Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Read online

  Staying in America, I decided, had to mean that I wouldn’t be an amateur ever again. Now the real game would begin. There was a lot of work ahead. And I had to start as a professional. I didn’t ever want to go away from a bodybuilding competition like I had in Miami. If I was going to beat guys like Sergio Oliva, that could never happen again. From now on if I lost, I would be able to walk away with a big smile because I had done everything I could to prepare.

  After coming to California, I posed for Joe Weider’s bodybuilding magazines at Muscle Rock in the heights above Malibu. Bodybuilders like this spot because the ridges in the distance seem little and your muscles look bigger than the mountains. Art Zeller

  Aurelia and Gustav Schwarzenegger, my mother and father, on their wedding day in 1945. He’s wearing the uniform of the Austrian rural police. Schwarzenegger Archive

  My brother Meinhard was born in 1946, and then one year and fourteen days later came me. Our mother had her hands full with two young boys. Here we’re on the unpaved main road outside our house in Thal. Schwarzenegger Archive

  I always liked to paint and draw, even as an eleven- year-old in Hauptschule. Schwarzenegger Archive

  At age sixteen, I loved working out at the local lake, the Thalersee, with buddies like Karl Gerstl, Willi Richter, and Harry Winkler. Schwarzenegger Archive

  Hitting a front bicep pose in my first bodybuilding competition, at the Steirerhof Hotel in Graz, at age sixteen. Bodybuilding was so obscure that the contest organizers thought they needed a band onstage to help attract an audience. Stefan Amsüss

  I drove this fifty-ton M47 during my year in the Austrian army; my fellow crew members and I were responsible for its daily maintenance. Schwarzenegger Archive

  I could press 185 pounds at age sixteen as a member of the Graz Athletic Union weightlifting team—the applause of a crowd made me stronger. Schwarzenegger Archive

  I finally got to meet my idol Reg Park while training at the London gym of Wag Bennett in1966 (the W I’m wearing stands for Wag). Schwarzenegger Archive

  My dream became reality at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre in 1967, when I became the youngest ever Mr. Universe at age twenty. Albert Busek

  I walked around downtown Munich on a November day in my posing briefs to publicize bodybuilding and attract customers to the gym. Rolf Hayo / Roba Press

  My second Mr. Universe victory, in London in 1968, brought me an invitation and a plane ticket to America. I won the professional class and Dennis Tinerino the amateur class. Schwarzenegger Archive

  On occasional visits home to Austria, I’d work out in the attic with my dad, a national ice-curling champ. Albert Busek

  CHAPTER 5

  Greetings from Los Angeles

  THERE’S A PHOTOGRAPH OF me arriving in Los Angeles. I’m twenty-one years old, it’s 1968, and I’m wearing wrinkled brown pants, clunky shoes, and a cheap long-sleeved shirt. I’m holding a beat-up plastic bag containing just a few things and waiting at the baggage claim to get my gym bag, which holds everything else. I look like a refugee, I can’t speak more than a few phrases of English, and I don’t have any money—but on my face is a big smile.

  A photographer and a reporter, freelancers for Muscle & Fitness magazine, were on hand to chronicle my arrival. Joe Weider had assigned them to pick me up, show me around, and write about what I did and said. Weider was promoting me as a rising star. He offered to bring me to America to train with the champions for a year. He would provide a place to stay and spending money. All I had to do was work with a translator to write stories about my techniques for his magazines while training to achieve my dream.

  The new and marvelous life I had dreamed about easily could have ended just a week later. One of my brand-new gym friends, an Australian strongman and crocodile wrestler, lent me his car, a Pontiac GTO with over 350 horsepower. I’d never driven anything so incredible, and it didn’t take long before I was flying up Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley at autobahn speed. It was a cool and misty October morning, and I was about to learn that the streets of California get very slippery when it starts drizzling.

