charlotte: Yeah. I have a Buddy Hutton one where she's advertising RC Cola , so I believe it. Oh yeah, absolutely. So the film, when it came out, it only made four and a half million dollars domestically. Yeah, 

Adam: that's not bad. So critic critics hated it, but audiences really liked it.

Adam: So it was the 13th highest grossing film of the year in 1956 with 4.5 million domestic, but it did 

Charlotte: pretty well overseas enough to make a small profit. 

Adam: I think that the final budget of the film was $6 million. That's what I read too. Which adjusted dollars is 56 million today. And at the time, that was the most expensive film made until they did 10 commandments.

Adam: 10 Commandments, yeah. Which was double that

Charlotte: There's conflicting stories about Howard Hughes, whether he liked the film or hated the film. It said that he bought all existing prints of the film for his own keeping 

Adam: people said he spent 12 million collecting prints on this Yeah.

Charlotte: To basically take them out of circulation because he didn't want this playing on television. And some sources say that he would watch the film often in the screening room that he shut himself into. Yeah, I read that too. Others say that. Loved the film so much that's why he wanted every copy. 

Adam: He bought this and Jet pilot those two movies. He didn't want them. Jet Finally, jet Pilot TV finally came out one year after this film. It was shot in 1949 and 1950 and came out in 1957. So by the time it came out, all the cutting edge technology and all the new planes that were in it were then out of date.

Adam: And John Wayne was 10 years younger, which is super weird.

Charlotte: Yeah. So the film fell into obscurity 

Adam: for a while. Yeah. It became really hard to see for a very long time. Still not an easy film to 

Charlotte: find. No, it's not. If you want a high deaf version, you have to import it from Europe. It's not available in the US just on D V D. film comes out and life goes on. Actors are another things. Meanwhile, a lot of people in St.

Charlotte: George, Utah and around that area started getting cancer. Children's leukemia rates were skyrocketing in that area. And they were all saying this is because of the nuclear testing that happened, not so far away. We're all downwind from it. It's in the food, it's in the 

Adam: water. Yeah. So they became known as Downwinders.

Adam: Mm-hmm. At that point they all kind of band together, and several of them launched lawsuits against the government. Unsuccessfully, all of them until Senator Ted Kennedy officially sponsored the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1979. The R E C A. It was not passed in 1979. It didn't go through until the nineties, but 

Charlotte: apparently it was also really hard to prove if you were eligible to get compensation because you had to prove that you were in the area between this year and this year for a specific amount of time.

Adam: They didn't make it easy, but they still paid out billions of dollars. Yeah. Over, the last, what, three decades 

Charlotte: now. Meanwhile, almost half the crew. For the conqueror got cancer before 1980. Had developed cancer. Many of them had died from it by then. 

Adam: Including our leads.

Adam: Both leads. 

Charlotte: Yeah. John Wayne. John Wayne. Wayne in 1979, 

Adam: John Wayne first got cancer though in 1964 he had a lung removed. He had cancer in his lung and he had the entire lung removed. But then ended up succumbing to cancer again in 1979. That was colon cancer. Susan Hayward died of brain cancer.

Adam: In the seventies. Dick Powell died of lymphoma. Very young. He was only 59 years old. Was what, 1963? Agnes Moorhead also died of cancer. Pedro Armad found out he had neck cancer and was suffering really heavily while he was shooting from Russia with love. Ended up shooting himself shortly after he wrapped on that film. 

Charlotte: Yeah, because it was, he found out 

Adam: it was terminal. Yeah. He knew it was terminal.

Adam: I guess he had lost tons of weight and it was massively painful. And Lee Van Clef also died of lung cancer. So these are all just people in the lead, and we're not counting the countless other people. Yeah. 

Charlotte: In 1980 there was an article that came out in People Magazine that was titled, the Children of John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Dick Powell Fear that Fallout killed their parents.

Charlotte: And this was written by Karen Jacobov and Mark Senate and they did a lot of research and they contacted the, there were 220 people officially as the casting crew for this film. And they found out that 91 of them had contracted cancer. And at the time, 46 of them had already died from cancer. So 

Adam: God, that's in 1980. 

Charlotte: Wow. This is in 1980. And the children of all of these actors they were involved with this article. A lot of them had already by 19. Battled some form of cancer or another. They had been on the set 

Adam: yeah. Both of John Wayne's kids contracted 

Charlotte: cancer.

Charlotte: Yeah. And there's of, a lot of people in the town. So all these people were not counted in those 220 numbers. There are some people that said that they would consider this an epidemic by these numbers. The American Cancer Society said that fell in line with their estimates for the percentage of people that would develop cancer in their life, which was 40%.

Charlotte: And they said 20% of those people will die from cancer, which is pretty much exactly what happened on the conquer. So decide for yourself. It's, yeah, it's hard to say. Is it because of the film or is it just not even coincidence? 

