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Episode 5: The Conqueror
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Rena and Sara discuss The Conqueror, a 1956 Howard Hughes production starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan. You read that correctly. This one is a doozy. Join us as we dig into all the things that make The Conqueror, er, special, including radioactive sand, a demoralised RKO studios gutted by Hughes, a supposedly tame panther, future Klingon gear, and a script full of insane, stilted, pseudo-archaic dialog that Wayne didn't bother reading until he arrived on the Utah desert set that was posing as the Gobi.
The Duke told screenwriter Oscar Millard that he couldn't say any of this dialogue, and was told that it was too late to change anything. It all went downhill from there in a shoot that would affect much of the cast and crew for the rest of their lives—because they were shooting 137 miles downwind of a nuclear test site.
The Conqueror also starred Susan Hayward (whose glamorous wardrobe makes no sense in the Gobi), Agnes Moorehead (of Bewitched and Citizen Kane), Pedro Armendáriz (who returned to the set eight days after breaking his jaw), and future spaghetti western luminary Lee Van Cleef, and was Dick Powell's first venture as a director. He was apparently a very nice guy.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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