From America with Cancer

 

Following the death of Sir Sean Connery …I was watching “From Russia with Love” when my thoughts turned to Pedro Armendáriz who was Bond’s Istanbul contact Ali Kerim Bey.

Now I did know that Armendáriz was terminally ill during the filming and it was his last film.  I knew he had to be propped up in some scenes and that he died before the release.  In fact he actually smuggled a gun into the hospital and shot himself...

.... but what I didn’t realise until today was that his death of cancer aged 51 wasn’t actually just a statistical freak… or bad luck.  Or probably it wasn't.

In 1951 he’d been in a Howard Hughes film called “The Conqueror” with John Wayne and Susan Hayward.  This was filmed in Utah just down the road from where the US Army was conducting above ground nuclear bomb tests.  There were 220 people in the cast in crew.  Within 25 years 90 had died of cancer.  Statistically experts have said that in a normal production you’d expect at most 30 of the cast and crew to have died from cancer in that timeframe.

According to Wikipedia Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, said in 1980, 

"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."

The proposers of these theories don’t just include left wing conspiracy theorists but the children of John Wayne himself who accompanied John on location.  Okay he was no spring chicken at the time but I should probably mention in passing that John Wayne also died of cancer – aged 72.  Susan Hayward was already long dead from lung and brain cancer having shuffled off her mortal coil at 57.

According to People (see here)

“Michael Wayne, 45, developed skin cancer in 1975. His brother Patrick, 41, was operated on for a breast tumor 11 years ago (fortunately it was benign). Tim Barker, 35, a son of Susan Hayward, had a benign tumor removed from his mouth in 1968. “I still smoke a pack a day,” admits Barker. “So who knows just what might have caused it? Smoking doesn’t help. But I’ll tell you, radiation doesn’t help either.”

In the same area two years before the US had tested two nuclear bombs two to three times the size of the Hiroshima blast.

Agnes Moorehead who died of uterine cancer was reportedly convinced that it was Uncle Sam’s Bombs what done it – telling  Debbie Reynolds on her deathbed that “I should never have taken that part” because “everybody in that picture has gotten cancer and died.”

In case anyone hadn’t got radiation from the Strontium 90 and Cesium 137 in the desert the studio transported large quantities of the contaminated dirt back to the studios so that they could colour match the studio earth with that of the desert which ...erm ...didn't help much.

Howard Hughes  meanwhile purchased back every print of “the Conqueror” after its initial release and wouldn’t allow it to be shown again in his lifetime.

Of course it wasn’t just the Hollywood actors who died early – many in the areas of the bombs are still suffering today but what “The Conqueror” proved was that this wasn’t a statistical fluke.