The awful John Wayne movie that was beyond saving: “No director could have pulled that one off”
John Wayne was renowned for his consistency as an actor.
Range was never his strong suit, but boy did he lean into what he had. He played sheriffs in the Old West, landowners in the Old West, and cowboys in the Old West. Occasionally, he took a break from the 19th century to play pilots and, in one dreadful instance, a Green Beret. He didn’t mess with method acting or really much acting at all, but whatever he was putting up on the screen, people seemed to love it.
It’s been five decades since the Rio Bravo star died, and he remains a revered and somewhat controversial cultural icon. Still, if you look just beyond the John Ford and Howard Hawks movies, you’ll find an embarrassment of drivel, from the aforementioned pro-war atrocity The Green Berets to a film called Hellfighters, in which he played a firefighter in a little red suit named Chance Buckman.
All of this pales in comparison, however, to a film that was so terribly misjudged that it has become a fixture on lists of the worst movies ever made, and truly, this one gives Tommy Wiseau’s The Room a run for its money, even though it was directed by a real filmmaker and starred actual actors, and The Conqueror tells the story of the rise of Genghis Khan, the 13th-century warlord who founded the Mongol Empire and presided over a huge swatch of Asia.
There is nothing noteworthy about Hollywood making a heavily fictionalised epic about a historical ruler. What was unusual, however, was the fact that multiple people signed off on the casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Now, our man Genghis died a long time ago, so it’s impossible to know exactly what he looked like, but you can be pretty darn certain that he looked absolutely nothing like the Rooster Cogburn.
To make matters worse, screenwriter Oscar Millard decided to make the dialogue Shakespearean in tone, if not in quality. As a result, Wayne is not only saddled with a wispy moustache, yellowface makeup, and a wig that looks like it was made of plastic, but with lines that include, “While my blood burns hot, your daughter is not safe in her tent” and “She is a woman – much woman.” Not to mention all the times he has to say “farewell” as if he were a lovestruck maiden waving goodbye as her boyfriend marches off to the Crusades. He may as well have been dressed in an alien suit for all the naturalness that he projected.
According to Lee Van Cleef, one of the stellar actors who had the misfortune of being in the film, Wayne took it on the chin. “It was obvious that he was out of his depth as Genghis Khan,” he conceded, but added, “He was never less than professional, although he was clearly unhappy with some of the decisions that [director] Dick Powell made.” In Powell’s defence, Van Cleef pointed out, “No director could have pulled that one off.”
It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Wayne. The role was, after all, his idea. It had been written for Marlon Brando, but when Brando found himself conveniently busy with another project, Wayne was all too eager to step in.
The actor was at a point in his career when he could demand whichever role he wanted, and unfortunately, he had his heart set on Genghis.
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