Actors - Woody Strode

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	Actors - Woody Strode

Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode (born July 28, 1914, Los Angeles, California; died December 31, 1994) was a decathlete and football star at UCLA before becoming a film actor.

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. After a few years, he moved to the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. He also spent a few years in professional wrestling, wrestling the likes of Gorgeous George.

As an actor, he made his screen debut in 1941 in Sundown, but became more active in the 1950s in roles that required little more than his physical presence, such as dual roles in The Ten Commandments (1956) as an Ethiopian king as well as a slave. He became a close friend of director John Ford, who gave him his 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). However, he is probably best remembered for his brief role in Spartacus (1960) where he fights Kirk Douglas to the death. In 1966 he landed a major starring role in The Professionals
, with Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, and Robert Ryan, 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).

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

Trivia

Strode's first wife Luana was a Hawaiian princess.
Strode posed for one of 2 paintings commissioned by Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
He wrote an autobiography entitled Goal Dust (ISBN 081917680X).

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