I Beg Your Parton

Surely one of the most jaw-dropping success stories in entertainment history, today's subject, Miss Dolly Parton, came from the simplest and most humble background imaginable and rose to become one of the most notable, beloved and wealthy singer-songwriters of her day.

Born on January 19th, 1946 in Sevierville, Tennessee, she was the fourth of an eventual TWELVE children born to her parents Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton (Lee obviously being a popular middle name in them there parts! The son, Robert, who came after Dolly had that middle name as well.) The fiscally-strapped family lived completely in a one-room house. The highly imaginative and musically-inclined Parton learned early on that it was going to take something special in order to stand out amidst all of those in her family.

Springing from a strong Pentecostal background (one of her grandfathers was a preacher) and drawing from the many experiences and situations around her, many focusing on the lack of prosperity which led to industriousness in order to make ends meet, she began writing songs in earnest at the early age of seven! She also coerced her siblings and other relatives to serve as her audience as she would emphatically and skillfully perform songs.

Already traveling to town with an uncle to sing on local radio by the age of nine, she was cutting records and even appearing at The Grand Ole Opry by age thirteen! Never having had a lick of vocal training, nor any particular instruction in writing (frankly, considering her surroundings, she was lucky she could read!) her style didn't always sit well with every country music fan, an area tough towards women to begin with. Johnny Cash told her to follow her heart and ignore what others had to say, advice which ultimately led to staggering success for her.

It didn't come swiftly, though. She made the best inroads initially through her song-writing, with ditties co-written with that helpful uncle who was also in the business, for Skeeter Davis and Hank Williams Jr. While in Nashville, doing her laundry at the Wishy-Washy Laundromat, she met the man who would become her husband, the reclusive Carl Dean, who remains her spouse to this day, though he has shunned the limelight from the very beginning of their union. The two wed in 1966. While nothing or no one was going to keep Parton from realizing her dreams in the music industry, he has always worked in his own field of expertise regardless of the avalanche of money that Parton's career has generated. Today, he runs a road-paving company.

In 1967, at age twenty-one, Parton landed a spot on the popular The Porter Wagoner Show, a country-western music program whose star wore flashy, sequined and beaded jackets that rested below a sizeable wave of golden hair. His previous female sidekick, Norma Jean, had departed the show following marriage and had been exceedingly popular with viewers. Parton's earliest days on the series were punctuated by hostility from some audience members and even chants of “Norma Jean... Norma Jean!” as she prepared to perform. Parton had ideas about hair, makeup and clothing that were at tremendous odds with her conservative family's viewpoint. (I do love the simple look she's sporting on the above left cover, though. What cute, short hair! Click to enlarge.) By her own admission, she'd as a young child seen a painted up floozie walking the streets one time, shocking the adult women she was with, and thought to herself that the trollop was just about the greatest thing she'd ever seen in her life! She would progressively adopt bigger, blonder hair and tighter, flashier clothes, the further she went in life.
Wagoner and Parton began recording duets in addition to performing together on the show and found significant success. In time, the vastly different, but arresting and – most importantly – genuine, Parton was accepted by his audience and eventually grew to be quite popular in her own right. For six years, the two released albums of duets, many featuring some now-amusing cover portraiture, which were very popular in the country music field. They were never a couple in the romantic sense, but were closely associated with one another in listeners' minds. Wagoner, with an interest in her career that was also financial, tried early on to launch Parton as a solo act, but could never come up with anything that clicked.
In 1970, she recorded “Mule Skinner Blues” on a lark and it was a hit. Thus, she was able to continue the Wagoner duets while pursuing her solo career. Hits like “Joshua” and “Coat of Many Colors” came in this time period, followed by her first real smash “Jolene,” in 1973. A dichotomy existed that continues to this day in that Parton looked like the most done-up, artificial, superficial lady imaginable and yet possessed the most down-to-earth, sincere, self-effacing personality imaginable, a rarity then and now. She might look like a colossal joke to those judging her only on her mode of hair and dress, but her songs and personality betrayed a heartfelt, thoughtful persona that was infectiously appealing.

Soon, Parton stopped appearing on The Porter Wagoner Show (having stayed two years beyond her initial five-year deal), though they still sang duets up until 1975. The prior year, Parton penned and sang “I Will Always Love You” as a poignant memento of her departure from his program. They had enjoyed a popular and profitable collaboration, but it was clear that she was ready to spread her wings and fly (and look at the big hair on the solo album cover above left!) Unfortunately, Wagoner felt that he had created this songbird (who'd been hatching since she was a preteen!), had her tied up contractually and sued her for a share of her income!

