From Marginalised Malcontents to Micronation Monarchs: The Australian Experience

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Local history, Popular Culture, Regional History

Within the world of macropolitics, the realm of large-scale political entities, the urge by some within the whole to secede has always been a recognisable element of those societies. During the last half century Australia as elsewhere has witnessed the emergence of individuals or small groups of people wanting to break away, for varying reasons, and go it alone.

The actions of micronations✻ or “would-be” micronations (sometimes called “model countries”) have been motivated by a host of varying reasons. These include genuine secessionist aspirations, environmental protests, a sense of grievance and financial motives. Quite a few seem to be specifically humorous in intent. Some micronations are just left-field wacky, like Asgardia, a Russian initiative which seeks to launch satellites into space to found a “real nation” recognised by the UN (and therefore, it claims, protect Earth from the threat of asteroids, solar storms and space junk)[1].

▲ The ‘border’ bridge between Vilnius & Užupis

Reactions of the periphery to the metropolitan centre have prompted the rise of quasi-anarchist communities purporting (seriously or less seriously) to be outside the jurisdiction of that same central authority…two such European instances of this are Freetown Christiana in Copenhagen whose advocates proclaimed autonomy over a small district of the city in 1971 and an established open drug trade (tolerated by the Danish authorities until 2004); and Užupis (Užupio Res Publika), a tiny enclave within Vilnius, described perhaps somewhat romantically as a “modern manifestation of a bohemian Free State”[2]. Whereas Freetown strove for a kind of anarchist autonomy, the unrecognised “Republic of Užupis” adopted all the trappings of a sovereign state (flag, currency, politicians, anthem, etc) but uncertainty remains whether the Užupis entity is “intended to be serious, tongue-in-cheek, or a combination of both”[3].

▲ The Prince of Hutt R Province

His Royal Hutt River Highness
One recurring theme of micronationhood including in Australia has been the singular protest against the state (or against the local authority). Leading the way in this (chronologically at least) is Prince Leonard and his self-declared Principality of Hutt River. Leonard Casley was an unremarkable wheat farmer in rural Western Australia in 1970 when a dispute with the state of WA over the wheat production quota set him on a course of (declaring) succession from Australia. ‘Prince’ Leonard adopted royal titles and garb for himself and his family and the Hutt River Principality grew into a tourist attraction. Casley’s failure to comply with his taxation requirements resulted in a Commonwealth prosecution in 1977 which the prince, increasingly behaving like Count Rupert of Mountjoy✪, responded by declaring war on Australia![4].

The Hutt River WA prince, after easing himself into the unfamiliar mantle, like other Micronation ‘monarchs’ enthusiastically set about establishing the tourism potentiality of the novel enclave in the Western Australian bush…HR Province began issuing ‘royal’ stamps, ‘legal'(sic) currency and passports (described by the Council of Europe dismissively as “fantasy passports”)[5]. In 2017 Prince Leonard now a nonagenarian ‘abdicated’ in favour of his son, the altogether less regally sounding ‘Prince’ Graeme.

▲ King Paul with his court (Source: News Ltd)

The principality of the suburban quarter-acre block
Some breakaway entities and would-be sovereign states have arisen from the most trivial of domestic matters, eg, Mosman artist and art school principal Paul Delprat founded the Principality of Wy as a consequence of his local Sydney council’s refusal to grant permission for a residential driveway (a dispute lasting over 20 years!)[6]. Presiding over his ‘kingdom’ which comprised in area one suburban block, ‘King’ Paul, possessed of a theatrical bent and a large supply of whimsy, has warmed to his new status, naturally going the “whole hog” with full regal fancy dress, pomp and ceremony!

Global open borders orchestrated from the NSW South West Slopes
George Cruikshank together with his cousins started up his own micronation whilst still a schoolboy in Sydney. Known as the Empire of Atlantium ‘Emperor George II runs it from Reids Flat¤, 344km inland from Sydney…the 0.76 square kilometre province has its own post office, government buildings, currency, national anthem and monuments (ie, a small white pyramid and obelisk in the micronation’s Lilliputian-sized capital). What marks Atlantium out from other micronations is its espousal of liberal, progressive values – described by the Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations as serious in its aims and “a refreshing antidote to the reactionary self-aggrandisement of so many micronations”…a “secular humanist utopia”[7] George is also a bit atypical as ‘micronationals’ go as his separatist impulse derives not from a specific beef with local authority but from genuine idealism. Emperor George advocates the international freedom of movement and other socially progressive goals. The Empire claims in excess of 3,000 ‘citizens’ hailing from various parts of the globe – all signed up online.

