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UTAH GOTHIC

Did Utah Kill John Wayne? Part II: Atomic Bombs and Dead Sheep

By Contributing Writer, 2-09-06

By Clint Wardlow, UtahGothic.com

Atomic Bombs and Dead Sheep

Local prospectors had been reporting finds on their Geiger counters that indicated large caches of uranium. The problem was that once they began digging, the uranium never turned up. Also, local ranchers had been suffering a spate of mysterious livestock deaths.

Many suspected it may be due to the atomic bomb tests a short distance away at Yucca Flats in Nevada. However, the feds assured locals the tests were perfectly safe. Any fallout would be minimal and dissipate quickly. And everyone knows the government would never lie to its own citizens. That would be unethical.

On May 19, 1953 the Atomic Energy Commission set off "Dirty Harry," a 32 kiloton nuclear device about 100 miles away from St. George. The bomb was one of 126 test fired on the Nevada range from 1951 to 1963. Unfortunately for Cedar City and St. George residents, the winds were particularly bad for this test. What no officials admitted was that St. George had been pummeled by 1230 times the permissible fallout level and had stayed that way for an alarming 16 days! Sheep begin to die. Cattleman were alarmed. The AEC gave Utah Congressman Douglas Stringfellow a tour of the 1350 square mile test site. Good lackey that he was, Stringfellow told residents the tests posed no danger to the citizens of southern Utah. We had to keep the world safe from Communism.

When producers considered shooting The Conqueror in southern Utah they were concerned about nuclear fallout. Government experts assured Powell and the producers that radiation levels were safe. The script called for several giant battle scenes. Electric fans were set up to insure the fight scenes had a certain dusty, wind-blown realism. The film-makers certainly did not want blast their cast and extras with irradiated dirt.

Hayward brought her nine-year-old twins. Wayne arrived with his two sons, Michael and Patrick. The shooting schedule called for almost daily battles. Cast and extras rolled in the dirt, and were hit by dust clouds from the giant wind machines. It was such a constant that the food provided by craft services (a kind of traveling cafe for the crew) was coated with dust. That damned dirt got everywhere.

Because the government had given the area its seal of approval, no one worried about what the soil, that seemed to work its way into the hair, clothing and bodies of everyone working on the film, contained. Strontium 90, cesium 137, radio iodine, and plutonium were just not things one considered while making a Hollywood blockbuster.

There were still some shots needed to complete the movie after shooting in St. George finished. To match the location shots, Hughes shipped over 60 tons of Utah dirt to Hollywood, contaminating some Los Angeles studio.

The premiere of The Conqueror unfolded before the unbelieving eyes of the nation. The critics hooted at the laughable spectacle of John Wayne posturing as the tartar warlord. Filmgoers stayed away in droves. Hughes, indignant at the philistines’ reaction to his epic, pulled the movie from theaters. The film remained unseen except by the crazed aviator. Hughes, in his madness and hidden from the world, sat in his secluded Las Vegas sanctuary screening the movie on an almost daily basis.

So that's how it would have remained; a forgotten, ill-conceived movie vaguely remembered by the unlucky few who had forced themselves to sit through it during its initial release. A single blemish in the fifties during the golden age of John Wayne. However, twenty-five years after its making, certain information would come before the public that would bring The Conqueror back into the limelight. Facts that showed the fallout (literally) from The Conqueror went tragically far beyond the simple consequences of a truly bad movie.

Tuesday, Part III: “Folks Start Dying�

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