within the single page which this work devotes to Strode’s long career, Bogle says nothing to
suggest that Strode is an important figure in black and American film history. Instead, he writes
this about Strode: “With his magnificent physique and spectacular style— quick eyes that flash
and dart malevolently, gleaming white teeth fixed in a broad smile, and biceps and triceps that
he was quick to flex—Strode became the movies most notable black muscleman, appearing in
adventure stories and spectacles” (185). Bogle says these comments regarding Strode’s
early career in the 1950s, but one gets the sense that this is his estimation of the entirety of
Strode’s work in film.
For Strode, as a black athlete turned actor, there seems to have been a double
challenge, one which Charlene Regester discusses in her essay, “From the Gridiron and the
Boxing Ring to the Cinema Screen: The African-American Athlete in pre-1950 Cinema”: “As
the black athlete was transformed on the screen, he represented both danger and desire—
binary opposites, resulting in a problematized im age----- It thus appears that the black male
athlete has always been a viable commodity and a point of exploitation for the cinema industry”
(270-71). Regester’s contention is crucial to consider in any discussion of Strode’s acting long
acting career, because it brings to the fore this question: at what point should one disregard his
athletic career, and examine his acting career solely on its merits? Moreover, at what point can
one look beyond his physique, or at least focus on something more than simply that when
discussing Strode’s acting career?
In his 1976 essay, The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin makes several point s which
contribute to this discussion. Of the challenges confronting the black actor, Baldwin says the
following: “What the black actor has managed to give are moments— indelible moments,
created, miraculously, beyond the confines of the script: hints of reality, smuggled like
contraband into a maudlin tale, and with enough force, if unleashed, to shatter the tale to
fragments” (104-105). Further along in the discussion, Baldwin makes the point that during the
1970’s, many of the “black films" of the era were intended to “make black experience irrelevant
and obsolete” (106). Although he does not name the films, one might imagine that he is
referring to the “black exploitation” films of the time. Of such films, Baldwin also says that they
used as actors, “a staggering preponderance of football players and models” (105). This of
course brings one back to the point which Regester makes regarding the black male athlete as
commodity and site of exploitation for Hollywood. However, of all of the football players turned
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