▲ A Great Britain strawberry patch in Sth Australia!

The strawberry fields United Kingdom
One of the more exotic if not outright wacky secessionists in Australia was Alec Brackstone. English migrant Brackstone, alarmed at the prospect (as he saw it) of Australia’s drift toward republicanism, founded the Province of Bumbunga in rural South Australia in the 1970s. The ultra-monarchist, self-appointed governor-general of the breakaway mini-state, planted thousands of strawberry plants in the pattern of a huge scale model of Great Britain (A++ for loyalty/subservience to the Crown!) The Bunbunga Province also issued Cinderella stamps honouring the royals, but the province dissolved in the late 1990s after the “G-G” was charged with possession of illegal firearms and repatriated to the UK[8].

PostScript: Micro-states of mind?
Wy and the self-styled Hutt River and Bumbunga provinces conform with RT Reid’s characterisation of the ethos of contemporary micronations …”mock sovereign states fuelled by local disputes, utopian idealism and the imaginations of a few eccentric individuals”[9]. Ultimately it is that eccentricity, together with their isolation and the fact that they pose no real inconvenience or harm to the greater (macro) political entity✦, explains why they tend to be tolerated (but not encouraged) by the central authority of the state in which they reside.

﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
✻ defined as an entity claiming to be an independent nation or state but not recognised by world governments or major international or supranational organisations, ‘Micronations’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
✪ leader of the fictional minuscule tinpot state of Grand Fenwick which declares war on the USA in the 1959 comedy/satire The Mouse That Roared
¤ Cruickshank’s Atlantium had two prior “spiritual homes” in Sydney, a house in suburban Narwee and a flat in inner city Potts Point
✦ the ‘Principality’ of Seborga in the Italian Riviera is a good case in point: despite a 98.7% vote in favour of independence from Italy in 1995, the tiny town (pop: <400) still pays its civic taxes to Rome

[1] ‘Space oddity: Group claims to have created nation in space’, Science, 12-Oct-2016, www.sciencemag.org
[2] J Crabb, ‘Gabriele D’Annunzio And The Free State of Fiume’, (Culture Trip), 12-Jul-2017, www.theculturetrip.com
[3] ‘The Republic of Užupis’ (Užupis Everywhere), www.uzhupisembassy.eu . Some of the more absurd sounding clauses of the Užupis Constitution evoke a suggestion of whimsical hippiedom, eg, 12. A dog has the right to be a dog.
[4] ‘Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations’, (J Ryan, G Dunford & S Sellars, (2006)
[5] ‘Principality of Hutt River’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[6] ‘Prince of Wy Paul Delprat loses driveway court battle’,
(Simone Roberts), Mosman Daily, 17-Jul-2013
[7] Lonely Planet, op.cit.
[8] ‘Province of Bumbunga’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org. Hutt River, Atlantium and Bumbunga are only three of the estimated 35 Australian micro-nations in existence at one time or other, according to ‘A quick tour of some of the many, many Micronations Australia has to offer’, (Joseph Earp, Mashable Australia, www.mashable.com
[9] RT Reid, ‘Micronations of the World’, Smithsonian, 23-Aug-2009, www.smithsonianmag.com
⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉⑉

Grawlixes/Obscenicons – Unutterable Graphics and the Universal Interjection!

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Literary & Linguistics, Media & Communications, Popular Culture

Grawlixes or Obscenicons

Grawlix: a spiral-shaped graphic used to indicate swearing in comic strips (comprising typographical symbols, non-letter graphic characters which are encased in a word-free balloon)

~ Wiktionary, http://wiktionary.org

Etymology of the Grawlix
The term Grawlix itself comes from veteran American cartoonist Addison Morton Walker. The sprightly nonagenarian better known to the world as Mort Walker has gleaned lifelong fame in the US (and elsewhere where his comics are treasured) from two of his creations, Beetle Bailey and a spin-off of sorts, Hi and Lois. Beetle Bailey is especially beloved of seriously rusted-on US comic aficionados. Beetle, a private (zero-class!) in an unnamed US Army military post, has been described as “a feckless, shirking, perpetual goof-off and straggler known for his chronic laziness and generally insubordinate attitude”. Debuting in September 1950 Beetle Bailey is among the oldest comic strips still being produced by the original creator [‘Beetle Bailey’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Copycat grawlixing!