Thus, things got ugly and ended badly, but Parton struck a deal with him rather than become mired down in the courts. She wrote songs and sang, performing in concert, often on the road, in order to raise the money to complete the settlement agreement with him and, in essence, be rid of him. Around this time, she made a fateful decision, too, that would impact her life tremendously later. Her song “I Will Always Love You” had caught the ear of The King, Elvis Presley, and he wanted to record a rendition of it. Thing was, it was his manager Colonel Tom Parker's policy to have any song Elvis recorded become half his from then on! Parton resisted, not an easy thing to do in these early years, because she wanted to own her own material flat out. Decades later, when Whitney Houston sang a reconditioned version of the song in The Bodyguard, also releasing it as a single, Parton made millions of dollars in the bargain.

In the wake of her burgeoning solo success, Parton made a couple of attempts to cross over to the pop charts. In 1976, she went under the management of Sandy Gallin, who's other clients at one time or another included Cher, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Neil Diamond and others. Her first attempt at crossing over was not successful (perhaps hampered by an album title with the word “harvest” in it?!) However, 1977's Here You Come Again was a rip-snorting hit and included “Two Doors Down” in addition to the title track.

From here, there was no looking back, really. She had a popular TV variety show called Dolly!, which she had to give up after one season due to vocal strain. She was interviewed by Barbara Walters at a time when such a thing was an event, not an eventuality. She found herself in demand all over the place, be it TV specials with Cher or Carol Burnett, concert venues or special occasions such as a 1979 tribute to contemporary country music, which was attended by then-President Jimmy Carter.

The next mountain to climb was the film business. In 1980, a script was developed about three put-upon female office workers who have endured the tyranny of their domineering, sexist, uncaring boss for long enough. Through a series of mishaps and ironic circumstances, they wind up keeping him captive in his own home and proceed to take over the running of the office themselves.

The movie, 9 to 5, marked Parton's first foray into movie-acting. Teamed with Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda and esteemed comedienne Lily Tomlin, Parton knew that she would have to be on her game in order to keep up with that company. One thing that helped was that her character, Doralee, was similar in background and look to the curvaceous singer. Another thing that helped her stay above water was that, in her eagerness to be prepared and her lack of knowledge about how movie-making worked, she had memorized the entire script from start to finish, including the lines of her costars!

Parton's character didn't sing in the film, but she was commissioned to write an opening credits theme song that captured the basic essence of the ladies and their life as office workers. While brainstorming over the song (and Parton claims to have written some sort of song – or at least explored an idea for one – almost every day of her life!), she realized that running her acrylic nails back and forth against each other generated a sound similar to that of a typewriter. This gave her the basis for what would become an enormous hit and the title number played over shots of women getting ready for work in the morning, effectively setting up the environment for the movie. The song was nominated for a Best Song Oscar (losing the the equally catchy title track from Fame) and Parton, in her debut role, was nominated for a Best Actress-Musical or Comedy Golden Globe (losing to Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner's Daughter.) A later TV series adaptation starred Parton's younger sister Rachel.

Now considered a screen personality as well as a music industry chart-topper, she signed on for what seemed like a winner: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The property had been a hit musical on Broadway from 1978 to 1982 and was now being turned into a film. Burt Reynolds was cast (how he got anywhere near a musical after 1978's At Long Last Love is anybody's guess! The original release only featured his singing in one duet, though a solo number – written by Parton – later popped up in the television version.) He and Parton (who was cast after original considerations Barbara Mandrell and Crystal Gayle were passed on) made an appealing pair on the poster (which also featured Parton's own appealing pair!)

The filming of Whorehouse was tumultuous and unpleasant. Reynolds had been suffering from physical ailments as well as the recent demise of his relationship with Sally Field and Parton was in agony and distress over some female problems she was having as well. When she innocently remarked to the press that she and Burt would get on well because they “both wear wigs and high heels” it caused friction between the two, though eventually they got on okay, mostly because they were both miserable and could commiserate with each other in the face of endless rewrites and a generally unhappy set. Parton rerecorded “I Will Always Love You” for the film, leading some people to think that she wrote the song at that time as a valentine to Reynolds, which is certainly wasn't.

A film with a title like that was a major-league hard sell in 1982, especially to parts of the country similar to where Parton was from, and the title was sometimes changed, obscured or bleeped in advertising. Nevertheless, it was considered a hit and Parton came out of the experience unscathed in the critics' and audiences' eyes. Thing was, the process of making the film, itself, led her to question her desire to pursue acting in movies.

In 1983, she teamed up with Kenny Rogers to record the explosive hit “Islands in the Stream,” a number written by Barry Gibb and worked into a duet for the two country superstars. The song showed off their remarkable chemistry together and won them multiple awards. They would pair again two years later for a Christmas special (Once Upon a Christmas) and tie-in album as well as one more duet, “Real Love,” in 1985.

In 1984, Dolly entered the world of movies once more when she signed on for Rhinestone. The story was about a country singer locked into an unwanted performing contract who bets her boss (played by Ron Leibman) that she can turn anyone of his choosing into a real live country singer in two weeks in order to be freed (if she loses, she has to go to bed with him!) It all might have looked good on paper, but the result was something of a disaster.

