Unless the person directing was John Ford, the most powerful and influential figure on any movie set John Wayne walked onto was ‘The Duke’.
While he did strike up several fruitful collaborations throughout his career – most notably with Henry Hathaway – Wayne was always viewed as the top dog. He was the biggest star in the cast, the production’s most marketable asset, and one of the most famous actors on the planet, which meant, almost by default, he’d get his own way.
It was a daunting prospect for any relative newcomer, which is why Wayne very rarely partnered up with filmmakers who hadn’t proven themselves first. When he took a chance on a rookie who only had one feature under their belt, not only did ‘The Duke’ quickly discover that the director was wildly out of their depth, the end result wasn’t just one of the worst films he’d ever made, but one of the worst ever.
The legacy of 1956’s The Conqueror is an unsavoury one, to put it lightly. Beyond the fact it was a critical pariah and a commercial catastrophe that doesn’t hold up through a modern lens when the very non-Mongolian John Wayne plays Genghis Khan, it might be the deadliest shoot in cinema history.
Deciding that nothing could possibly go wrong filming on former nuclear test sites, in the years to come, almost 100 cast and crew members involved with The Conqueror would develop various forms of cancer, and close to 50 of them would die from the disease. Before anybody knew that, though, Wayne was fully aware he was fighting a losing battle to try and polish a steaming cinematic turd.
Powell, who was best known as an actor, only had 1953’s noir thriller Split Second under his belt as a director. Meanwhile, Wayne was an A-lister who was accustomed to exerting his authority. ‘The Duke’ didn’t dislike Powell as a person, but he had serious issues with his experience and skill levels as a filmmaker.
“He was such a nice guy that when I could see that he really was over his head, I tried to be helpful without coming on too strong, which I admit I have a habit of doing,” he told Michael Munn. “I just barge right in there, ‘Hold it a minute; you’re telling me you’re putting the camera there?’ That’s what I’m like.”
It didn’t help that the part was originally written with Marlon Brando in mind, and after he dropped out to be replaced by a completely different actor in every way, the script didn’t get a rewrite. That meant Wayne had problems “with trying to get to grips with that goddamn dialogue,” compounding his misery.
“So we had a less-than-talented director who just happened to be a terrific guy, and we had a script that was written for Brando but was being spoken by Duke Wayne,” he huffed. “And it was just a fucking disaster.” A harsh assessment of his own work, but not inaccurate when The Conqueror wasn’t just awful: it was deadly.