  I got ready to downshift for an upcoming curve. Shifting was something I was good at because all the vehicles in Europe had manual transmissions, including the trucks I drove in the army and my banged-up old car in Munich. But downshifting the GTO slowed the rear wheels abruptly, breaking their hold on the road.

  The car spun wildly around two or three times, completely out of control. I was probably down to about thirty miles per hour when momentum took me into the oncoming lanes—which were, unfortunately, very busy with morning traffic. I watched as a Volkswagen Beetle T-boned me on the passenger side. Then some American car hit me, and four or five more vehicles joined the pileup before everything came to a stop.

  The GTO and I ended up about thirty yards down from my destination, Vince’s Gym, where I was going to train. The car door on my side worked so I climbed out, but my right leg felt like it was on fire—the impact had wrecked the console between the two front seats, and when I looked down, a big splinter of plastic was sticking out of my thigh. I pulled it out, and now blood started running down my leg.

  I was really scared, and all I could think of was to go to the gym for help. I limped in and said, “I just had a big accident.” A few of the bodybuilders recognized me, but the one who took charge was a man I didn’t know, who happened to be a lawyer. “You better get back out to your car,” he said. “Don’t leave the scene of an accident. It’s called a hit-and-run here; hit-and-run, you understand? And you get in a lot of trouble. So go out there, stay with your car, and wait for the police.”

  He understood I’d just arrived in the United States and that my English wasn’t good.

  “But I’m here!” I said. “And I can look right over there!” I meant that I would easily see when the police arrived and go meet them.

  “Trust me, just go back to your car.”

  Then I showed him my leg. “Do you know a doctor who can help me with this?”

  He saw the blood and muttered, “Oh Christ.” He thought for a second. “Let me call some friends. You don’t have health insurance or anything?” I had trouble understanding what this meant, but we figured out that I didn’t have insurance. Someone gave me a towel to hold against my leg.

  I went back to the GTO. People were shaken up and hassled that they had to be late for work and that their cars were damaged and they were going to have to deal with their insurance companies. But nobody jumped all over me or made accusations. Once the cop was sure that the lady in the Volkswagen was okay, he let me go without a citation and just said, “I see you’re bleeding; you ought to get that looked at.” A bodybuilder friend named Bill Drake took me to a doctor and kindly paid the bill to get me stitched up.

  I’d been an idiot to cause the wreck, and I wish I had everyone’s names so I could write to them today and apologize.

  I knew I’d been lucky: the police in Europe would have been incredibly strict in a situation like this. Not only could I have been arrested but also, as a foreigner, I could very well have ended up in jail or getting deported. The incident definitely would have cost me a lot of money in fines. But the cops in LA took the view that the roads were slick, this was an accident, there were no serious injuries, and the key thing was to get traffic flowing again. The cop who talked to me was very polite; he looked at my international driver’s license and asked, “Do you want an ambulance, or are you okay?” Two guys from the gym told him I’d been in the country only a few days. It was pretty clear I couldn’t really speak English, although I tried.

  I went to sleep that night feeling optimistic. I still needed to work things out with the crocodile wrestler, but America was a great place to be.

  —

  My first view of Los Angeles was a shock. For me, America meant one thing: size. Huge skyscrapers, huge bridges, huge neon signs, huge highways, huge cars. New York and Miami had both lived up to my expectations, and somehow I’d i
magined that Los Angeles would be just as impressive. But now I saw that there were only a few high-rises downtown, and it looked pretty skimpy. The beach was big, but where were the huge waves and the surfers surfing?

  I felt the same disappointment when I first saw Gold’s Gym, the mecca of American bodybuilding. I’d been studying Weider’s bodybuilding magazines for years without realizing that the whole idea was to make everything seem much bigger than it was. I’d look at scenes of famous bodybuilders working out at Gold’s, and my vision was of a huge sports club that had basketball courts, swimming pools, gymnastics, weight lifting, power lifting, and martial arts, like the giant clubs you see today. But when I walked in, there was a cement floor, and the whole place was very simple and primitive: a single two-story room about half the size of a basketball court, with cinder-block walls and skylights. Still, the equipment was really interesting, and I saw great power lifters and bodybuilders working out, lifting heavy weights—so the inspiration was there. Also, it was just two blocks from the beach.

