STACK #160 Feb 2018

EXTRAS FEATURE

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unpleasant and very public divorce, fighting for the custody of her two children. Her lawyers were also trying to avoid her paying alimony to a husband who believed he was entitled to his share of her stardom and wealth. She accepted the role in Howard Hughes' “absurd epic” purely as a temporary escape from the drama of her personal life. The cast and crew were apparently aware of the radiation, but none took the threat that seriously. After location shooting completed, the director, Dick Powell, trucked sixty tons of the Snow Canyon red sand back to Hollywood. This was to ensure that the interior scenes matched the same colour and texture of the location

Susan Hayward HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDENAGE Forgotten Stars of

(1917-1975) Part 3

Location filming in radioactive Snow Canyon, Utah. Scene from The Conqueror .

An Oscar and a brave finale

shoot. As a consequence, the cast and crew wallowed in the radioactive mix for another two months. Of the 220 people Dick Powell brought to Utah in 1954, over the following two decades, 91 of them would succumb to various types of cancer. It has never been proven (and probably never will be) but many in Hollywood attribute the extraordinary number of cancerous deaths amongst the cast and crew of  The Conqueror to the radioactive fallout from the “Dirty Harry” bomb. The film itself was considered to be so bad that its release was delayed for two years. Critically slated, it was swiftly withdrawn from circulation after its initial run in 1956. Hayward’s next two films for Fox teamed her with Tyrone Power in Untamed  and Clark Gable in  Soldier of Fortune ; both released in 1955 and both big hits at the box office. But it was her third movie released that same year that grabbed all the headlines. Her gutsy portrayal of the tragic Broadway and Hollywood vocalist, Lillian Roth, and her battle with alcohol and substance abuse, deservedly won Susan Hayward a fourth Oscar nomination.  I’ll Cry Tomorrow was a huge success, taking over $7.7 million ($69 million in today’s money) at the box office. A phenomenal return for a movie made in the mid-1950s. On the night of the Academy Award ceremony, Hayward was concerned that the scandalous headlines of her divorce would scupper her chance of winning the Best Actress Oscar. She was right – morally oriented Hollywood voted for Anna Magnani in  The Rose Tattoo . For weeks after, newspapers and

M ost film buffs worth their salt can link John Wayne with the movie Dirty Harry  (1971) – as the first actor to be offered the part of San Francisco Police Inspector, Harry Callahan. Wayne flatly refused the role that would later make Clint Eastwood a superstar. But seventeen years earlier, the Duke had a lesser known encounter with another “Dirty Harry”. Not a fictional detective but an atom bomb. The US Atomic Energy Commission had tested and detonated numerous atomic bombs in the dry lake bed of Yucca Flats, Nevada, throughout the early 1950s. One of them, nicknamed "Dirty Harry" (due to the amount of Strontium 90 and various radioactive isotopes contained within the 32-kiloton bomb), was exploded in May 1953. Immediately after the

detonation, a sudden and unexpected wind swept a cloud of radioactive fallout more than 150 miles to the east, blanketing the rolling red sand dunes of Snow Canyon in the state of Utah. One year later, Susan Hayward, along with co-star John Wayne and other cast and crew members, arrived in Snow Canyon to shoot the battle and chase scenes for the movie  The Conqueror . Hayward instinctively knew the film would be a total clunker. After reading the improbable script, she said to her agent: “Me, a red-headed Tartar princess, and Duke Wayne, a Mongol warrior: who the hell are they kidding?” In 1954, Hayward was now the highest paid actress in Hollywood, with three Best Actress nominations under her belt. But her private life was a trainwreck. She was in the middle of an

Susan Hayward’s facial expression seems to be saying “What am I doing in this turkey of a movie?” A scene from The Conqueror, with John Wayne as Genghis Khan!

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FEBRUARY 2018

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