Walker apparently coined the term ‘grawlix’ around 1964…it appears in a tongue-in-cheek article he penned called “Let’s Get Down to Grawlixes”. A nonsense word, grawlix is the descriptor that Walker came up with to depict a cartoonist’s standard device: to show that one of his or her’s characters was uttering a “four-letter” word or words in the strip without infringing any moral codes, the cartoonist would draw a combination of typographical symbols and insert them in the dialogue balloon in place of the actual profane words. Commonly but not uniformly, the symbols used are @#$%&! or slight variations on this (whichever typographics are used, the grawlix always ends with an exclamation mark [Nordquist]). And as a way of expressing powerful, earthy emotions without having to call in the censors, it caught on within the realm of popular graphic art!”❉

Mort Walker’s catalogue of neologisms
In his Lexicon of Comicana (1980) Walker in his jocular fashion elaborates on his personal vocabulary of neologisms from the world of the cartoonist (with mock grandness he called these his Symbolia)…so in addition to grawlix the Lexicon contains many of Walker’s trademark neologisms, words coined for his own amusement, some with strange-sounding onomatopoeic names – a few of which are listed below.

In addition to grawlix, Walker devised and named three other sets of symbols and squiggles representing graphic euphemisms for the unspeakable and very taboo swear words – Quimps, Jarns and Nittles (basically hard to distinguish from grawlixes but something very similar by another name!) [World Wide Words].

Moving away the topic of obscenities Mort came up with other words to describe some of the graphics representing the range of feelings and emotions experienced by his comic personae – such as squean – squeans are starbursts and little circles above the character’s head to indicate a state of intoxication, dizziness or unwellness¤.

Other logo-inventions in the idiosyncratic Walker Lexicon are variations on the same theme – such as:
Emanate – lines drawn around the head to show shock or surprise
Plewds – flying sweat droplets that appear around a character’s head to indicate working hard, stressed, etc.

An indotherm – as opposed to a wafteron!

Another neologism in Walker’s ‘cartoonucopia’ is Indotherm – wavy, rising lines used to represent steam or heat; when the same shape is used to denote smell, it is called a wafteron.

Before the grawlix was the unnamed ‘grawlix’
Mort Walker gave the world a recognisable name to identify what is today a standard cartoonist’s device for representing profanity in a non-verbal way, but the use of @#$%&! wrapped in a speech bubble far predates modern comic strip practitioners like Walker. Ben Zimmer has researched early US comic strip history to find that the device features in comics goes as far back as 1902 – the work of Rudolph Dirks employed the grawlix in his strip (he just didn’t it that, or anything!). In Dirk”s “Katzenjammer Kids” for the New York Journal… the pioneering cartoonist “initiat(ed) the use of both speech balloons and…symbolic swearing”. This was emulated by a contemporary cartoonist of Dirks, Gene Carr, at about the same time (1903). Zimmer himself eschews the random ‘Grawlix’, preferring the term Obscenicon💢[Zimmer].

Grawlixes and other such graphic devices are the indispensable tools of cartoonists and comic artists looking for a way to economise with words and convey an emotion succinctly. They are non-verbal and thus all about visual cues…they can convey obscenities without recourse to the offending words themselves, or they can summarise an action or reaction instantly with an image that obviates the need for words and a lengthy explanatory sentence.

❆∺❆∺❆∺❆∺❆∺❆ ❆∺❆∺❆∺❆∺❆∺❆ ❆∺❆

Interjections

Interjection: is a part of speech using words solely designed to convey (often strong) emotions (reinforcing meaning or feeling). It conveys the emotion, sentiment or feelings of its speaker [‘What is An Interjection?’, (Your Dictionary), www.grammar.yourdictionary.com].

