The movie was filmed near a nuclear weapons testing site in the Utah desert, and even though the government said it would be safe, the cast and crew was still exposed to radiation. It also didn’t help that 60 tons of dirt from the location were later shipped to Hollywood for re-shoots.
There were about 220 cast and crew members on location. Nearly half of them developed some type of cancer within the next two decades, and 46 died from the disease, including John Wayne: “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 would hold up even in a court of law.”
—Danielle Kilburn, Facebook