To play the poor schlub, a New York taxi driver, who is earmarked for transformation, the producers hired that master of song, Sylvester Stallone. (Granted, the man isn't supposed to be a singer, but one likes to hope that there's a pot of gold at the end of the movie's rainbow and with mumbling, curled-lipped Stallone in the role, there's no chance!) Stallone allegedly turned down both Romancing the Stone and Beverly Hills Cop in order to take this part (and then rewrote it to suit him to the point where the screenwriter nearly took his name off the project, something he probably should have done!)

The movie underperformed at the box office, failing to make back all of its budget, and was nominated for eight Razzie Awards, “winning” two! Miraculously, considering the wave of disdain for the film, Parton escaped being nominated for her own acting performance, though two of her songs were. She and Stallone had gotten along well during filming. He even cited her as his favorite female costar to work with to date (though he'd really only worked with a handful of them by that time.) At least the soundtrack album yielded Parton two top ten country singles. In this way, she's been similar to Olivia Newton-John in that audiences might be fickle about what they wish to see her in, but even when they avoided certain movies, they still usually liked the music.

In what would be a recurrent theme in her life, she had new lands to conquer anyway. In 1986, Miss Parton purchased Silver Dollar City Tennessee, a theme park that had existed since 1961 under several names and incarnations near her birthplace in the Great Smokey Mountains. She re-christened the park Dollywood and set about making the place a larger, more appealing, more successful venture. Her goal with the attraction was to generate jobs in her part of the country and she achieved that in spades, adding more and more to the park with each passing year, such as rides and performance venues. Next spring, Dollywood will see its most expensive investment yet with the addition of Wild Eagle, a $20 million-dollar steel roller coaster.

This physical return to her roots continued in her music. In 1987, she collaborated with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris on a project called Trio. The album put forth several harmonic hits for the ladies and won them a Grammy as Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. (They regrouped in 1999 for a follow-up album, Trio II. Parton would also team with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette in 1993 with Honky-Tonk Angels.) Also in 1987, she made a second attempt at a TV variety show with Dolly, a highly-touted and expensive project that started strong, mostly due to curiosity and heavy promotion, but soon began a ratings decline that it never recovered from. It lasted only 23 episodes despite many format changes, much hard work from its star and a wealth of guests stars, some of which were pals of Parton and some of which were foisted on her by the network. She cried all the way to the bank thanks to a reported $44 million-dollar two-year contract. My own belief is that people didn't cotton to a newly svelte, scrawny actually, Parton at a time when such a thing wasn't as “in” as it is now. She had recently discovered an eating plan that worked for her: several tiny meals a day of whatever she wanted, but no big plates and no gorging. Her styling was also scaled down to include less flash and bric-a-brac and more solid colors and black.

1989 brought what would become a memorable role for her, that of Truvy, the sassy, but caring, beauty salon owner in Steel Magnolias. A powerhouse cast was assembled for this film adaptation of Robert Harling's play. Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympis Dukakis, Darryl Hannah and a relative newcomer named Julia Roberts were the primary stars of the film. Unlike the stage play, men were also present here in the form of Tom Skerritt, Dylan McDermott and Sam Shepard (who played Dolly's down-on-his-luck husband.) One unusual aspect of this movie was the prolific use of publicity photos, even including the film's poster, that depicted the ladies as they looked in real life rather than the clothing and hairstyle-altered way they actually appeared in the film!

The story primarily concerned Roberts' bout with diabetes and the hubbub of her impending wedding followed by the fallout of her deciding to have a child in spite of doctors' recommendations. The six featured ladies laugh, cry and chit-chat in snappy homespun dialogue that has since become, for whatever reason, the object of many a gay man's worship. (“Honey, time marches on and eventually you realize it is marchin' across your face,” “All gay men have track lightin'. And all gay men are named Mark, Rick, or Steve,” and “When it comes to pain and suffering, she's right up there with Elizabeth Taylor,” to quote a few. You've all heard them!)

Unfortunately for Parton, filming Magnolias was not a very pleasant experience. The director Herbert Ross, who had previously done The Turning Point, The Goodbye Girl and Footloose (as well as foisting Goodbye, Mr. Chips – the musical - and Funny Lady onto viewers) looked her right in the face near the start of filming and told her that she was “no actress.” She informed him that she was well aware of that, but that it was his job to make her look like one! He also made life hell for Roberts because he had wanted Meg Ryan for the role instead. Dolly and Julia turned to each other for support during the dicey shoot. (Roberts was vindicated when she won a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress and proceeded to earn the film's sole Oscar nomination, losing to Brenda Fricker in My Left Foot.)

