This movie may cause cancer. No, seriously.
But only if you're actually in it.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_016.html
Saw it on metafilter and was suprised there was no discussion of this on the IMDB boards.
I heard this very thing this evening, there were too many deaths from cancer to call it a coincidence. One footnote: Pedro Armendariz comitted suicide after hearing he was terminally ill, so he did not "die" from cancer.
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A crappy movie killed the Duke!? NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
shareJohn Wayne smoked and was a heavy drinker, so there could be more to his demise than this horrible movie. Still, the radioactivity from the nearby nuke tests did nothing good to him. The film was shot near St. George, Utah, a predominantly-LDS (Mormon) ocommunity where people generally don't smoke or drink, and people present during the nuke tests have unusually-high cancer rates.
It's hard to believe, but Clint Eastwood, the actor closest to being the Duke's successor, is now older than John Wayne ever got -- and he's going strong.
The Conqueror is a dreadful movie. Genghiz Khan set in motions conquests that broaught slaughters from Korea to Poland and from Russia to central India. The Mongol conquests are estimated to have killed 20 million people, which is roughly on the same scale as Hitler and Stalin, except that there were far fewer people to kill in those days.
The movie is styled as a western and characters speak in a mock-Shakespearian lingo. (Genghiz Khan lived more in the time of
Chaucer -- not Shakespeare). That itself is a disaster, and it thus offended both cinematic snobs and the usual fans of westerns.
Some say that this movie is little more than a vanity piece to express the fantasy of Howard Hughes -- and it would be except for the tragic circumstances for most of the cast and crew.
Except that it's not mystery or science fiction, and for the personal tragedies about which one could not laugh, this would be good MST3K material.
...Someone who commits suicide rrather than face the last stages of a terminal disease causing excruciating pain really dies of the disease. No disease, no suicide -- right?
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A diagnois of cancer was very different in 1963 then it is now. There were fewer and much harshed avenues of treatment, also when your doctor tells you your cancer is terminal - you are pretty sure you will die. Cancer did kill him, even if it was indirectly.
shareYour statement only holds up because you assume there's a God. Using your same argument, that there is no proof that the disease would have killed him, I'm sorry to say, there is no proof that there is a God, and if there is, it's exceedingly presumptuous AND arrogant of YOU to determine what he thinks.
share"In GOD's eyes he killed himself." Well, I don't think anybody here was asking for god's opinion.
I would not fault someone for suicide in the face of a prognosis that one has as one's only future is a complete loss of control over one's life and a certainty of a horrible death, as if by being eaten alive or being burned to death from inside.
I can think of some fates, including cancer, that might cause me to put a bullet into my temple or to lie down in the path of a freight train. I don't consider the people who jumped from the Twin Towers as they faced being burned or crushed 'suicides'. Choosing a quick death over another death more slow and agonizing can be a rational choice.
Dick Powell was not that old when he succumbed to cancer (was in his late 50's or very 60s), and John Wayne had his first bout with cancer (lung) in 1964 He had surgery for the removal of his left lung, and believed that it was caught. Later, late in 1978, he developed symptoms and again feared the worst. This time he had stomach cancer and lung as well. The stomach surgery was performed on January 13, 1979, and he passed away on June 11, 1979. Hard to believe it will be twenty-seven years already.
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How marvelous that 'trandate' can see things 'through GOD'S eyes.' When did GOD hand this gift to 'trandate?' And what marvelous insights into what motivated that poor actor to take his own life. I would say someone has the 'gift of total bulls**t."
When did god make you his spokesman?
shareJohn Wayne smoked and was a heavy drinker, so there could be more to his demise than this horrible movie.
I'm pretty sure Agnes Moorehead -- who was in this movie, and who also died of cancer -- was a smoker, too. So it might be coincidental, it might not. share
BUT (and this is a big one), it wasn't just 2 or 3, or even 23... 91 (yes, that is NINETY-ONE) people who worked on this movie all wound up with cancer... that's a little TOO much to be considered a coincidence, in my book anyway.
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I didn't even think the fact that this movie was the direct cause of cancer was even debateable. I read the back blurb on a VHS copy of it that said something along the lines that part of the legacy of the movie was tragedy. Then it went on to talk about the actors and crew who died as a result of the exposure to contaminated Utah sand. That's not the only source, but even the movie itself wants to play up its cancer deaths. Kind of makes you feel bad for laughing at this piece of crap knowing it killed so many people.
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I read the back blurb on a VHS copy of it that said something along the lines that part of the legacy of the movie was tragedy. Then it went on to talk about the actors and crew who died as a result of the exposure to contaminated Utah sand. That's not the only source, but even the movie itself wants to play up its cancer deaths.
Well, of course. It may be tasteless sensationalism, but it's one way to pique movie fans' interest in this colossal turkey. Remember: There's no such thing as bad publicity.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
Definitely for some, but if you start removing people over 70 from that list, ones that were smokers and their cancer was lung cancer, I'm willing to bet you'll find that number comes to less than half that.
It's like someone tried to tell me there was some kind of curse on the TV show "Bewitched," because all the stars were dead. Never mind that the show was 45 years old and that they mostly died of old age and age related diseases...
People DO die.
I think the same...too much coincidence.
Anyway, it's been proved through the years the connection between the shooting of this picture and the dying of the people involved on it.
The movie was made in a radiactive zone.
Agnes Morehead died of uterine cancer. Smoking does not increase your risk of uterine cancer. That kind of blows your theory out of the water.
shareJohn Wayne got lung cancer initially in the earlyt 70s. It was treated and it went away. A few years later, a different, more aggresive cancer showed up in his lungs. This cancer killed him. It was considered a little odd.
Choose your signature quotes carefully…. They could be misinterpreted (you moron).- drwho
The movie is styled as a western and characters speak in a mock-Shakespearian lingo. (Genghiz Khan lived more in the time of Chaucer -- not Shakespeare).
Since neither the Mongols nor any of the people they conquered spoke English, the time frame is irrelevant. What makes the dialog laughable is the attempt at flowery, pseudo-literary speech, especially coming from the mouth of John Wayne.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
The United States Army and the Pentegon killed The Duke -- their greatest proponent.
shareOf the deaths "attributed to the nuclear test," the theorists have clearly scraped the bottom of the barrel in order to add names John Hoyt was in his eighties. Moorehead and Wayne were both in their seventies. All three were smokers, and died of lung cancer--quite obviously, we get to pick one or the other... was it the test or cigarettes that killed these people? Personally, I pick cigarettes. Clearly some people died a premature death, like Armendariz and Powell, but an 81 year old smoker dying of lung cancer, and they attribute his death to the nuclear test twenty years earlier? Get a grip and face reality. I'd be interested in sifting through the list of deaths, see how many were in their 70's and 80's and died of lung cancer... but not interested enough to do it.
shareThere is a connection. These people smoked. A lot.
shareSmoking was much more the norm in America, especially in the motion picture business than it is now. That said, smoking is one way in which to get a very high quantity of any radioactive substances that might be in the environment, along with any heavy metals.
Smoking surely contributed to some of the deaths of the cast and crew, but it also let them get unusually heavy doses of radioactive substances.
Even so, St. George, Utah is a cancer alley despite a poplulation that (Mormon/LDS) smokes very little even with no heavy industry. Nuke tests.
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