A2-Sunday News, November 16, 1980

A strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

I remember a movie back in 1956 called “The

Conqueror”,

starring John Wayne as Genghis

Kahn and Susan Hayward as an Arab princess of
some kind who spent most of the time riding
around on a horse with her hands tied.

Why that should stick in
my mind, God _ knows.
Maybe, at 15, I had some
kinky thoughts about
equestrian bondage.

Whatever, John Wayne
was our hero at the time. I
wouldn't say that The
Conqueror was my favorite
all-time picture. In fact, The
Duke looked kind of
peculiar with his glued-on

Mongolian moustache,
makeup added to heighten
his cheekbones, and some
trick pulled so his cyes
looked slightly slanty.

Still, he charged around
on horseback with hordes of
Hollywood extras howling in
the background, waving
swords, and when the
cinemascopic dust had

The skeleton rider

settled, us kids had got our
money's worth.

As for Susan Hayward,
well, let’s just say I always
fall in love whenever I see a
lady with her hands tied
riding by on a horse... a rare
sight these days, I might add.

It was therefore spooky to
read, about a year ago, that
The Conqueror might have

. been the very movie to have

caused the deaths

of both Wayne and
Hayward.
Bnitsh newspapers carned

reports that the movie was
shot in Utah, not far from

the Yucca Flats atomic
testing ground, where
hundreds of bombs had been
blasted off the year before.
Waync, Hayward and Dick

Powell, the producer-
director, all later died of
cancer.

The stones were dismissed
with a sneer by the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission,
naturally. But I notice that
People Magazine has
resurrected the story and
adds the claim that at least
46 members of the cast and
crew involved in the
shooting of The Conqueror
have been killed by cancer
Since then.

eee

Atomic fallout was “very
abundant” in the area where
the set was located that year.
In the 1950's, of course, no
one worried about radiation.
At worst, it might turn you
into Superman.

WV students fo tour China

Sentinel Secondary
students in West Vancouver
are planning the first
Canadian student tour of
mainland China for next
year, school principal Doug
Player told West Van School
Board last week.

Player, student council
president Brian Cannon and
Sentinel Advisory Com-
mittee member Scott Ando
were seeking board per-
mission to allow Neworid
Educational Cruises Ltd. to
enter the school and solicit
customers for the tour.

“The students are 100 per
cent in favor of the idea,”
Cannon said. “They can see
the value of witnessing the

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NORTH VANCOUVER
136 East 14th St.
988-0212

development of a third world
country and it will make
certain classes topical.

“It's a true opportunity of
a lifetime and shouldn't be
denied to those students
affluent enough to afford it,”
Cannon added.

The cost of the tour —
slated to last from October
19 to November 9, 1981 — 1s
$2,700 per person.

The tour will visit Hong
Kong and Japan as well as
mainland China.

School board members,
though, felt that Sentinel’s
original proposal to limit the
tour only to dents who
will be in grades nine, 10
and 11 next year was urfair,

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chairman Audrey
Sojonky saad.

She felt “very strongly”
about denying the tour to
any student willing and able
to meet the cost.

“We're willmg to make
that amendment,” Player
said.

Trustee Norman Alban
added that the school board
should make it “very, very
clear” to parents that the
district of West Van is not
responsible “if the children
get stranded in Peking.” an
amendment to which the

board unanimously
Neworld Educational
Cruises Ltd. is an

educational non-profit

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Give A

No Contracts

organization, not a travel
agency, Player said.

Also going “east” are West
Vancouver Secondary
students participating in a
Quebec exchange program,

French teacher Anne
Mulvaney told the board.
Thirty present grade 10

students will visit Quebec
City from February 7 to 14
with major travelling ex-

penses paid by the federal
government.

Reading this, images from
the movie came flashing
back into my mind. Yeh,
there was The Duke, not too
many wrinkles yet, a torn
warrior’s vest, curved sword
waving against the sky,
screaming at his hordes to
follow him as he went
gallopmg pell-meli across
the desert toward some bad
guys...

‘Now that I see it again in
my mind’s eye, I noticed the
background is a bit ceric.
I'm sure it’s the same place
that was used later on to test
the Lunar Landing Module
that went to the moon.

To think now that, as John
Wayne was charging across
the sands, immune to balsa-
wood arrows and cardboard
swords, his cells were being
bombarded by deadly in-
visible radioactive fallout

against which there was no
defence, well, it gives the
movie, The Conqueror, a
poignant dimension of irony
and sadness, doesn’t it?
There he was, so
masculine and unbeatable,
being secretly murdered
before our innocent eyes. If
only we'd known. If only
John Wayne had known.
And poor Susan Hayward,
bound there on her horse...

Less than ten years ago,
The Duke passed the coast
of B.C. on his minesweeper.
At the time, a lot of us
natives were restless about
American nuclear tests at
Amchitka Island. The Duke
told us to mind our own
business. He was all in favor
of his country’s nuclear test
program. Proud of it, in fact.

All I see now, riding that
horse across the desert, is a
skeleton.

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