Parton had, at times, dark blonde hair in Magnolias, about the darkest it had been seen in decades, which was, perhaps, part of a concerted effort to tone her character down, though there was no reason to even try. The character was written to be tacky in hair and dress. Actually, she took what easily could have become merely a string of one-liners and injected real heart into it. One of my own favorite moments of hers in the movie is not from the original play. It's when her downtrodden husband, who has hardly given her the time of day throughout the story, picks up a stick with hot wax on it and asks her what it is. She tearfully states, “It makes you pretty,” which adds a whole new dimension to Truvy: that she has painted, polished and poofed herself up for years in order to try to look attractive to her man and the whole matter has barely registered with him at all. Fortunately, in a happy, but contrived, final move, he surprises her with a second salon and they appear to have reached a more promising place.

At the premiere of Steel Magnolias, Parton showed up in what might be the all-time most eye-popping get-up when it comes to boobage. He famous chest was just downright obnoxious this night! Like everything else, however, she's always managed to laugh at herself and at them. Once, she said, “I don't know if I'm supporting them or if they're supporting me” and another time, “I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out!”

Parton continued what had become an unintentional trend of pairing herself with unlikely male costars when she made 1991's Straight Talk opposite James Woods. In it, she played a country-fried gal who stumbles into the job of a Chicago radio advice show hostess, advertised as Dr. Shirlee. Woods plays a reporter determined to look into her background and reveal her lack of credentials, but who becomes captivated by her himself in the meantime.

Straight Talk was not much of a hit, coming and going from theaters rather swiftly, though, once again, her own contributions were mostly heralded. The endlessly creative, busy bee Parton found that working as the star in a movie was, to her, a most tiresome and unpleasant process with all the production hassles, waiting, interpersonal issues and so on. She got on well with Woods, but the tedium was ultimately too much for her and this would be her final feature film as the leading character. She would primarily do cameo roles or voice work from here on out with regards to the movies.

In 1993, her album Slow Dancing With the Moon featured a variety of guest artists, one of whom was Billy Ray Cyrus of prior “Achy Breaky Heart” fame. He provided vocals on her song “Romeo” and was featured in the video as well. Coming from similar backgrounds (his father was a Pentecostal preacher), they had been friends prior to this and Parton was even the godmother to his daughter Miley, born in 1992 (how's that for some trivia?!) In the years to follow, Parton made several appearances on young Miley Cyrus' Disney Channel series Hannah Montana as the character's “Aunt Dolly.” (And that is all I will probably ever write on this site about Miley Cyrus!) Incidentally, I did once see Billy Ray's infamous mullet in person. He was at a CD signing held in an outlying department store in southern Ohio in the mid-'90s and as I was shopping, I saw a swarm of tacky people forming a mob. Through the cracks of space in between their heads, I was able to spot the back of his head; the long, wavy locks cascading down towards his belt as the rabble yelped and waved their arms. This testament to trashiness went over splendidly in the region I happened to be living in at the time.

In 2006, Parton scored one more Oscar nomination for her song from Transamerica, “Travelin' Thru.” It lost to that American Songbook standard, “It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from Hustle & Flow... Over the years, Parton has done much to help support her alternative lifestyle fans, from co-producing the Oscar-winning documentary feature Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt to lending her talent to the aforementioned gender-switching film Transamerica to supporting various HIV/AIDS charities. (She has occasionally referred to herself as a female drag queen!) There has been speculation about her own sexuality, especially when confronted with her closest female friend, an ex-soldier named Judy who has, at times, lived with her and who by Parton's own admission has jogged naked with her through the woods at night (can you even imagine?!) Just as Parton rarely reveals very much about her marriage or her alleged straight dalliances over the years, she has never officially outed her friend, coyly working around that issue in her autobiography.

I like this quote of hers: “All these fine Christian-type people that seem to think they know what God wants for all of us, that's certainly more of a sin then anything they would claim about us. To judge people is one of the greatest sins.” Yet, she also takes pains to stay out of politics directly, feeling that affiliation with a particular party interferes with her ability to speak her mind as she sees fit and to do things the same straightforward way she always has. She has been given not only a Kennedy Center Honor, but also The National Medal of Arts, our country's highest honor in that field, among many other accolades.

What I admire most about her is her literacy program, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which instigates a desire in children to read. With this program, every registered child receives a free, age-appropriate book every month until he or she is five years of age, resulting in roughly a 60-book library by the time kindergarten comes. This began in Sevier County, but now extends to 36 U.S. states and even parts of Canada and England. More than 2.5 million books are distributed annually at no charge to the recipients. This has earned her a special place in the hearts of some teachers, librarians and parents as well as a place of honor in The Underworld.

At age sixty-five as of this writing, Miss Parton never stops. She doesn't want to! She wrote a raft of songs for a stage musical version of 9 to 5, which ran on Broadway. There's always a new tune, a new look, a new challenge. Her goal is to keep at it until she just falls over, having never stopped doing what she loves. She's always been candid about the plastic surgery she has embraced (sometimes to a rather extreme degree. Once, she said, “If I have one more face-lift, I'll have a beard.”) and some of her looks over the years haven't been as successful as others (this one here scares me!), but she has perfected the ability to continually refresh and reinvent herself.

