BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Woodrow Wilson Woolwine "Woody" Strode July 25, 1914 – December 31, 1994 pronounced strowd, as in crowd was a decathlete and football star who went on to become a pioneering African American film actor. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Spartacus in 1960. He served in the US Army during World.
Early life and athletic career
Strode was born in Los Angeles, California. He attended college at UCLA, where he was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. His world-class decathlon capabilities were spearheaded by a 50 ft (15 m) plus shot put (when the world record was 57 ft (17 m)) and a 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) high jump (the world record at time was 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m)). Strode posed for a nude portrait, part of Hubert Stowitts's acclaimed exhibition of athletic portraits shown at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (although the inclusion of black and Jewish athletes caused the Nazis to close the exhibit).
Strode, Kenny Washington and Jackie Robinson starred on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team, in which they made up three of the four backfield players. Along with Ray Bartlett, there were four African-Americans playing for the Bruins, when only a few dozen at all played on other college football teams. They played eventual conference and national champion USC to a 0–0 tie with the 1940 Rose Bowl on the line. It was the first UCLA–USC rivalry football game with national implications.
Strode and fellow UCLA alumnus Kenny Washington were two of the first African-Americans to play in major college programs and later the modern National Football League, playing for the Los Angeles Rams in 1946. No blacks had played in the NFL from 1933 to 1946. UCLA teammate Jackie Robinson would go on to break the color barrier in Major League baseball (in fact, all three had played in the semi-professional Pacific Coast Professional Football League earlier in the decade). He played two seasons with the Calgary Stam peders of the Western Inter provincial Football Union in Canada where he was a member of Calgary's 1948 Grey Cup Championship team before retiring due to injury in 1949.
Professional wrestling career
In 1941, Strode had dabbled for several months in professional wrestling. Following the end of his football career in 1949, he returned to wrestling part-time between acting jobs until 1962, wrestling the likes of Gorgeous George.
In 1952, Strode wrestled almost every week from August 12, 1952–December 10, 1952 in different cities in California. He was billed as the Pacific Coast Heavyweight Wresting Champion and the Pacific Coast Negro Heavyweight Wresting Champion in 1962. He later teamed up with both Bobo Brazil and Bear cat Wright.
Acting career
As an actor, the 6' 4" (1.93 m) Strode was noted for film roles that contrasted with the stereotypes of the time. He is probably best remembered for his brief Golden Globe-nominated role in Spartacus (1960) as the Ethiopian gladiator Draba, in which he fights Kirk Douglas to the death.
Strode made his screen debut in 1941 in Sundown, but became more active in the 1950s, eventually in roles of increasing depth. He played an African warrior in The Lion Hunters in Monogram's Bomba the Jungle Boy series in 1951. Also, he appeared in several episodes of the 1952-54 television series "Ramar of the Jungle", where he portrayed an African warrior. He played dual roles (billed as "Woodrow Strode") in The Ten Commandments (1956) as an Ethiopian king as well as a slave, and in 1959 portrayed the cowardly Private Franklin in Pork Chop Hill. He appeared once on Johnny Weismuller's 1955-1956 syndicated television series Jungle Jim.
He became a close friend of director John Ford, who gave him the title role in Sergeant Rutledge (1960) as a member of the Ninth Cavalry falsely accused of rape and murder; he appeared in smaller roles in Ford's later films Two Rode Together (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Seven Women (1966). Strode was very close to the director. During Ford's declining years, Strode once spent four months sleeping on the director's floor as his caretaker, and he was later present at Ford's death.
Strode played memorable villains opposite three screen Tarzans. In 1958, he appeared as Ramo opposite Gordon Scott in Tarzan's Fight for Life. In 1963, he was cast opposite Jock Mahoney's Tarzan as both the dying leader of an unnamed Asian country and that leader's unsavory brother, Khan, in Tarzan's Three Challenges. In the late 1960s, he appeared in several episodes of the Ron Ely Tarzan television series.
Strode's other television work included a role as the Grand Mogul, in the Batman episodes "Marsha, Queen of Diamonds" and "Marsha's Scheme of Diamonds" Strode appeared in the third season of the Daniel Boone television series as the slave/wrestler Goliath in the episode of the same name.
Strode played a heroic sailor on a sinking ship in the 1960 film The Last Voyage. In 1966, he landed a major starring role in The Professionals, a major box-office success which established him as a recognizable star. Another notable part was as a gunslinger in the opening sequence of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); after this, he appeared in several other
spaghetti Westerns of lesser quality. His starring role as a thinly disguised Patrice Lumumba in Seduto alla sua destra (released in the U.S. as Black Jesus) garnered Strode a great deal of press at the time, but the film is largely forgotten now. He remained a visible character actor throughout the '70s and '80s in such films as Scream (1981), and has become widely regarded (along with Sidney Poitier and Brock Peters) as one of the most important black film actors of his time. His last film was The Quick and the Dead (1995).
Personal life
Strode was the son of a Creek-Blackfoot-black father and a black-Cherokee
mother. His first wife was Princess Luukialuana Kalaeloa (aka Luana Strode), a descendant of Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii. They were married until her death in 1980. In 1982, he wed Tina Tompson, and they remained married until his death. Strode was a dedicated martial artist under the direction of Frank Landers in the art of Seishin Do Kenpo.
Death
Strode died of lung cancer on December 31, 1994, in Glendora, California, aged 80. He is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.
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