Woody Strode A Colossal And Dignified Presence On Fields And Screens For 50 Years

Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode, more commonly known as Woody Strode was built like an elite level athlete, at least in part, because he was one. He was a fine enough decathlete that, in 1936, he was in Olympic contention. Among his personal records: 50’ shot-put, 161’10″ for the discus, pole vault 11’ and he completed the mile in 5 minutes, flat.  This pioneering Black actor relocated from the United States to Europe, later in his career,  while seeking to pursue bigger and more interesting roles.

“Race is not a factor in the world market,” Strode said. “I once played a part written for an Irish prize fighter. I’ve done everything but play an Anglo-Saxon. I’d do that if I could. I’d play a Viking with blue contact lenses and a blond wig.”

In movies as well as life, Woody Strode’s range was extraordinary and striking.

Woody Strode was born in Los Angeles on July 25, 1914, he was one of two sons of Baylous Strode, Sr., a brick mason, a Creek-Blackfoot-African-American father and Rose Norris Strode, a homemaker; was his  Cherokee-African-American mother. Baylous Jr. was the couple’s only other child. Woody Strode was tall and thin as a youngster, his athletic ability did not manifest until he reached junior high school.

After a growth spurt, just prior to high school, while he was growing up in South Central. Woody Strode truly started to stand out as an athlete while attending Thomas Jefferson High School, in South East Los Angeles. He starred in multiple sports, basketball, track and field and football. He was even chosen to be captain of the all-city football team.

He arrives a 6′ 3 ½” 195 sapling that promised to, one day, be a powerful oak with world-class decathlon potential, which was evidenced by his 50 feet (15 meter) plus shot put (when the world record was 57 feet (17 meters) and a 6′ 4″ (1.93 meters) high jump (the world record at time was 6 feet 10 inches (2.08 meters). He then attended UCLA and played alongside Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington, this trio broke the color barriers of either baseball or football in the 1940s.

While at UCLA Woody Strode joined the brotherhood of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. Strode’s athletic physique was so staggering that he drew the attention of the acclaimed German cinematographer Leni Riefenstahl, who took several still photographs of Strode and had him pose for a sculptor. Also, a nude portrait of him was featured in Hubert Stowitts’ acclaimed exhibition of athletic portraits shown at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The exhibit was closed, because the Nazis considered it degeneracy, due the inclusion of Black and Jewish athletes being featured and the stark and forthright nature of their physical power.

During the late 1930s Woody Strode and his UCLA teammate Washington began working in the service department at Warner Brothers Studio. Since the NFL, like major league baseball was barred for Blacks, Strode and Washington did play in the Pacific Coast League, a minor league, and they actually earned more money than many NFL players. When World War II started, Woody Strode was playing with fellow former Bruin, Kenny Washington for the Hollywood Bears Football team.

Woody Strode left to join the United States Army Air Corps and spent the war unloading bombs in Guam and the Marianas, as well as playing on the Army football team at March Field in Riverside, California.  After he left UCLA, Strode’s contacts at Warner Brothers allowed him to secure small roles in motion pictures, including Sundown (1941), Star-Spangled Rhythm (1942), and No Time for Love (1943). But Strode was mainly an athlete during this time. When not playing football, he trained as a wrestler and won several professional matches.

In 1941, Strode married a real-life princess. Strode’s first wife was Princess Luukialuana Kalaeloa (a.k.a. Luana Strode), a distant relative of Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii.  Also, in 1941, he began working as a professional wrestler, and in 1946, he and Washington became the first two Black football players to play in the NFL, when they signed with the Los Angeles Rams. Strode played as an End with the Rams in 1946, playing in 10 games that season.

Woody Strode was not in the NFL in 1947 after failing to make the team the following year. Subsequently, Woody Strode was signed in 1948 by the AAFC Brooklyn (football) Dodgers, he was released prior to the season and joined the Calgary Stampeders at age 34. He was part of the CFL’s only undefeated team in 1948(12-0), making the CFL all-star team in his first year. Calgary’s first championship, since 1911, was marked by wild celebrations, and Strode was identified as the player who rode a horse into the lobby of the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. He scored a touchdown in Calgary’s Grey Cup Victory but after the 1949 retired from football for good.

Woody Strode’s exercise regimen is tiring just to describe: 1000 free squats, 1000 sit-ups, and 1000 pushups every day until he turned 40, at which point he reduced the numbers to 500. Strode was noted for film roles that defied and decried the stereotypes of the times.

Best remembered for his Golden Globe-nominated role in Spartacus (1960) as the Ethiopian gladiator Draba, in which he defeats Kirk Douglas’ character Spartacus, prior to turning on their oppressors.

In the late 1960s, Woody Strode moved to Europe and became a regular in the Italian (“Spaghetti”) Westerns. His onscreen dynamism and upstanding presence was vital in giving rise to a  tribute by Pixar films. The Tom Hanks’ voiced cowboy toy “Woody” in the Toy Story series was named “Woody” after Woody Strode.

By the time he died on New Year’s Eve, 1994, he had worked with such legendary directors as Cecil B. Demille (The Ten Commandments), Lewis Milestone (Pork Chop Hill), Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus), Sergio Leone (Once Upon A Time in the West), and John Ford (Sergeant Rutledge, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

Ford repeatedly harassed John Wayne on the set with rude remarks that intentionally pushed his buttons. However, the actor took it out on Woody Strode.

“This really pissed Wayne off but he would never take it out on Ford,” Strode said. “He ended up taking it out on me. We had one of the few outdoor scenes where we hightail it out to his ranch in a wagon. He’s driving and I’m kneeling in the back of the wagon. Wayne was riding those horses so fast that he couldn’t get them to stop. I reached up to grab the reins to help, and he swung and knocked me away.”

Woody Strode continued: “When the horses finally stopped, Wayne fell out of the wagon and jumped off ready for a fight. I was in great shape in those days and Wayne was just getting a little too old and a little too out of shape for a fight. But if he’d started on me, I would have flattened him. Ford knew it, and he called out, ‘Woody, don’t hit him. We need him.’”

Despite his impressive work in: Spartacus, Sergeant Rutledge, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Professionals and Once Upon A Time in the West, he found that unlike his White counterparts. who then as now, once the had “made it” say a dramatic increase in both the quality and quantity of their roles. The sobering fact was like Fredi Washington, Louise Beavers, Ethel Waters. Clarence Muse, Juano G. Hernández, Juanita Moore, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte and so many others found to be true, that Hollywood may give you a brief moment in the spotlight, but you cannot be allowed to thrive. to have a consistent career.

Woody Strode continued acting until the mid-1990s. While his pro wrestling career lasted two decades from the 1940s to 1960s, his impact in pro wrestling, on the NFL and in Hollywood were groundbreaking. His final film was as Charlie Moonlight in the 1995 film, The Quick and the Dead that also featured Leonardo Di Caprio, Sharon Stone, and Gene Hackman, Strode passed away from lung cancer at age 80 died of lung cancer on  December 31, 1994, Woody Strode , in Glendora, California, prior to the release of the film. The film was dedicated to him upon release. In 1992: Woody Strode was inducted into UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame and the American Football Association (AFA) inducted him in 2015.

(Photo by American International Pictures/Getty Images)He was interred with military honors at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California, east of his hometown. Woody Strode had an  Associated Press obituary that praised his work in Westerns and period dramas, but didn’t mention the trail he blazed on the gridiron. I found much of my research equal parts illuminating and frustrating.

Sources:

IMDB