Woody Strode, July 18, 1987

Sometimes in life, you get to meet people you've admired since you can remember. That's what happened with several actors over the few years of the National Western Film Festival in Ogden. One of those people was Woody Strode. I cornered him at the Hilton Hotel in Ogden, and he was gracious enough to pile into a car with photographer Blair Kooistra and me, and we drove around west Ogden looking for a place to take his photo -- and I peppered him with questions the whole time. Finally we settled on some old wooden gates in the ancient Ogden stockyards. What an afternoon.

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

When Francis Ford Coppola was directing "The Cotton Club" a few years ago, he needed someone to play the small role of the club's doorman. And Coppola, being the persnickety director that he is, would consider only one man for the part -- Woody Strode.

"I can't even see myself in the movie, to tell you the truth," Strode said Thursday as he walked through the Ogden stockyards near the Golden Spike Coliseum. "But you know what I got paid for the itty-bitty part? Sixty-two thousand dollars. Can you believe it?"

To hear Strode tell it, luck like that has followed him all his life.

The Paramount logo and Mt. Ben Lomond: facts and myths

April 24, 1987
"Outtakes" movie column
Donald Porter
Standard-Examiner

Recently, a local TV show attempted to discover whether the voice of God in "The Ten Commandments" was dubbed by a Utah man. It seems the story has been circulating in the state for years, yet no one has been able to provide any evidence to establish the myth as fact or fiction. The man in question is dead, and all that remains is hearsay.

Well, I love a good story -- especially when it concerns the movies. One I've heard repeatedly since I took over the movie beat at this newspaper concerns Ogden's connection to the Paramount Pictures trademark. People keep telling me that the logo -- a mountain peak circled by stars -- was patterned after Ben Lomond Peak.

These aren't exactly crackpots, mind you. People at the National Western Film Festival love to tell the story, and a lot of folks have traced Paramount's business history (rather inaccurately in most instances) in support of the Ben Lomond connection. Why, even Gedde Watanabe -- the Ogden native who's gone on to act in films -- said he heard the story from a crew member while starring in "Gung Ho" (a Paramount film).