THE CONQUEROR
US, 1955, 112 minutes, Colour.
John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendariz, Agnes Moorehead, Thomas Gomez, John Hoyt, William Conrad, Ted de Corsia, Lee Van Cleef.
Directed by Dick Powell.
The Conqueror is a film which has achieved some notoriety.
In 1956, it was a popular box office film - a vehicle for John Wayne and Susan Hayward. It was directed by Dick Powell, former singer and actor who had turned successful director (The Enemy Below). John Wayne had appeared in many westerns during the '50s and was making a period piece (not exactly his line of film) which many reviewers thought was a mediaeval western. He seems singularly out of place as Temujin, the Genghis Khan. He swaggers about in the Nevada and Utah locations as a 19th. century man of the west rather than a 13th. century oriental. He is as persuasive as he was as the centurion in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Susan Hayward, more at home in period spectacles, is strong as his at first captured and then willing wife Bortai. Pedro Armendariz, who appeared with him in several westerns including Three Godfathers, portrays his brother.
A number of Hollywood character actors, led by Agnes Moorehead and William Conrad, take the supporting roles. The film has been considered in retrospect as one of the worst Hollywood epics made. This is probably unjust as the film, presented by Howard Hughes, has some action and spectacle in Cinemascope and a Victor Young score. However, it is comic book action, romance, war and betrayal - leading, of course, to ultimate triumph. It is Hollywood interpretation of history.
The film has also become notorious since the company became victim of the nuclear testing in Nevada during 1955. Winds blew the radioactive air towards Nevada and Utah where the company was filming. Stars Wayne, Hayward and Moorehead all died of cancer as did Dick Powell. Statistics and information are given in the antinuclear feature, The Atomic Cafe. There are also sequences in this film of American military in trenches watching the result of the nuclear explosion.
Of interest as an epic in the new dimension of Cinemascope of the '50s and as part of John Wayne's and Susan Hayward's careers.