Another way of characterising the interjection is through its syntactic position. It is “an exclamation inserted into an utterance without grammatical connection to it” [ibid.]. Interjections are the tools of casual or creative communication, they have an informality to them, and in many cases an outright ‘slanginess’ to them (eg, ‘Jeez’, ‘Holy cow!’ (or ‘mackerel’), ‘Fiddlesticks!’, ‘Baloney!’, ‘Bingo!’, ‘Mama-Mia!’).

All contemporary engagers in social media are (over)familiar with exclamations like ‘LOL’ and ‘OMG’ (case optional) or ‘Ha-ha’ which infest the online world of communications like locusts at harvest season⊛. Interjections are exhaustive in number and heterogeneous in nature. They can be used to communicate a broad spectrum of different feelings – from anger and frustration (Argh) to sadness or sentimentality (Aw) to confusion (Huh!) to disgust (Yuck!) to mockery (Whoop-de-doo⊡) to indifference (Meh) to surprise (Wow!) to excitement (Woo-hoo!) to triumph (Yay!) not to be confused with the affirmative ‘Yea!’ [Fleming].

Interjections are usually positioned at the start of the sentence, occasionally at the end (the purpose being to maximise the message’s impact or effect). And like the sound themselves, most interjections can be strengthened by elongating them [Vidarholen] – adding one or more extra w’s to Aw gives weight to the degree of empathy you want to convey to your interlocutor; similarly using more than one Ha-ha is interjector code for turning up the laughter gauge! Putting an exclamation mark after the interjection is not mandatory but is often employed in the spirit of the lack of restraint that characterises this part of speech. After all, interjections are at their core exclamations – the appended ! goes with the territory!(Image credit: www.7esl.com)

PostScript 1: “Onomatopoeic interjections”
Onomatopoeic words or phrases are ones that imitate the sound of a thing or action, splash! is therefore onomatopoeic, it is also an interjection. Interjections represent emotion and can usually be distinguished from onomatopoeia which represents sounds, although there is clearly some overlap between the two. Another point of difference is that an interjection is syntactically isolated, it has no grammatical connection with the rest of the sentence⌽.

PostScript 2: Batman – Holy interjections with graphics!
The cult 1960s television series Batman is a veritable feast of interjections…in just about every episode Boy Wonder Robin, with excruciating monotony, specialises in uttering interjections of the “Holy ……” kind. Robin would pick the opportune moment to breathlessly interject with “Holy Switch-a-Roo”, “Holy Superlatives”, “Holy Cliche” or whatever other topical word pertaining to the “Dynamic Duo’s” particular predicament de jour [Oxford Dictionaries Blog].

The sublimely ridiculous Bat Fight scenes in the TV show are replete with interjections…as Batman and the arch-villains land thunderous blows on each other, corny graphics flash up with words representing the pugilistic action (SOCK! AIMEE! BIFF! WHAMM! KAPOW! THUNK! BANG!). Interestingly Batman’s art department incorporated some comic strip style graphics into the flashing word cards (eg, stars within the word SOCK! signifying the effects of being ‘socked’, ie, dazed, dizzy – akin to a kind of squean? KAPOW! with a bulls-eye target inside the O)

←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←←→→

❉ placed in dialogue boxes above the characters’ heads (Walker calls these “Maledicta balloons”)
¤ a character with both a squean and a spurl (a vertical upward-spiralling coil) above his or her head is more than a little drunk, they’ve had a ‘skinful’ in fact! [Brownlee]
⊛ its unquantifiable definitively, but an empirical survey of the various avenues of social media would confirm an upsurge in interjection usage in everyday communications
💢 Urban Dictionary describes ‘oscenicons’ as “like a emoticon, but for profane words”
⊡ especially mocking someone who is trying to impress
⌽ the Onomatopoeia Dictionary lists a number of words that can represent both forms of expression, eg, wham, phew, shoo, shush, ha-ha, geez