Once in an old TV interview (it was either with Barbara Walters or, most likely, a 60 Minutes profile) she outlined the way she had once set out with a plan to become a millionaire within five years. Of course, she achieved it. She's rarely been thwarted at achieving her goals. On yet another personal note, I remember my own father being awe struck by her determination in that interview and he decided to do the same thing. He, too, became a millionaire within five years. (Don't panic that I'm some rich kid toying with the Internet for kicks! I no longer see him and haven't for close to a decade and do not share in the wealth! You see, he lost – or never had – one other component that Parton possessed and that is a generosity of spirit. He was inspired by her money, but not by the joy, fun and humanity that she has always paired with it.)

So, here's to Dolly Parton, one of the most unique and most uniquely successful women ever to hit show business!

Hell, "The Conquer"-ing Hero Comes...

In 1991, when Kevin Costner took on the unlikely title role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, critics and some viewers sniffed at his inappropriateness and complete lack of an accent, his flat, American, drone-like voice standing out atrociously against his British costars' more refined inflections. (Somehow, his American costar Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio mostly managed to escape the same fate.) He was hardly the first actor to stand out in such a way and I daresay he won't be the last. At least the film was a significant success, in any event. One of the previous instances of similar dire miscasting came three and a half decades earlier when western icon John Wayne wound up starring as Genghis Khan in 1956's The Conqueror. This Howard Hughes-produced spectacle (actually filmed in 1954) became an instant monument to miscasting and has gained legendary status as an example of wrongheadedness in not only casting, but in scripting as well. Sadly, it also gained fame for its deadly postscript involving a large number of the cast and crew involved in its making.
The story goes that Mr. Wayne, who had one remaining film commitment on an RKO contract, was sitting in actor-turned-director Dick Powell's office one day when Powell had to excuse himself for a while. When he returned, Wayne was reading a script that had been earmarked for disposal, a 12th century epic, written with Marlon Brando in mind, all about the early days of Mongol warrior Genghis Khan and how he united a variety of smaller tribes into a map-changing, powerful unit. Powell knew instantaneously that Wayne was all wrong for the part, but felt that he couldn't say no to The Duke.

Producer Howard Hughes, the air industry millionaire who played around in Hollywood for a time through his purchase of RKO, spared few expenses in mounting the production, believing that box office giant Wayne, along with color Cinemascope photography, location shooting and a supporting cast of solid performers could only result in success. Unfortunately, he underestimated just how ill at ease Wayne would seem when mouthing the preposterous lines of dialogue found in the script.

The film begins with rousing Victor Young music and shots from later moments in the film only to settle on a caravan of travelers. Leslie Bradley plays a tribal chieftain cutting through Wayne's land in order to escort his bride-to-be Susan Hayward, a Tartar princess, back to his homestead as soon as possible. Hayward, as anyone would when crossing desert terrain, lounges comfortably in a shaded wagon, situated on colorful pillows and assorted covers while wearing a flimsy, white, diaphanous gown. Maintaining her trademark bouffant hair - albeit with a long fall attached, her sole concession to looking the part was the upward shaping of her eyebrows.

Wayne and his blood-brother Pedro Armendariz come charging in to question Bradley about his presence. A blindfolded falcon rests on Wayne's right forearm (and for the life of me, I swear that there are moments when it is replaced with a dead, stuffed bird.) One glimpse of the curvaceous Hayward is all Wayne needs in order to proclaim his affection for her. I don't think I'm incorrect in assuming that there's something symbolic about him staring Hayward down intensely while simultaneously rubbing and stroking on his bird! (The falcon is never seen again after this stage of the film either.) He decides to humiliate Bradley and capture Hayward for his own. In just one example of the hooty dialogue this movie is filled with, he explains, “I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, take her. There are moments for wisdom and moments when I listen to my blood; my blood says, take this Tartar woman.”

You can just imagine Wayne, who offers less than a scintilla of any attempt at an accent, mouthing this sort of language in the same drawling, halting way that he performed in countless westerns and war epics. His voice in this movie is strangely tinny and higher-pitched than most people might remember, somehow making the words sound even sillier and more anachronistic. If you ever saw his notorious one-line cameo in The Greatest Story Ever Told, in which he played a Roman centurion present at Jesus' crucifixion (during which he exclaimed, “Truly, this man was the son of God”), and marveled at its inappropriate awfulness, then you know what this entire movie is like. He decided early on, and misguidedly, to play his role as a cowboy who happens to be Asian (or “Oriental” as was used back then.)
Anyway, back to the plot. Wayne's family in the film (apart from Armendariz, who is repeatedly referred to as his “blood-brother,” so we must assume they are not siblings in the purest form of the word) consists of his (not so) little brother William Conrad and his rather embittered mother Agnes Moorehead. (In real life, Ms. Moorehead was less than seven years Wayne's senior! They started 'em out early in those Mongol conqueror days...) Girthy Conrad is shown shirtless, bending an iron bar against his back in a show of strength. Moorehead chatters on about how she disapproves of Wayne's choice of bride while wearing what another online reviewer called “an abacus” on her head! Future western star Lee Van Cleef also appears as one of Wayne's chief warriors, outfitted with what seems to be an upturned, decorated flower pot on his noggin! Almost all of the beefcake in this movie is on the husky, burly side, with Van Cleef being the leanest and fittest in sight. (In fact, he looks quite tiny from the side, as shown here on the right... with his flower pot.)

