Franco and I felt pretty nervous about our upcoming event especially after we talked to George Eiferman, one of the ex-bodybuilding champions we’d lined up as judges. George was an elder statesman of the sport (Mr. America 1948 and Mr. Olympia 1962) who now owned gyms in Las Vegas. A week before the contest, he came to visit and give advice. He met with Franco, Artie Zeller, and me at Zucky’s.
George said, “Now make sure you that you have everything there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I ran these competitions in the past. Sometimes we forget the simplest things.”
“Like what?” I started sweating, wondering what it could be. I’d been concentrating so much on selling seats that maybe I’d overlooked some important details.
“For instance, do you have the chairs for the judges at the front table? Who is going to get you those chairs?”
I turned to Franco. “Did you take care of those chairs?”
Franco said, “You’re such an idiot. How do I know about chairs for the judges?”
I said, “Okay, let’s write this down.” So I made a note that the next time we went to the auditorium, we had to figure out where to get this table to put in front of the stage and where to get nine chairs.
George went on: “You need a nice tablecloth on the table—a green one preferably, so it looks official. Also, have you thought about who is going to buy the notepads for the judges?”
“No.”
He said, “Make sure the pencils you bring have erasers.”
“Oh, shit.”
George walked us through the whole thing. We had to figure out how the stage should look, how to arrange the backstage area and have weights there ready for pumping up, where those weights would come from, and how to get them into the back of the auditorium. “Have you worked that out?” he asked. “I’m sure this auditorium is governed by unions, so what are you allowed to lift and carry and what has to be done by the union guys?”
Franco and I, of course, didn’t like the idea of having to obey union work rules. But we reminded ourselves that everything was much easier to do here compared to what it would be in Europe. Getting the permits and paying the taxes were much simpler, and the taxes were lower. Also, we had a lot of enthusiasm from the people who ran the auditorium.
In the end the competition was packed. Franco and I personally picked up all the bodybuilders from the airport, and we treated them exactly the way we would have wanted to be treated. The top bodybuilders were there. There was good, experienced judging. We invited judges, sponsors, and contestants to a reception the night before, which Franco and I paid for. All our publicity efforts really filled the hall, so that we ended up having to turn away two hundred people. Most important, the seats were filled by people from all walks of life, not just bodybuilders.
The ripples from my success on The Merv Griffin Show extended into the fall. Shelley booked me onto more talk shows. It was always the same. Since there was no expectation at all, I’d be spontaneous, and the host would respond, “This is fascinating!” Pretty soon I realized that in an entertainment interview, you could just make up stuff! I’d say things like, “In 1968 Playboy did a survey, and eighty percent of women hated bodybuilders. But now it’s turned around, and eighty-seven percent of women love guys with muscles.” They loved it.
Being on Merv Griffin led to another unexpected payoff. The morning after the show, I got a call at the gym from Gary Morton, the husband and business partner of Lucille Ball. “We saw you last night,” he said. “You were funny. She has a job for you.” Lucille Ball was then the most powerful woman in television. She was world famous for her sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here’s Lucy, and was the first woman in TV to break from the studios and run her own production company, which made her rich. Morton explained that she was working on a TV special with Art Carney, best known as Ed Norton on the 1950s sitcom The Honeymooners. She wanted me to play the part of a masseur. Would I come in that afternoon and read from the script? All of a sudden Lucy was on the phone. “You were fabulous! You were great! We’ll see you later, right? Come in, we love you.”
I went to their office, and somebody handed me the script. The show was called Happy Anniversary and Goodbye. I got really excited as I read it. Lucille Ball and Art Carney were playing a middle-aged couple named Norma and Malcolm. Their twenty-fifth anniversary is coming up, but instead Malcolm declares he’s tired of Norma and suggests they get a divorce. Norma is tired of Malcolm, too. So they agree on a trial separation, and Malcolm moves out. But he goes back to the apartment to pick up something he forgot, and there is Norma, lying half naked on a table getting a massage. She plays it up to make him jealous, which leads to a hilarious fight, with the masseur, whose name is Rico, caught in the middle.
That masseur would be me. It was a seven-minute part of the hourlong show, and I thought, “This is great exposure; I will be on camera with Lucille Ball and Art Carney!” Since Hercules in New York had never been released, this would be my screen debut, and it would have an audience in the millions.
I was daydreaming about it when they called me in to read. Lucy, Gary Morton, and the director were all there, and she was very welcoming. “You were really funny last night!” she said. “Here, let’s read.”
