The film icon, who died June 11, 1979, was born 103 years ago today.
A Harris Poll released in January of last year placed John Wayne third among America's favorite film stars, the only deceased star on the list and the only one who has appeared on the poll every year since it first began in 1994.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Mr. Wayne 13th among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
Among the 220 or so cast and crew who filmed the 1956 film, The Conqueror, on location near St. George, Utah, ninety-one had come down with cancer, with an unheard of 41 percent morbidity rate, including stars Mr. Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead.
The film was shot in Southwestern Utah, east of and generally downwind from where the U.S. Government had tested nuclear weapons in Southeastern Nevada, and many contend that radioactive fallout from these tests contaminated the film location and poisoned the film crew working there. Despite the suggestion that Mr. Wayne’s 1964 lung cancer and his 1979 stomach cancer resulted from this nuclear contamination, he himself believed his lung cancer to have been a result of his six-pack-a-day cigarette habit. That is six as in one-two-three-four-five-six.
The effect of nuclear fallout on The Conqueror's cast and crew, and particularly on Wayne, is the subject of James Morrow's science-fiction short story Martyrs of the Upshot Knothole.
WFDS
It's also James Arness' birthday as well. I guess it was a good day to be born a cowboy.
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