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He was one of the first black actors to break from stereotypical "Negro" roles pioneering the pathway for others. Tall, muscular, extremely athletic with a square jaw and handsome face, he played mostly athletic roles at first but proved his abilities at serious drama in "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960) in the title role as Sgt. Braxton Rutledge. He was born Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode July 25, 1914 in Los Angeles, California the son of a brick mason. He grew up near the L.A. Coliseum where he would eventually star on the football gridiron. He was educated at UCLA and later played professional football. Interrupted by World War II, where he fought in the Pacific, he later returned to football and then professional wrestling, but the lure of Hollywood and acting appealed to him and he auditioned for parts. His film debut was in "Sundown" (1941) as a Tribal Policeman, and that led to a series of muscleman type roles: gladiators, athletes, henchmen and the like. Among his film credits are: "Star Spangled Rhythm" (1942) as Rochester's Motorcycle Chauffeur; "The Lion Hunters" (1951) as Walu; "City Beneath the Sea" (1953) as Djion; "Demetrius and the Gladiators" (1954) with Victor Mature, as a Gladiator; "The Ten Commandments" (1956) as The King of Ethiopia; "Tarzan's Fight for Life" (1958) with Gordon Scott, as Ramo; "Pork Chop Hill" (1959) as Franklin; "The Last Voyage" (1960) as Hank Lawson; "Spartacus" (1960) probably his best known and most popular role as the Gladiator Draba; "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) as Pompey; "Tarzan's Three Challenges" (1963) considered one of the best non-Weissmuller Tarzan films, as Khan; "The Professionals" (1966) as Jake Sharp; "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1969) a Sergio Leone spaghetti western with Henry Fonda, as Stony; "The Black Stallion Returns" (1983) as Meslar; "The Cotton Club" (1984) as Holmes; "Lust in the Dust" (1985) as Blackman and his last film "The Quick and the Dead" (1995) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Sharon Stone, as Charlie Moonlight. He also worked on films in Europe for a time in the 1970s and 1980s. On TV he was a regular on the series: "Mandrake the Magician" (1954) as Lothar; "The Outside Man" (1977) as Shaker Thompson and "How the West Was Won" (1978) a mini-series, as Arapaho Chief. He appeared in TV movies including: "Breakout" (1970); "Key West" (1973) and "A Gathering of Old Men" (1987). He died of lung cancer on December 31, 1994 in Glendora, California at the age of 80.

I had the very distinct privilege of meeting one of my early childhood hero's while living in Cali..
My girlfriend at the time; her Mother knew him http://juanitamillendermcdonald.blogspot.com/ and had him and his Hawaiian princess over for dinner so I could meet him..It was a highlight of my life...and I have never forgot it.. Of course he drove a Mercedes Benz, just like the one I had... 1972 280 se 4.5 http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/6633/w108w109/w108w109.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W108

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=woody+strode&aq=f&oq=
Vera Miles (Hallie Stoddard) + Woody Strode (Pompey)
The Man who Shot Liberty Valence


























Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode (born July 25, 1914, Los Angeles, California; died December 31, 1994) was a decathlete and football star before finding even greater fame as 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.
Contents[hide]
1 Early athletic career
2 Professional football
3 Acting career
4 Personal life
5 Death
6 Pop culture references
7 Filmography
8 Author
9 References
10 External links
//

[edit] Early athletic career
Strode attended college at UCLA. Strode was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter organization established for African Americans.[citation needed] His world class decathlon capabilities were spearheaded by a fifty foot plus shot put (when the world record was fifty seven feet) and a six-four high jump (world record at time was 6-10). 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).[1]
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.[2] 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.[3] 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.

[edit] Professional football
Strode and fellow UCLA alumnus Kenny Washington were two of the first African-Americans to play in the National Football League, playing for the Los Angeles Rams in 1946.[4] UCLA teammate Jackie Robinson would go on to break the color barrier in Major League baseball (in fact, all three had played in the professional Pacific Coast Professional Football League earlier in the decade). In 1948 and 1949, he played for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. He also spent a few years in professional wrestling, wrestling the likes of Gorgeous George.

[edit] Acting career
As an actor, he was noted for film roles that contrasted with the stereotypes of the time. He was 6' 4" (1.93 m) tall. He is probably best remembered for his brief Golden Globe-nominated role in Spartacus (1960), 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, in roles of increasing depth. He played dual roles 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 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 would later appear in smaller roles in Ford's later films Two Rode Together (1961) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Strode was one of the last friends of legendary director John Ford. He came to visit Ford while the director was feuding with the Hollywood film studios. A studio head called as the two were talking and Ford said "Tell him I'm busy, sitting here with my good friend Woody Strode."
Strode played memorable villains opposite three screen Tarzan's. 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 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 (almost) established him as a major 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 would appear 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, despite his impressive performance. He remained a visible character actor throughout the '70s and '80s, 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).