The whole thing was so foreign to me, I had no idea that reading from a script means that you are supposed to actually act out the role. I sat and literally spoke my lines word for word, as if I was showing the teacher I knew how to read. “Hello my name is Rico and I’m from Italy and I was a truck driver there but now I’m a masseur.”
And she said “Oooo-kay.” I noticed the director looking at me. Under normal circumstances, they would have said, “Thank you very much; we’ll call your agent.” In my case, they couldn’t have done that, because I didn’t have an agent. But this wasn’t an ordinary audition because Lucy really wanted me to play the part and nobody else was auditioning. I was there just so she could get Gary and the director on board.
She jumped right in to try to save me. “Great!” she said. “Now, do you know what the scene is about?” I said yes, and she said, “Tell me, just briefly.”
And I said, “Well, it seems to me that I’m coming into your apartment because you’ve asked me to come and give you a massage, and you are getting divorced or a separation, or something like that, and I have these muscles because I was a truck driver in Italy, and I came to America, and I made some money not as a truck driver but as a masseur.”
“That’s exactly what it is. Now, can you tell me this again at the right moment when I ask you?” This time we played out the scene, starting with me ringing the doorbell, walking in with the massage table, and setting it up. She’s gaping at my muscles and saying, “How did you get like that?”
“Oh, I actually come from Italy. I was a truck driver and then I became a masseur guy, and I’m very happy to be here today to massage you”—she is losing it as I’m saying this—“and after that I have another massage someplace else. I make a little bit of money massaging, and it’s also good for the muscles.”
“Now let’s improvise,” she said. So I made up a line. “Lie down so I can work you over.”
She said, “Great, great! What do you think, guys?”
“That was funny, the way he explained it, and the Italian accent,” the director said.
I said, “No, it’s a German accent, but to you guys, it all sounds the same.” They laughed and told me, “Okay, you’ve got the job.”
Art Carney, Lucy, and I rehearsed that scene every day for a week. Carney had just won an Academy Award for his leading role in the movie Harry and Tonto. He was a very funny actor who turned out to have even more trouble than me memorizing lines. Finally, on Friday they told me, “On Monday when you come back, we’re going to shoot live.” I felt ready and said great.
Monday I waited backstage in the green room with some of the other actors. Then somebody came in and said, “Your scene is ready.” They led m
e behind the stage to the door I was supposed to go through. “Stand here, and when the green light goes on, ring the doorbell and take it from there, just like we rehearsed.”
So I waited, holding my massage table by the handle. I had on shorts and sneakers and a jacket I was supposed to strip off during the scene to reveal my tank top and my muscles underneath all pumped up and oiled up.
The green light came on, I rang the bell, Lucy opened the door, and I stepped onstage and said my first line, “I am Rico.”
All of a sudden there was laughter and applause.
Which we hadn’t rehearsed. I had no idea that “We’re going to shoot live” in this case meant that we would be videotaping in front of three cameras and a studio audience. I’d never heard the expression before—what did it mean to me, a bodybuilder who had never been involved in TV? Meanwhile, Lucy was in character as Norma, acting hypnotized by my bulging legs and getting a big laugh by saying, “Oh, y-yes . . . won’t you come in . . . Oh, you are in,” and hurrying behind me to shut the door.
My next line was supposed to be “Where do we do it, here or in the bedroom?” But I’m standing frozen, holding the massage table and looking into the lights and listening to the applause and laughter of a thousand people filling this studio up to the rafters.
Being a total pro, Lucy saw what was happening and ad-libbed. “Well, don’t just stand there looking at the art! You came to give me a massage—right?” I remembered my line, and from there the scene went great. There was applause throughout.
She was so good that I really thought she was asking me questions that I had to answer; I didn’t feel like I was acting. It was a real lesson, and instead of getting paid, I should have paid them. Lucy followed my career like a mom for many years after that. As tough as she was by reputation, she was a sweetheart to me and would write me a letter of praise whenever a new movie came out. I ran into her many times at celebrity events, and she always gave me a big hug and just went off the deep end. “I take full credit for this man. He’s going to become a big star,” she’d say.
