A couple of weeks ago Ken Jennings mentioned in passing that John Wayne may have contracted the cancer that eventually killed him while filming The Conqueror in 1956. Which I’d never heard before. Although maybe that’s not surprising; with the exception of The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, I don’t think I’ve seen any of Wayne’s movies. The Conqueror, in which the Duke played Genghis Khan, doesn’t appear to be one of his better films (which may be putting it mildly), and so it got me thinking.

I know that Marty Feldman died while on location for Yellowbeard, which I can assure you is a dreadful movie, and John Candy died while filming Wagons East, which evidence suggests isn’t too much better. There are apparently lots of other examples — although also lots of rumor and false examples — but Feldman, Candy, and Wayne are the most interesting to me, because they were such ignoble deaths for such iconic stars. It’s arguable that Candy could have died anywhere, that his death was the result of long-standing health problems. But Feldman — and Wayne, too, if the story of The Conqueror is accurate — died as a direct result of filming movies that didn’t at least have the decency to be any good.