╰☆╮ ╰☆╮ ╰☆╮

References:
J Brownlee, ‘Quimps, Plewds, And Grawlixes: The Secret Language Of Comic Strips’, (Co. Design), 15-Jul-2013, www.fastcodesign.com
Grace Fleming, ‘Interjections’, Thought Co, 23-Apr-2015, www.thoughtco.com
Richard Nordquist, ‘What the @#$%&! Is a Grawlix?’ (Thought Co), 02-May-2017, www.thoughtco.com
B Zimmer, ‘How did @#$%&! come to represent profanity?’, Slate, 09-Oct-2013, www.slate.com
‘Grawlixes’, (World Wide Words), www.worldwidewords.org
The lexicon of comicana’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
‘Dictionary of Interjections’, www.vidarholen.net
‘From “Gadzooks” to “Cowabunga”: some episodes in the life of the interjection’, Oxford Dictionaries, www.blog.oxforddictionaries.com
Onomatopoeia Dictionary A-Z, (Written Sound), www.writtensound.com
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Sydney’s Seaside Amusement Piers of Yesterday – Recreating Brighton Pier on the Pacific Coast

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Popular Culture

The beach and the seaside being such an integral part of Sydney, it is not surprising that amusement piers – following the fashion of Brighton, Blackpool, Hastings and a host of other seaside piers scattered throughout Britain – sprang up and achieved popularity for leisure-seeking Sydneysiders in the early to mid 20th century. I have previously outlined the meteoric but short-lived rise of Tamarama’s Wonderland in an October 2014 blog, ‘A Day-Trippers’ Paradise: The Vogue for Pleasure Grounds in 19th/20th Century Sydney’. In this piece I am focusing on former amusement piers at two of Sydney’s most iconic beach suburbs – Coogee and Manly.

Coogee Pier
Coogee Pier AKA Coogee Pleasure Pier took four years to construct (1924-28) but its operational lifespan was as ephemeral as Wonderland, lasting only a mere six years! (1928-1934) The pier was constructed by a private firm, the Coogee Ocean Pier Company, at a princely sum of £250 thousand…”large crowds gathered to watch the first pile being driven on 24th July 1926. Radio stations 2BL and 2KY made live broadcasts of proceedings”¹.

Coogee Amusement Pier

The Pier on the beach at Coogee, when opened was a spectacular sight, reaching out 180 metres out to sea. Built with the boardwalks of English Coastal towns in mind, the entertainment pier complex was lavishly furnished with a 1,400 seat theatre, a ballroom that could accommodate 600 dedicated foot-shufflers, a 400 seat restaurant, a penny arcade and small shops. Beach-goers flocked to the pier as illustrated in the old photograph at right, helping to establish Coogee’s credentials as a resort town. The pier also incorporated a large, netted safe swimming area for its patrons – the shark net itself, attached at one side to the pier, cost £6,750. The “occasion of the shark net’s official opening was made grander by the additional unveiling of the new Giles’ Ocean Baths and the new surf sheds. The celebration was promoted as ‘Come to Coogee’ Week and attracted a crowd of 135,000 people”².

Unfortunately the amusement pier’s fate was sealed by its precarious location in the open bay, where it was subjected to the physical onslaughts of nature. Damage to the pier by the surf’s repeated thrashings❉ took its toll and the operators eventually decided to pull the plug – in 1934 Coogee Pier was closed and subsequently demolished³.

Manly wharf & fun pier 1950s/1960s

Manly Fun Pier
Manly Fun Pier (MFP) (at one point it was referred to as Manly Amusement Pier and Aquarium) was located in Manly Cove on the wharf that had hitherto been used as a cargo wharf♦. The Pier opened to the public as a “fun parlour” in 1931, eventually adopting as its slogan, Built for Fun in ’31. Establishing itself as a local icon, MFP gradually expanded its rides and features over the years – which included the Octopus ride, the Space-Walk ride, the Mexican Whip, a tumbling house and slide, indoor mini-golf, as well as more traditional features such as a ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, a ghost train, a mirror maze and a train ride. The Pier’s aquarium anticipated the Fun Pier’s debut, kicking off from the year before, 1930⁴. The distinctive feature of the aquarium was its entrance which required visitors to go through a gigantic synthetic shark mouth to get inside!⁵

Later additions to MFP included dodgem cars, scooter-boats, speedboat joy rides, Pierrot shows and a wax museum. Richard Smith rose from being in charge of the speedboats to become manager of the entire amusement pier. MFP continued to be run by Smith’s family until 1971 when a group of concession holders took over its management under the banner “Fun Pier Company”. A sygna storm in 1974 damaged the Pier necessitated repairs by the Company⁶. Manly Fun Pier & Aquarium late 60s/early 70s

By the 1980s MFP was on the wane, small suburban fun piers were passé, and it was of no surprise when the Pier closed in 1989. The old Cargo Wharf was incorporated into an expanded, modernised Manly Passenger Wharf in 1990 and new amusement rides were erected (carousel, Ferris wheel, etc). However this revival was short-lived – locals living on the eastern side of Manly Cove (East Esplanade, Little Manly) didn’t waste much time before they started voicing complaints about the noise and light coming from the new rides at night…within a short time what remained of the Manly wharf amusement park was permanently closed⁷.

