Last week my wife and I saw "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" at the Jordan Commons complex in Sandy. This terrific 1962 Western by John Ford stars John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles — and Lee Marvin, at his nastiest in the title role. (The film will play for another week; check it out.)
The supporting cast in this classic black-and-white oater (in which Wayne refuses to call Stewart's character by his name, instead referring to him repeatedly as "Pilgrim") is also impressive — Edmond O'Brien, Andy Devine, Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef among them.
Also featured, as Wayne's sidekick, right-hand man and closest friend is Woody Strode.
In fact, a lot of Strode's movies have been coming my way lately. I don't know why; I haven't deliberately sought them out. But I've always enjoyed Strode's presence on the big screen. He was stoic and commanding, with a gentle dignity and a no-nonsense toughness that often made audience members sit up and take notice.
Especially in "Spartacus," in the famous scene where Strode, as a gladiator deliberately pitted against Kirk Douglas in the arena, battles him to the death . . . with a shocking twist.
Strode, who died six years ago, was a tall (6-foot-4) athlete who played college football in the '30s, married a Hawaiian princess, played pro ball for the Cleveland Rams, wrestled professionally (he once went up against Gorgeous George) and played for several seasons in the Canadian Football League before he plunged full-time into a film career.
He was also one of four black players who broke the color barrier in major-league football in 1946 (the others being Bill Willis, Marion Motley and fellow Cleveland Ram Kenny Washington).
In a way, Strode performed similar duties in the movies.
Oh, he was never a multifaceted character actor like Ossie Davis, or a ridiculously handsome superstar like Harry Belafonte, or a breakout Oscar-winning matinee idol like Sidney Poitier. Strode found his characters' motivations quite simply, exhibiting a quiet truthfulness similar to that of other supporting players like Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr., with whom Strode was featured in a number of John Ford Westerns.
After years of playing African warriors and Ethiopian gladiators in everything from "Bomba" and "Tarzan" B-pictures to "The Ten Commandments," Strode was given the lead role in a little film Ford cooked up about a black cavalry sergeant who is falsely accused of murdering a white officer and raping and killing a white woman.
The film was "Sergeant Rutledge," and it was pretty strong stuff for moviegoers in 1960 (the same year "Spartacus" was released). Although this was after "Blackboard Jungle" (1955), "The Defiant Ones" (1958) and a handful of other films that helped paved the way, it preceded the groundbreaking films that would realistically depict racial strife throughout the '60s, and, of course, the blaxploitation films of the '70s.
It's fair to call Woody Strode an unsung movie hero of this period. He broke down barriers in football and then did the same thing in the movies.
Though he returned to supporting roles, he still managed to shine in a number of subsequent films that gave him gritty parts he could sink his teeth into . . . and a greater number of pictures that did much less.
In addition to "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "Spartacus" and "Sergeant Rutledge," over the past few months I've also stumbled across Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968), "The Professionals" (1966; co-starring Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster) and a pair of 1961 films in which Strode shows up but is sadly underused, "Two Rode Together," a Western with James Stewart and Richard Widmark, and "The Sins of Rachel Cade," a melodrama starring Angie Dickinson, Peter Finch and Roger Moore, set in the Belgian Congo.
Others may have been better actors, but Strode had that indefinable big-screen charisma that many of those "actors" would die for.
And it reminded me once again how important supporting character players are to the movies, and how few we have these days that are as memorable as those in movies of the past.
E-MAIL: hicks@desnews.com