Adam: You gotta take into effect that most of these people were heavy smokers back then.

Adam: Because everybody was, John Wayne notoriously had a five pack a day. That's crazy addiction. They said he would light one off the other one off the other. Yeah. That was how he would do it. Dick Powell was also a major smoker. But just the sheer fact that so many of them got it within, 30 years.

Charlotte: And I don't know what that number is now. I don't know if it's been updated or researched. 

Adam: I think there's compelling evidence to say yes. I personally believe that had something to do with it. Dick Powell was dead within 10 years and John Wayne had a lung removed within 10 years. So 

Charlotte: a lot of them had some form of cancer within 10 years.

Charlotte: It's 

Adam: wild. It's a crazy story. The conqueror, they don't make 'em like that 

Charlotte: anymore. No, they don't. And that dirt somewhere in Culver City, it lays. 

Adam: That's all I can think about because, the guy just pushed it off into the Oh yeah. He just swept it off. Yeah. Into the gutter. It's probably still in the water down there.

Charlotte: Was the film cursed? From the radiation, was it cursed from the casting choice of John Wayne? Was it cursed from, mean, he cast himself 

Adam: producing of Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes. Who's to say all I know are those last two films that he made Jet Pilot and that one were just total debacles.

Adam: I think it's mainly casting as far as the movie and the fact that the script is just boring. Yeah. 

Charlotte: We didn't even get into that. Yeah. We didn't talk about the movie. We've seen The Conquer. Yeah. We yet, because you hear something that's the worst film of all time or one of them and you have to watch it and I don't know, my expectations were low.

Charlotte: I think yours were too, but I just found it dull. 

Adam: I didn't think it was the worst movie I've ever seen. It's not even in the top 100 for worst movies I've ever seen. Yeah. The production is fantastic. The costuming is good. Makeup's. Makeup's, okay. It's a competently made film with really bad casting.

Adam: That's the problem. Susan Hayward is not good in this movie either. No. It's just really boring. .

Adam: And it's under two hours. That's the thing. It feels like three, eight and a half hours. Yeah, it did. I highly recommend you see it if you're interested in the story. It's fun seeing John Wayne just terribly deliver dialogue. It's gangas. 

Charlotte: Terribly gangas 

Adam: cowboy or Yeah.

Adam: If you're offended by the yellow face aspect of it, steer clear cuz there's a lot of it in there. Yeah. It is what it is. It is a sign of the times. There's no way around it. Yeah. But yeah, worth seeing just so that you can say you've seen it

Adam: or if you're a John Wayne fan, the conqueror 

Charlotte: an rko radioactive picture. I didn't come up with that, but I love it. Somebody did. 

Adam: All right. Thanks for joining us on this fun trip. on this 

Charlotte: Wayward journey through Rko and Howard Hughes and. All the terrible movies that came of that relationship.

Adam: Yeah. You know what, this is just more than anything, this made me realize that Howard Hughes was just a fraud as far as filmmaking. He lucked out with some good relationships, but overall, whenever he was actually in charge, he made some really bad choices. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Before we go, I wanna give credit to all the books that we used for the research for this story, the 50 Worst Films of All Time, and How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss, the Golden Turkey Awards by Harry and Michael Medved and the Rko O story by Richard BJ and Vernon Harbin The People Magazine article from 1980. and killing John Wayne, the Making of the Conqueror by Ryan Tugen. All excellent reads the Killing, John Wayne book is 

Adam: excellent. Highly recommend it. He frames it in all of the stuff that's happening at the time too.

Adam: Culturally. The 1950s atomic age. Mm-hmm. The atomic craze. It's really interesting. And there's a lot very detailed, a lot more about Howard Hughes. Very 

Charlotte: well researched. Yeah. Fantastic. 

Adam: Excellent book. Can't recommend it enough. 

Adam: Let us know your favorite John Wayne films or your least favorite John Wayne films. 

Charlotte: Let us know if you've seen The Conqueror and what you think. Did you think it was boring? We thought it was boring. You can send us a note. We are perf damage podcast gmail.com. You can send us a note on Twitter. We're at perf damage. And don't forget, Adam will be making that letter box. List the list. Every movie we've referenced today, we're perf damage on 

Adam: letterbox. Yeah, come find us. We'll follow you back. Join us, won't you.

Adam: Until next time. Thanks for joining us here on Damage.

Adam: There were financial reasons because of the Great Depression. Oh, nope. We're in 1948. 1948, sorry. World War ii. My 

Charlotte: bad. No. World War I, yeah. World War because of the Civil War, the Spanish American War, 

Adam: the B War, I don't even know what that is. Yeah. It's a, it's one over in Europe because of the 

Charlotte: dinosaurs.

Charlotte: Dinosaurs. 

Adam: Dinosaurs.