#Chuck close portraits plus#

He was drafted at age 27 and soon joined the United States Army Air Corps and spent the war unloading bombs in Guam and the Marianas, as well as playing on the Army football team at March Field in Riverside, California. When World War II broke out, Strode was playing for the Hollywood Bears in the Pacific Coast Professional Football League. He had a small role in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), as a chauffeur of Rochester (Edward Anderson) and could be glimpsed in No Time for Love (1943). Strode made his first appearance in Sundown (1941) playing a native policeman. It was the first UCLA–USC rivalry football game with national implications. They played eventual conference and national champion USC to a scoreless tie with the 1940 Rose Bowl on the line.

Īlong with Ray Bartlett, there were four Black Americans playing for the Bruins, when only a few dozen at all played on other college football teams. They became famous nationally as 'the Gold Dust gang'. 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. 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). 'Never used it, but I could walk into the White House with it now.' 'I got a cultural education-majored in history and education,' he said in a 1971 interview.

#Chuck close portraits plus#

His world-class decathlon capabilities were spearheaded by a 50 ft (15 m) plus shot put (when the world record was 57 ft (17 m)) and a 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) high jump (the world record at time was 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m)).

He attended Thomas Jefferson High School in South East Los Angeles and college at UCLA, where he was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. His parents were from New Orleans his grandmother was African-American and ' part Cherokee' and his grandfather was an African-American who claimed his own grandmother was Creek.