Old portico entrance to Giles’ Baths

PostScript: Coogee’s “pay-to-swim” baths
As suggested above, the opening of Coogee Pier in 1928 was something of a double act for Coogee with the simultaneous opening of Giles’ Hot Sea Baths, in a natural rock pool setting off the northern headland of Coogee Beach¤. The baths (AKA “Giles’ Gym and Baths”) were built on the same site as the earlier Lloyd’s Baths. The baths’ proprietor was Oscar E Giles, a masseur who promoted health and fitness through hydrotherapy, electric and hot sea bath treatments, as well as offering a “weight-reduction massage course”⁴.

Coogee Beach’s long tradition of “pay-to-swim” baths extends to the other (southern) side of the beach, two such still operating are Wylie’s and McIver’s. Wylie’s Baths, an ocean tidal pool, was started by Henry Wylie for Olympic swimmers (including his daughter Mina (Wilhelmina Wylie) and pioneering Australian gold medallist Fanny Durack) to train. McIver’s Ladies Baths is the only women only saltwater pool in Australia. The baths have been available only to women and children since the 1880s□. Since 1922 it has been run by the Randwick and Coogee Ladies Amateur Swimming Club.

Manly Marineland – was situated on the Esplanade not far from the amusement pier. The aquarium opened in 1965, underwent a number of name changes before closing at the beginning of 2018.

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫▪▫

░▒⁰ ¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹▒░
ღ__________________________________________ღ

❉ lifeguards at Coogee recently found remnants of the pier on the ocean floor 50m from the shore
¤ known for its distinctive portico entrance… to the 1980s a male only swimming preserve, Giles’ Baths closed down in 1998 but the rock pool is still used by swimmers today willing to brave its turbulent waves
♦ parallel and subordinate to the larger, Passenger Wharf
□ there is some understanding that the southern end of Coogee Beach was sacred to women in traditional aboriginal society

¹ ‘Bicentennial Commemorative Plaque – Site of Coogee Pier & Shark Net’, Monument Australia, www.monumentaustralia.org.au
² ibid
³ Gillian McNally, ‘Sydney’s long lost amusement parks’, Daily Telegraph, 23-Jul-2015
⁴ ‘Manly Fun Pier’, (Parkz – Theme Parks), www.parkz.com.au
⁵ ‘Manly Fun Pier’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
⁶ John Morcombe, ‘Manly had its own fun pier for almost 60 years’, Manly Daily, 26-Jun-2015
⁷ ibid
⁸ ‘Giles Baths’, (Randwick City Council), www.randwick.nsw.gov.au

Cursed Movies II: ’The Conqueror’ Film’s Catastrophic Afterlife

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Cinema, Media & Communications, Popular Culture

The Conqueror (1956) was a doomed film, both cinematically and in terms of its devastating human cost. Its reception critically was abysmal and its performance at the box office was less than mediocre. Reviews for the movie disaster have been consistent in assigning it an unenviable position as one of cinema’s worst ever pictures, one of Hollywood’s greatest “turkeys”¹.

Yahoo!Movies described The Conqueror as “the most toxic movie ever made”…tarnishing the careers of those who appeared in this egregious stinker, especially its star John Wayne, effectively bankrupting RKO Pictures (costing a blown-out $6 million) and contributing to the deaths of an inordinate number of its cast and crew².

John Wayne, faced with the need to fulfil the third and final picture of his contract with RKO, apparently fished the discarded script out of the rubbish bin and convinced the assigned director Dick Powell (who in turn convinced RKO’s owner Howard Hughes) to make the film with Wayne playing the role as Mongol warlord Genghis Khan (a role intended apparently for Marlon Brando). By all accounts Wayne was grossly miscast⋇, interpreting the great Mongol leader as a cowboy (probably an entirely natural notion for the Duke!). The script (by Oscar Millard) was terrible and vacuous as the following inane, awkward samples of the dialogue illustrate:

Temujin: I feel this Tartar wo-man 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 wo-man.
૱…………૱…………૱

Temujin: She is wo-man, Jamuga…MUCH wo-man!