  The neighborhood of Venice around Gold’s seemed even less impressive than the gym. The houses lining the streets and alleys looked like my barracks in the Austrian army. Why would you build cheap wooden barracks in such a great location? Some of the houses were vacant and run-down. The sidewalks were cracked and sandy, with weeds growing alongside the buildings, and some stretches of sidewalk weren’t even paved.

  “This is America!” I thought. “Why wouldn’t they pave this? Why wouldn’t they tear down this abandoned house and build a nice one?” One thing I knew for sure: back in Graz, you would never find a sidewalk that was not only paved but also totally swept and immaculate. It was inconceivable.

  It was a challenge moving to a country where everything looked different, and the language was different, and the culture was different, and people thought differently and did business differently. It was staggering how different everything was. But I had the big advantage over most newcomers: when you are part of an international sport, you’re never totally alone.

  There’s amazing hospitality in the bodybuilding world. No matter where you go, you don’t even have to know people. You always feel you are part of a family. The local bodybuilders will pick you up at the airport. They will greet you. They will take you into their homes. They will feed you. They will take you around. But America was something else.

  One of the bodybuilders in Los Angeles had an extra bedroom where I could stay at first. When I showed up to start training at the gym, guys greeted me and hugged me and made it clear that they were happy to have me over here. The guys found me a little apartment, and as soon as I moved in, this friendliness turned into “We’ve got to help him.” They organized a drive and showed up one morning carrying packages and boxes. You have to picture a bunch of big, muscular guys: huge bears you’d never want near anything delicate or made of glass, who you’d hear in the gym every day saying, “Look at that chest, oh man!” or “I’m gonna squat five hundred pounds today—fuck it.” Suddenly, here they were carrying boxes and packages. One of them says, “Look what I brought you,” opens up this little box, and takes out some silverware. “You need some silverware so you can eat here.” Another one unwraps a bundle and says, “My wife told me that these are the plates I can take; they’re our old plates, so now you have five plates.” They were very careful to name things and give simple explanations. Someone else brought a little black-and-white TV with an antenna sticking out the top and helped me set it up and showed me how to adjust the antenna. They also brought food that we sat around and shared.

  I said to myself, “I never saw this in Germany or Austria. No one would even think of it.” I knew for a fact that, back home, if I’d seen somebody moving in next door, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to assist them. I felt like an idiot. That day was a growing-up experience.

  The guys took me over to see Hollywood. I wanted to have my photo taken there and mail it to my parents, as if to send the message “I’ve arrived in Hollywood. Next will be movies.” So we drove until one of the guys said, “All right, that’s Sunset Boulevard.”

  “When do we get to Hollywood?” I asked.

  “This is Hollywood.”

  In my imagination, I must have confused Hollywood with Las Vegas, because I was looking for giant signs and neon lights. I also expected to see movie equipment and streets blocked off because they were shooting some big stunt scene. But this was nothing. “What happened to all the lights and stuff?” I asked.

  They looked at one another. “I think he’s disappointed,” one guy said. “Maybe we should bring him back at night.”

  The others said, “Yeah, yeah, good idea. Because there’s nothing to see during the day, really.”

  Later that week, we came back at night. There were a few more lights, but it was just as boring. I had to get used to it and learn the good places to hang out.

  I spent a lot of time finding my way around and trying to figure out how things worked in America. In the evening, I often hung around with Artie Zeller, the photographer who’d picked me up at the airport. Artie fascinated me. He was very, very smart, yet he had absolutely no ambition. He didn’t like stress, and he didn’t like risk. He worked behind the window in the post office. He came from Brooklyn, where his father was an important cantor in the Jewish community; a very erudite guy. Artie went his own way, getting into bodybuilding in Coney Island. Working as a freelancer for Weider, he’d become the best photographer of the sport. He was fascinating because he was self-taught, endlessly reading and absorbing things. Besides being a natural with languages, he was a walking encyclopedia and an expert chess player. He was a die-hard Democrat, liberal, and total atheist. Forget religion. To him, it was all bogus. There was no God, end of story.