After defeating Bradley and his men, Wayne comes up to a spunky and indignant Hayward, still in her cart and tears her dress off completely in one fell swoop. (Hayward, apparently not wishing to go commando in front of Wayne, Bradley and a passel of extras recruited from the nearby Indian reservation, is clearly still wearing something strapless in front. Shame on the editor for not handling this better!) He then throws the stripped-off gown on to Bradley telling him to get back to his people and inform them of what has happened as Hayward darts under a nearby throw to cover herself. Back at Wayne's encampment, he delivers another howler of a line that has taken on special significance in these more recent times when he instructs Armendariz to see to “the sharing of the booty” while staring at Hayward. Armendariz even chimes in, while indicating Hayward, “All of it?”
Hayward makes it clear that she will never acquiesce to Wayne to which he replies, “You're beautiful in your wrath.” With her still demonstrating reluctance, he gives her a good whallop across the face! She then, sensing discord between the men and knowing that that both find her irresistible, tries to pit Armendariz against Wayne by offering herself up to him in exchange for means of escape. He will have none of it, tempting as it is and has his own turn at roughing her up (see above.) She was supposed to have a scene involving a black panther (a tiny snippet of which still remains) in which she kicked it in the rear, but there were many issues. The panther was so ill-tempered that it went to maul her, then it was replaced with a puma painted black, but the beast kept licking all of the paint off itself!
Part of Wayne's plan for regional domination includes pairing up with wealthy, obese Khan Thomas Gomez. This meeting affords us the chance to enjoy one of those loony, 1950s palace dances in which the audience sits on thrones or cushions, drinking and nibbling on various delicacies, while waves of brightly-hued dancing girls come out onto the floor to do their thing. This is possibly the most colorful part of the movie as fuchsia, aquamarine and pale green swathed ladies come out to swirl and twirl themselves around, to the delight of Gomez and Wayne. Solo dancer Sylvia Lewis, wearing a skintight, fringed get-up that can't possibly have anything at all to do with 12th century Mongolia and carried in by four hunks in brown tights, gives it her all, while the men's adoration of her talent starts Hayward on a slow boil.

Feeling a brewing mixture of fury, resentment, insult and jealousy, Hayward finally throws down her cloak and decides to perform a dance of her own. She not only wants to prove that she's every bit the sultry siren as what has performed before her, but she also wants to take the opportunity to slay her captor/husband Wayne. So onto the floor she goes, writhing and undulating to music she has never heard before until she climactically picks up two swords, one which is discarded before long and the other which she phallically plays about with until it's time to plunge it toward Wayne. You can't tell in this black and white publicity photo, but the scarf she's wielding is a fiery red. Hayward underwent six weeks of Terpsichorean training in order to perform this number.

This has been noted in various sources as Hayward's dancing debut in the movies, though that isn't the case at all. She played tragic vocalist Jane Froman in With a Song in My Heart in 1952 and danced a lavish number with a tuxedo-clad partner. In fact, she (unintentionally) showed more skin in that routine than she did in her “steamy” number here, thanks to the fact that her body stretched up to embrace her partner, but her stiff dress bodice decided to stay where it was, causing a brief glimpse of her right breast that went virtually undetected in the film for years! High-definition video brings the situation, er, out into the open now...

Anyway, in time, Hayward escapes back to her people and Wayne is captured and put into bondage. Strapped to a massive yoke of timber, he continues to defy his captors. Hayward's father lets out this gem, “Joint by joint from the toe and fingertip upward shall you be cut to pieces, and each carrion piece, hour by hour and day by day, shall be cast to the dogs before your very eyes until they too shall be plucked out as morsels for the vultures.” He is summarily treated like a dog, chained out in the back until for some reason Hayward decides that she actually cares for him after all.
She, with the help of her handmaid Jeanne Gerson, arranges for him to escape from the camp. Once free and clear of the enemy, he reunites with his family and they make plans to attack. Reigning Khan Gomez, however, has a traitor in his midst, a seer who wants him dead and replaced by Wayne as the new Khan. The seer (John Hoyt) comes to Wayne and cunningly convinces him to lay siege to Gomez's palace. Hoyt (on the right above), by the way, an actor with crystalline blue orbs, offers up his rendition of how to play Asian by scarcely opening his eyes throughout the film, peering through slits while barely moving his features. Clocking in on my television too late to make the cut for my recent post on movie stars and their bathtubs, we are also “treated” to the site of hefty Gomez wallowing around in a sumptuous bubble bath complete with milky blue water!

