WOODY STRODE - INSCRIBED PRINTED PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED IN INK 03/1980 - HFSID 298894

WOODY STRODE
The actor is shown wearing Western garb, in this 8½x11 black and white photograph.
Inscribed Printed Photograph signed in Ink: "To Warren/Perkins/Woody Strode" in green ink, B/w 8½x11. Woody Strode (1914-1994) was a decathlete and football star at UCLA, playing USC to a 0-0 tie in the 1940 Rose Bowl. At a time when college football included few Black athletes, Strode shared the Bruins backfield with Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington. Robinson is famous for breaking the color barrier in Major League baseball. Few remember that Strode and Washington broke it in the NFL, playing for the 1946 Los Angeles Rams (a year before Robinson reached the Dodgers). Strode was included in Hubert Stowitt's photographs of nude athletes prepared for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but the Nazis closed the exhibit because it contained Black and Jewish athletes. Strode later pursued a successful acting career, at first in supporting roles: he played an Ethiopian king in The Ten Commandments (1958), an Ethiopian gladiator in Spartacus (1960), and the villain opposing three different Tarzans (Gordon Scott, Jock Mahoney and Ron Ely). He played the title role in Sergeant Rutledge (1960), John Ford's film about a "Buffalo soldier" in the 9th Cavalry falsely accused of raping and killing a white woman. Strode appeared in several Spaghetti Westerns, including Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). He made many TV appearances. His later films included The Cotton Club (1984) and The Quick and the Dead (1995, released after his death). Creased. Worn. Toned at edges. Otherwise, fine condition.