1937 Bruins mail day

This site is all about the 1939 Bruins, but it’s not like these players showed up out of nowhere in 1939! Many of the team’s seniors, including Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, played their first season of varsity football with the hapless 1937 team that finished 2-6-1 (1-5-1 in conference play).

A terrific keepsake from that historically significant but otherwise forgettable season is the 1938 UCLA yearbook that arrived today.

A complete digitized copy of the yearbook is available online, but here are the highlights related to the Kenny, Woody, and the gang.

Football

Facing pages 214-215 of the yearbook provide a nice introduction to the varsity football team, include an action shot of Kenny against Oregon State, and present the team’s official photo. Among the many players profiled on this site, present in the photo are Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Mladin Zarubica, Ernie Hill, and Chuck Cascales.

The next set of pages includes action poses of (future) 1939 Bruin standouts Johnny Ryland and Woody Strode. We also see (then) assistant Babe Horrell and former all-world center looking like he may have snapped the ball a few times in practice.

The next several pages of the yearbook, which you can browse online, take you through the season game by game. I won’t lie. The photos and write-ups are very cool, but oh what a dreadful season!

Completing the football section of the yearbook is a two-page spread on the frosh team. Many of the juniors from the 1939 team (but not Jackie Robinson and Ray Bartlett, who were still at Pasadena Junior College) hailed from this “Brubabe” squad.

Other sports

Beginning at page 270, there are several pages devoted to the UCLA track team, which of course included Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. Here are just a couple of their photos from the section.

Though not a 1939 football Bruin, we can also spot multiple images of “Black Bruin” (and future Los Angeles mayor) Tom Bradley!

Baseball coverage begins on page 282, and with it comes more Kenny Washington, also referred to by his “Kingfish” nickname.

Though no picture appears, Kenny even gets a shoutout in the yearbook’s Boxing section on page 294!

Drama!

IMDB would have you believe a certain 1939 Bruin made his acting debut in the 1941 movie “Sundown,” but we find him in the yearbook on page 155 as a Nubian slave in spring 1938 campus production of “Julius Caesar.”

The ridiculously sculpted physique, wig notwithstanding, should leave no doubt as to which Bruin this is!

All in all, the yearbook offers a terrific look at the university, not to mention the 1939 team, in its formative years. In that sense, it’s a very welcome addition to my 1939 Bruins collection. If I had even a single complaint it would be that its original owner collected zero signatures! So much for my chances to land my first Woody Strode auto!