Mongol chief Temujin battles against Tartar armies and for the love of the Tartar princess Bortai. Temujin becomes the emperor Genghis Khan.Mongol chief Temujin battles against Tartar armies and for the love of the Tartar princess Bortai. Temujin becomes the emperor Genghis Khan.Mongol chief Temujin battles against Tartar armies and for the love of the Tartar princess Bortai. Temujin becomes the emperor Genghis Khan.
Pedro Armendáriz
- Jamuga
- (as Pedro Armendariz)
Fred Aldrich
- Chieftain #2
- (uncredited)
Phil Arnold
- Honest John
- (uncredited)
Gregg Barton
- Jalair
- (uncredited)
Lane Bradford
- Chieftain #4
- (uncredited)
Larry Chance
- Tartar
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe film is sometimes called "An RKO Radioactive Picture". It was filmed near an active nuclear test site in Utah, where 11 tests had reportedly been carried out in the year before the production landed there. The set was contaminated by nuclear fallout, but the Atomic Energy Commission assured Howard Hughes and the local population that the area was completely safe. Photographs exist of John Wayne holding a Geiger counter that reportedly made so much noise that he thought it was broken. After location shooting, Hughes had tons of contaminated soil transported back to Hollywood in order to match interior shooting done there. Over the next 30 years, 91 of the 220 cast and crew members developed cancer. Forty-six died, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz (who shot himself soon after learning he had terminal cancer), Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt, and director Dick Powell. Lee Van Cleef had throat cancer, but died of a heart attack. The count did not include several hundred local Native Americans who played extras, or relatives of the cast and crew who visited the set, including John Wayne's son Michael Wayne. A "People" article quoted the reaction of a scientist from the Pentagon's Defense Nuclear Agency to the news, "Please, God, don't let us have killed John Wayne". As of June 2011, the article is available in its archive online. It has however been suggested that many of the cast and crew died of cancer as a result of smoking. John Wayne had smoked 3-5 packs of cigarettes a day since the early 1930s, and many of the other actors and crew members were also heavy smokers.
- GoofsWhen Temujin shoots a flaming arrow to signal his troops to enter Urga, it is night, but when the troops see the arrow, it is daylight.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The World According to Smith & Jones: The Middle Ages (1987)
Featured review
One of the all time unintentionally funny movies.
One of the all-time bad movies, an unintentional joke that actually stays funny for over two hours. John Wayne as Genghis Khan is one of the worst examples of miscasting in the history in Hollywood, but that's not what makes the movie so funny. What makes the movie funny is Wayne attempting to say the ridiculous purple prose of the script, the whole thing is written in this sort of pseudo-Shakesperian English, and John Wayne was always one of those rare actors who had serious trouble with anything like a grammatical sentence. Whenever things start to lag Wayne has to say something like "I ree-gret that Ah am without sufficient spittle to sa-lute you as you dee-serve" or the classic "Yore beautiful in yore wrath".
Also memorable for bad supporting performances by Agnes Moorehead and William Conrad, the sight of Wayne in Asiatic eye-makeup and Fu-Manchu moustace (the only biography of Khan I've read says he was white anyway), Susan Hayward doing a clumsy sword dance, a rape scene that would embarrass the tackiest Bodice-ripper, kitschy sets, and a Las Vegas revue act featuring a female dancer in a white leotard with a patch of fringe right *there*.
Also memorable for bad supporting performances by Agnes Moorehead and William Conrad, the sight of Wayne in Asiatic eye-makeup and Fu-Manchu moustace (the only biography of Khan I've read says he was white anyway), Susan Hayward doing a clumsy sword dance, a rape scene that would embarrass the tackiest Bodice-ripper, kitschy sets, and a Las Vegas revue act featuring a female dancer in a white leotard with a patch of fringe right *there*.
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $6,000,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 51 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 2.55 : 1
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