The scene is brief, but soon he's emerging into the waiting arms of two fleshy, virtually topless manservants (who seem to have noticeable difficulty keeping a straight face!) They are given the not inconsiderable task of swathing Gomez in a cumbersome kimono and then retiring to the sidelines to either guard the door or fan him with a large feathered stick. Then a flock of ladies comes in to pamper and perfume the rotund Khan. Basically, any scene involving Gomez is an opportunity to find camp in the film.

When Armendariz is captured by Hayward's hatchet-faced (literally, take a closer look!) father de Corsia, he is put through every conceivable torture known to them (including, natch, Chinese water torture) for several days until he, too, is aided by Hayward, whose loyaties have slowly shifted away from her own people to Wayne and his. By the way, get a load of the hooty, mop-like hat on the extra to the right of Susan in this shot.

The whole thing becomes messy with Wayne suddenly appointed Khan, but having lost the trust of blood-brother Armendariz, yet finally aligned with Hayward. (In actuality, Khan and his bride had been married as youths in an arranged union.) Near the finale, Armendariz has what seems to be a bizarre request yet appears to have a basis in historical fact. The story comes to a close as Wayne is about to embark on his quest to rule most of the known world. According to the narrator, the children of his and Hayward's loins would rule half the known world for a century. A simply staggering shot of a serpentine caravan of men and wagons sojourning through the desert signals the end. It's a happy ending only if you weren't one of the reported forty-million people who were slaughtered in the Mongol campaigns! Posters for the film (many of which either reduce or eliminate his Fu Manchu-style mustache and substitute his regular hair for the moppet-style wig he sports here) emphasized the dramatic and passionate qualities of the story and visuals that only come across so-so in the finished product. Lord knows the truth of the actual times was far more vicious than anything even hinted at on screen. Some of the methods of killing documented from this time include being boiled alive, the mass murder of villages (everyone taller than the axle of a cart wheel), being crushed under a heavy wooden platform, having molten silver poured into one's ears and eyes and even trophy-like pyramids being made from the heads of massacred villagers! Taking this into consideration, one wonders why anyone would attempt to fashion a heroic story out of the figure of Genghis Khan in the first place!

This was the last movie that Howard Hughes ever produced. Jet Pilot (also starring Wayne) was released after it, but had been made previously. Ironically, though is wasn't much of a hit in the U.S., it was a success in foreign markets (likely because Wayne was dubbed into whichever language, thus eliminating the movie's chief flaw.) In later years, the reclusive and increasingly obsessive Hughes bought up every print of the $6 million movie at a cost of $12 million in order to prevent it from being seen! It was out of circulation entirely until about 1974, by which time Hughes was near death, rarely making any of his own decisions and reportedly watching The Conqueror over and over and over (when he wasn't screening Ice Station Zebra, his favorite movie!)

One reason Hughes bought back the film was a sense of guilt due to the fact that he'd sent the cast and crew to a Utah desert location that was dangerously close to the site of some recent nuclear testing. In the years following the filming, more and more people involved in it began to develop cancer, at a rate far more significant than would be statistically likely. In addition to having his people baking and rolling around in the infected sand for all those weeks, he also had 60 tons of the stuff brought back to Hollywood in order to ensure that the landscape of the scenes shot indoors would match up properly. Of course, Hughes had no way of knowing this and had even been assured by the U.S. government that there was no danger. Still, it was tough for him to live with the results of his innocent actions. This is one dusty, dusty movie and it's kind of gut-wrenching to watch it now and see how all that sand was constantly kicked up and distributed onto everything and everyone.

Powell, who had managed to develop from a boy singer and cinematic leading man into a highly successful television producer and director, had been married to June Allyson since 1945 (perhaps possessing an aversion to the word Dick, she unceasingly referred to him as "Richard" at all times.) In the years after 1956's The Conqueror, he worked on Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater and The Dick Powell Show, both successful anthologies. In January of 1963, however, he died of lymphoma at the age of fifty-eight.

Mexican-born Armendariz (seen below right with Russian-born Gerson) had worked with Wayne before on Fort Apache and 3 Godfathers (both 1948) and with Hayward in Tulsa (1949.) He came down with kidney cancer in 1960. In 1963, while filming From Russia with Love, he developed severe pains in his hips, bad enough to prevent him from completing all his scenes, after which his condition was deemed terminal. Rather than suffer any more or continue to live while under oppressively heavy pain medication, he shot himself in the heart on June 18th of that year. He was fifty-one. (Incidentally, his son, actor Pedro Armendariz Jr, went on to work with Wayne himself in 1969's The Undefeated and 1970's Chisum.)