  Artie’s wife, Josie, was Swiss, and even though I was trying to stay immersed in English, it was helpful to be around people who knew German. This was especially true when it came to watching TV. I’d arrived in America during the last three or four weeks of the 1968 presidential campaign, so when we turned on the set, there was always something about the election. Artie and Josie would translate from speeches by Richard Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who were running against each other. Humphrey, the Democrat, was always going on about welfare and government programs, and I decided he sounded too Austrian. But Nixon’s talk about opportunity and enterprise sounded really American to me.

  “What is his party called again?” I asked Artie.

  “Republican.”

  “Then I’m a Republican,” I said. Artie snorted, which he often did both because he had bad sinuses and because he found a lot in life to snort about.

  —

  Just as Joe Weider had promised, I got a car: a secondhand white Volkswagen Beetle, which made me feel at home. As a way of learning the area, I would visit different gyms. I made friends with a guy who managed a gym in downtown LA, at what was then called the Occidental Life Building. I drove inland and also down to San Diego to see the gyms there. People would take me places, too, which was how I got to know Tijuana, Mexico, and Santa Barbara. At one point, I drove with four other bodybuilders to Las Vegas in a VW microbus. It couldn’t even get up to sixty miles per hour with all the muscle on board. Las Vegas itself, with its giant casinos and neon lights and endless gaming tables, really lived up to my expectations.

  A lot of champions trained at Vince’s Gym, such as Larry Scott, who was nicknamed “the Legend” and who had won Mr. Olympia in 1965 and 1966. Vince’s had carpeting and plenty of nice machines, but it wasn’t a power lifter’s gym: they thought basic strength-training exercises like the full squat, bench press, and incline press were old-fashioned strongman stuff that didn’t chisel the body.

  The scene was totally different at Gold’s. It was very rough, and monsters trained there: Olympic shot-put champions, professional wrestlers, bodybuilding champions, strongmen off the streets. There was almost no one in a workout outfit. Everyone trained in jeans and plaid sh
irts, tank tops, sleeveless wife-beater shirts, sweatshirts. The gym had bare floors and weight-lifting platforms where you could drop a thousand pounds and no one would ever complain. It was closer to the atmosphere where I came from.

  Joe Gold was the genius of the place. He’d been part of Santa Monica’s original Muscle Beach scene as a teenager in the 1930s, and after serving as a machinist in the merchant marine in World War II, he came back and started building gym equipment. Just about every machine in the place was Joe’s design.

  There was nothing delicate here: everything Joe built was big and heavy, and it worked. His cable rowing machine was designed with the footrests exactly high enough for you to work your lower lats without feeling like you were about to launch right out of the seat. When Joe designed a machine, he did it with everybody’s input rather than going off on his own. So on all of it, the angles of pulling down were perfect, and nothing got stuck. And he was there every day, which meant that all the equipment was maintained continuously.

  Sometimes Joe would simply invent new machines. He’d created one to do donkey raises. This calf exercise was essential for me because compared to the rest of me, my calves were congenitally puny and hard to build up. Normally you did a donkey raise by placing the balls of your feet on a bar or plank with your midfoot and heels suspended. Then you bent at the waist 90 degrees, braced your arms on a bar, had one or two training buddies climb up and sit on your back and hips as if you were a mule, and worked your calves by lifting them up and down. But with Joe’s machine, you didn’t need riders. You loaded it with any amount of weight you wanted, went underneath it in a donkey stance, and took off the lock. Now you had, say, seven hundred pounds on top of you, and you could do the donkey raises.