Woody Strode - Athlete And Actor Extraordinaire
John Ford loved him but didn't think a black actor could become a star. Little did the great man know that Woody had been a big deal long before he embarked on his career in film...
Woody Strode - yeah, that’s him hanging upside down in Spartacus. Stanley Kubrick had actually commissioned a dummy of Strode’s slain gladiator Draba for this very shot but the arch perfectionist didn’t think it looked convincing. So it was that top athlete Strode volunteered to be suspended while his co-stars filed past him, keeping perfectly still until the director shouted ‘cut!’
As for exactly how extraordinary an athlete Woody Strode was, well, there’s the small matter of him being among the first black men to play American Football professionally. He was also a bona fide track-and-field star. Indeed, while attending UCLA, his decathlon performances were positively world-class.
On top of everything else a gifted wrestler and stuntman, Woody's athletic excellence was so great that the the Nazis - people not known for their equal-opportunity employment policies - insisted Strode pose for a series of paintings they’d commissioned ahead of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Here’s the work in question…