૱…………૱…………૱

Snow Canyon, radioactive movie set

The Conqueror was a patently absurd vehicle by any standard – as an attempt at film art or as a plausible historical reconstruction…but as disastrous as the movie was, it was to have far more serious and far-reaching tragic consequences. Most of the filming took place at Snow Canyon¤ near Saint George in Utah, 130 odd miles from a nuclear test site where the US Government detonated 11 above-ground nuclear explosions in 1953. By the time location filming took place, June-August 1954, winds had shifted the still highly radioactive soil downwind to Snow Canyon. The shooting of the action sequences (in an adventure movie this was most of the film!) necessitated that the performers wallowed in the carcinogenic dust day after day.

The film’s producers (Hughes and Powell) were aware of the proximity of the atomic testing before shooting started but had been assured by the government that the atomic tests posed no risks to public health, a gross deception (self-deception?). Compounding the dilemma, at the end of the location work Hughes ordered that 60 tons of the radioactive reddy-brown dirt from the Snow Canyon site in Utah be carted back to the RKO film set at Culver City for re-takes!

Human Fallout
Consequently, by about 1980 it could be shown that 91 of the 220 individuals who made up the film’s location staff had contracted cancer including its stars Wayne, Susan Haywood, Agnes Moorehead and Pedro Armendáriz (one of Wayne’s sons who had a small part in the movie later also died of cancer). There is no definitive way of proving that the contaminated soil was 100% to blame for the cancer deaths…Wayne had a heavy smoking habit (up to seven packs a day!), as did others in the cast, which could have been a contributing factor to the malignancies⍔. The harmful effects of the area’s radiation however is undeniably part of the explanation for such an aberrant outbreak of disease. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, concluded that the toxic fallout of Saint George was of epidemic proportions, that the toll was about three times what might be expected³. In addition it is well documented that health checks on ordinary residents of Saint George similarly revealed higher incidences of cancer than other comparable areas⁴.

PostScript: Howard Hughes’ own private purgatory
As is well-known, The Conqueror’s Producer Hughes lived as a recluse, (literally) hermetically sealed off from the rest of humanity, for his last years. It is believed that he deeply regretted his decision to go ahead with The Conqueror project. Hughes delayed the film’s theatrical release and attempted to purchase every single print to try to keep it out of the public eye. Part of his penance in his hermit mode of existence, it has been claimed, was to watch and re-watch the disastrous movie every day (along with Ice Station Zebra⁵).

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⋇ Wayne as a 13th century Asiatic warrior was a ludicrous choice, as the casting was overall – only two of the entire performers were of Asian descent. Many of the doomed extras were undisguised Navajo Indians
¤ Howard Hughes thought the rolling red hills would be similar in appearance to the steppes of Mongolia
⍔ although ‘Duke’ Wayne did not die from his lung cancer (which went into remission) but from the subsequent stomach cancer he contracted [Gaggiano, below]

¹ included in H & M Medved & R Dreyfuss’ 1978 The Fifty Worst Films of All Time
² ‘The Conqueror: The story of the most toxic movie in Hollywood history’, (Yahoo!Movies, 09-Nov-2016), www.uk.movies.yahoo.com
³ Pendleton: “…in a group this size you’d expect only 30-some cancers to develop. With 91, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up even in a court of law” – Karen G Jackovich & Mark Sennet, ‘The Children of John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Dick Powell Fear That Fallout Killed Their Parents’, People, originally posted 10-Nov-1980, www.people.com
⁴ Rory Carroll, ‘Hollywood and the downwinders still grapple with nuclear fallout’, The Guardian,, 06-Jun-2015, www.guardian.com
⁵ Greg Caggiano, ‘The Conqueror (1956): The Film That Killed John Wayne … Literally’, Reel to Real, 26-Jul-2010, https://gcaggiano.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/the-conqueror-1956-the-film-that-killed-john-wayne-literally/

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