February 22, 1956: The Conqueror premieres, starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan. I swear, I’m not making that up. It is often considered the worst film of its era, and it was the last John Wayne film to have been shown on television.
From 1203 until his death in 1227, Genghis Khan ruled the Mongol Empire in East Asia, having conquered more land than any human being, before or since. Tales of his savagery are legend, but he was also a smart politician: Any city willing to submit to his rule and his taxes was left to live in peace. Just as just about every person of European ancestry alive today is said to be descended from Charlemagne, just about every person of East Asian ancestry alive today is said to be descended from Genghis Khan.
But John Wayne, best known as the most iconic star of American Western films, was the wrong actor to play him: Not only was he not the least bit Asian, but his hatred of Asians was well established before the film was made. He made that clear in his World War II films, which showed him fighting the Japanese more than the Nazis; and, later on, the Vietnamese in the 1968 film The Ballad of the Green Berets.
The Conqueror was produced by Howard Hughes. Since the airline and film studio mogul was, by then, living in seclusion in Las Vegas, he wanted it filmed near Vegas. Well, in the American West, "near" is relative. It was filmed near St. George, Utah, 117 miles northeast of Las Vegas -- and 137 miles downwind of the federal government's Nevada National Security Site.
Director Dick Powell died of cancer in January 1963, 7 years after the film's release. Pedro Armendáriz, a Mexican actor who was nearly as iconic in his homeland as Wayne was in America, was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960, and committed suicide in June 1963 after he learned his condition had become terminal, shortly after he completed filming on the James Bond film From Russia with Love. Wayne, female lead Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead all died of cancer in the 1970s.
The cast and crew totaled 220 people. By the end of 1980, as ascertained by People magazine, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer, and 46 had died of the disease. That's 41 percent developing cancer, and 21 percent dying from it. In addition, several of Wayne's and Hayward's relatives also had cancer scares after visiting the set. Michael Wayne developed skin cancer, his brother Patrick had a benign tumor removed from his chest, and Hayward's son Tim Barker had a benign tumor removed from his mouth.
Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, stated, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size, you'd expect only 30-some cancers to develop. With 91 cancer cases, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law."
Bigotry is also a disease. Cultural appropriation, less so, but bad enough. Casting white actors in Asian roles continued, with one of the worst examples being Mickey Rooney as nasty landlord Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1961. In 1964, with heavy makeup and a heavier accent, Marlo Thomas, a white actress of Lebanese descent (as was her father, Danny Thomas), played a Chinese woman on the TV Western Bonanza.
By the time the TV shows Hawaii Five-O and M*A*S*H premiered, in 1968 and 1972, respectively, TV studios had begun to cast Asian actors in Asian roles, even if the actors weren't specifically Hawaiian (as on the former) or Korean (as on the latter).
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February 22, 1956 was a Wednesday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 3 games played in the NBA. Two of them were a doubleheader, at the Philadelphia Arena in West Philadelphia. In the opener, the Rochester Royals beat the St. Louis Hawks, 110-109. In the nightcap, the New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 117-108. In the other game, the Boston Celtics beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 93-90 at the Minneapolis Auditorium.
And there was 1 game in the NHL: The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the New York Rangers, 4-2 at the old Madison Square Garden.
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