[edit] Personal life
Strode was the son of a Creek-Blackfoot-black father and a black-Cherokee mother.[5] His first wife was Princess Luukialuana "Luana" Kalaeloa, a descendant of Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii.[6] Strode was a dedicated martial artist under the direction of Frank Landers in the art of SeishinDo Kenpo.[7]

[edit] Death
Strode died of lung cancer on December 31, 1994, in Glendora, California. He is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, Calif.

[edit] Pop culture references
Author Stephen King pays an homáge of sorts to Strode, in the King/Peter Straub collaboration Black House. Woody Strode is the Twinner of the Territories lawman and Gunslinger, Speedy Parker.

[edit] Filmography
Sundown (1941)
Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
No Time for Love (1943)
The Lion Hunters (1951)
Bride of the Gorilla (1951)
African Treasure (1952)
Caribbean (1952)
Androcles and the Lion (1952)
City Beneath the Sea (1953)
Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
Jungle Man-Eaters (1954)
The Gambler from Natchez (1954)
Jungle Gents (1954)
Son of Sinbad (1955)
Buruuba (1955)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Tarzan's Fight for Life (1958)
The Buccaneer (1958)
Pork Chop Hill (1959)
The Last Voyage (1960)
Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961)
Two Rode Together (1961)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963)
Genghis Khan (1965)
7 Women (1966)
The Professionals (1966)
Super Brother (1968)
Shalako (1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Che! (1969)
Boot Hill (1969)
Chuck Moll (1970)
Scipio the African (1971)
The Deserter (1971)
The Last Rebel (1971)
Black Rodeo (1972) (documentary) (narrator)
The Revengers (1972)
The Italian Connection (1972)
The Gatling Gun (1973)
We Are No Angels (1975)
Loaded Guns (1975)
Winterhawk (1975)
Keoma (1976)
The Million Dollar Fire (1976)
Cowboy-San! (1977)
Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
Ravagers (1979)
Jaguar Lives! (1979)
Cuba Crossing (1980)
Scream (1981)
Angkor: Cambodia Express (1982)
Horror Safari (1982)
Vigilante (1983)
The Black Stallion Returns (1983)
The Violent Breed (1984)
The Last Warrior (1984)
Jungle Warriors (1984)
The Cotton Club (1984)
Lust in the Dust (1985)
Bronx Executioner (1989)
Storyville (1992)
Posse (1993)
The Quick and the Dead (1995)

[edit] Author
Strode wrote an autobiography entitled Goal Dust (ISBN 0-8191-7680-X).

[edit] References
^ Stowitts, Hubert Julian. American champions; fifty portraits of American athletes by Stowitts, Tiergartenstrasse 21a, Berlin, 9.-15. September 1936, unter dem Protektorat des Amerikanischen Botschafters und Mitwirkung der Vereinigung Carl Schurz, anlässlich der XI. Olympiade, special sport exhibition. Stowitts, 1936
^ B.J. VIOLETT - TEAMMATES RECALL JACKIE ROBINSON’S LEGACY. UCLA Today magazine, 1997
^ Encyclopeǣia Brittanica article on Kenny Washington
^ NFL 2001 Record and Fact Book, Workman Publishing Co, New York,NY, ISBN 0-7611-2480-2, p. 280
^ Woody Strode, Goal Dust, Madison Books, 1990, ISBN 0-8191-7680-X, pp. 1-3)
^ Woody Strode, Goal Dust, Madison Books, 1990, ISBN 0-8191-7680-X, p. 78
^ Fighting Stars Magazine - July 1978

[edit] External links
Woody Strode at the Internet Movie Database




























Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, and other UCLA football alumni
Ex-Bruin-Stars--Ram candidates from former U.C.L.A. grid teams are, left to right, Jack Finlay, Kenny Washington, Nate DeFrancisco, Bob Waterfield and Woody Strode
Actor Credits
Actor
1.
The Quick and the Dead (1995) ..... Charles Moonlight
2.
Posse (1993)
3.
The Black Stallion Returns (1983)
4.
Vigilante (1983)
5.
Ravagers (1979) ..... Brown
6.
Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
7.
The Quest (1976) ..... Tucker
8.
Winterhawk (1975) ..... Big Rude
9.
The Gatling Gun (1973)
10.
The Italian Connection (1972) ..... Frank
11.
The Revengers (1972) ..... Job
12.
Boot Hill (1969)
13.
Che! (1969) ..... Guillermo
14.
The Professionals (1966)
15.
Genghis Khan (1965) ..... Sengal
16.
The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961) ..... Muwango
17.
Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
18.
Spartacus (1960) ..... Draba
19.
The Last Voyage (1960)
20.
Pork Chop Hill (1959)
21.
The Buccaneer (1958)
22.
City Beneath the Sea (1953) ..... Djion