Moorehead (who is profiled more extensively elsewhere at this site) would go on to make many more film appearances until her TV role of Endora on Bewitched endeared her to legions of viewers. That series ended (after eight seasons) in 1972 and by 1974 she was felled by uterine cancer that had spread to her lungs. Legend has it that, upon her deathbed she looked at her longtime friend Debbie Reynolds and said, “I never should have taken that part.” In retrospect, it was a rotten part and a foolish one and certainly not one worth risking one's life over, though neither she nor anybody else ever had an inkling about that.
Hayward had worked in two prior films with Wayne herself, Reap the Wild Wind in 1942 and The Fighting Seabees in 1944. She'd been nominated for Oscars for 1947's Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman, 1949's My Foolish Heart, 1952's With a Song in My Heart and 1955's I'll Cry Tomorrow. Her drive to win the statuette led her to take on more and more daring and showy parts until her film I Want to Live! in 1958 finally resulted in a win. By then, her peers were calling the movie, “I Want an Oscar!” She's legendary, of course, for her 1967 turn as fire-breathing Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls. In 1972, she was diagnosed with brain cancer and was forced to retire after The Revengers. The scrappy fighter pulled herself together as well as she could to made a final public appearance at the 1974 Oscars, on the arm of former costar Charlton Heston, but was dead on March 14th, 1975 at the age of fifty-seven.

Wayne was, by 1956, one of Hollywood most successful and iconic stars. In 1954, he had produced and starred in the big hit The High and the Mighty, following it up the next year with the less amazing The Sea Chase with Lana Turner (in which he was playing another atypical role, a German naval officer, again with no accent) and Blood Alley with Lauren Bacall. His dreadful performance in The Conqueror happened to come in the same year as one of his best in The Searchers. (It's entirely possible, in fact, that the specter of his ghastly Gengis Khan portrayal prevented him from winning an Academy Award nomination for the latter movie!) Believe it or not, considering that he's not exactly skinny in this, he went on a crash diet for the role and was popping diet pills like Tic Tacs throughout the filming.

Unlike a lot of contemporary movie fans, I “get” The Duke and his screen persona and often enjoy his movies (probably due to having had a stepfather who practically lived on reruns of them while I was growing up.) Leaving politics aside, I admire the type of forthright people he usually played and also typically enjoy the caliber of talent he tended to work for and with, so I generally enjoy his films. This one, though, is an exception.

Within the small range of talent that he had, he could be quite masterful. One-time costar Miss Joan Crawford probably said it best when she stated, “Get John out of the saddle and you've got trouble” (though he was also strong in war movies.) He did have a saddle in this, but he's just so wrong for the role, with that cowboy swagger and his patented method of speaking clanking up against the ungainly dialogue!

In 1964, Wayne had one entire lung removed due to cancer, but continued to work. He had been declared “cancer free” by about 1969, but in the late '70s, he developed cancer of the stomach and it claimed him on June 11th, 1979. He was seventy-two. Thus, the director and four of the primary stars died of cancer. That wasn't the end, though. It turned out that of the 220 cast and crew members associated with the film, about 45% of them (no fewer than 91 people) developed cancer, a rate that defies the normal ratio for a group of people. It has been suggested that the diseases and deaths have more to do with smoking than the radiation present at the movie site, but the fact remains that quite a few people became very ill in the wake of filming this movie. (More than a few get a little nauseous watching it!) Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991, but was eighty-five and Gerson died the year after of cancer, but was eighty-seven. Others died in other ways, such as Gomez, who perished after a serious car accident, or Ted de Corsia, Leo Gordon and Van Cleef, who died from heart attacks.

On a brighter note, the solo dancer Lewis is still alive today at age eighty, though as strictly a performer on the palace set, absent of any sand, she was not exposed to this controversial soil in the way others had been. Likewise, Patricia Tiernan, who played the virtually invisible role of Gomez's wife, is also still with us at almost eighty-one. Conrad, who could hardly be described as a “healthy liver” considering his weight, also managed to avoid the “curse” and lived to be seventy-three. He was the star of two successful crime dramas, Cannon and Jake and the Fatman (with Cannon demonstrating a sometimes startling amount of physical exertion and prowess.) He died in 1994 of congestive heart failure.

The Conqueror eventually found its way onto bad movie lists rather prominently. It made the cut in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time by Harry Medved, where it was listed alphabetically, and onto the Top Ten list of worst films ever in The Book of Lists. Naturally, there have been many, many successors to these dubious titles since then. Even though the movie is fairly rotten at times, almost any current multiplex today would be showing movies every bit as bad or worse, so sorry is the state of mainstream cinema at present. At least it offers striking scenery captured in widescreen cinematography, elaborate costumes, mammoth, skillfully-coordinated battle scenes with real men (each one elaborately costumed accordingly) and real horses (mistreated as they were, the poor things) and gorgeous music. It was a solidly-crafted movie that happened to have at least one completely inappropriate actor starring in it. That's something that even Howard Hughes and all his millions couldn't conquer.