Lucy gave me advice about Hollywood. “Just remember, when they say, ‘No,’ you hear ‘Yes,’ and act accordingly. Someone says to you, ‘We can’t do this movie,’ you hug him and say, ‘Thank you for believing in me.’ ”
—
I had to be careful not to let my adventures in television sidetrack me from training. In July, Franco and I shifted to workouts at maximum effort twice a day to get ready for the competitions of the fall. I was defending my Mr. Olympia title for the fourth straight year, but in some ways it was far from routine. For the first time, the contest was going to be at Madison Square Garden, New York City’s top location for rock concerts and sports. True, we were in the 4,500-seat Felt Forum rather than the 21,000-seat arena. But still, Madison Square Garden was where people came to see Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fight for the first time and to watch Wilt Chamberlain and Willis Reed play. It was where they came to listen to Frank Sinatra and to the Rolling Stones. It was the place for championships and major tournaments in college sports.
So bodybuilding was taking a big step up. People had seen me on TV. The book Pumping Iron was about to come out. And thanks to George Butler’s tireless networking, the 1974 Mr. Olympia contest was getting buzz like it never had before. Charles Gaines’s friend Delfina Rattazzi, an heiress to the Fiat fortune and later Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s assistant at the Viking Press, would be hosting a book party at her apartment after the competition. She was inviting dozens of hip and trendy people who would have turned up their noses at bodybuilding before. I didn’t know where it would all lead, but I knew I wanted to be in top form.
Joe Weider’s magazine writers outdid themselves working to whip up excitement for this event, calling it “the Super Bowl of bodybuilding.” The venue was a “modern Roman Colosseum.” The contestants were “gladiators in a mortal vascular combat.” The event itself was “the great muscle war of ’74” and “the battle of the titans.”
This year’s drama revolved around bodybuilding’s new wunderkind, Lou Ferrigno, a six-foot-five, 265-pound giant from Brooklyn. He was only twenty-two and getting better and better each year. He’d won both Mr. America and Mr. Universe in 1973, and now he was training to knock me off as Mr. Olympia. They were hyping Lou as the new Arnold. He had a terrific frame, wide shoulders, incredible abs, out-of-this-world potential, and nothing else on his mind except training and winning. To be precise, Lou was training for six hours a day, six days a week—more than even my body could stand. I loved being the champ. But how much more was there to prove after winning Mr. Olympia four straight years? Plus, my businesses were growing, and maybe I had the start of a movie career. As we trained for New York, I made up my mind that this Mr. Olympia would be my last.
Ferrigno had won the Mr. International contest that Franco and I had organized in Los Angeles. He was massive and symmetrical, and if I’d been a judge, I’d have picked him too, even though he was still undefined—like me when I first came to the America—and his posing needed work. If I’d had his body, I could have shaped it in a month to beat anyone—even me. I liked Lou, a nice, quiet guy from a sweet, hardworking family. He’d been partly deaf from the time he was a kid and had a lot to overcome growing up. Now he made a living as a sheet-metal worker, and his coach was his father, a New York City police lieutenant who drove him really hard. I could see how bodybuilding gave Lou pride. It made him somebody with a body. I loved the idea of a guy beating all the obstacles. I knew how he must have felt about me. He’d been a fan of mine growing up, and so he now saw me the way that I had once seen Sergio Oliva: as the champion he would ultimately have to beat.
But I didn’t think he’d be ready. This wasn’t going to be his year. So I trained carefully and kept things low-key and took it lightly when people would say to me, “Arnold, you’ve gotta be careful. If the judges want to look for a new face . . .” Or “Maybe Weider thinks you’re too independent. Maybe he wants a new star.”
Lou showed up in New York a few days before the competition, fresh from defending his Mr. Universe title in Verona, Italy. His father boasted at a press preview that if Lou won, he’d hold the title for a decade. “There is nobody on the horizon to challenge him.” But Lou skipped a talk show on the morning of the competition to which he’d been invited along with Franco and me. “He’s shy, he must be really shvitzing,” I guessed. On the air I joked, “He is probably sitting at home watching my body and moving around his television set, posing, to see if he should compete.”
At Madison Square Garden that night, it wasn’t even close. By the final pose-off Lou was looking depressed, like a rookie who’d made a mistake. And he had. He’d tried so hard to add muscle definition that he’d lost too much weight, so his big body actually looked stringy and less muscular than mine. Onstage in front of a capacity crowd, I copied his poses, doing each one better than him. Then came a moment when we were face to face in matching biceps poses, and I gave Lou a little smile that said, “You are beaten.” He knew it, the judges knew it, and so did the crowd.
Franco and I didn’t stick around for very long after the contest; we ducked out with the Weiders and my old friend Albert Busek, who had flown from Munich to cover the event, to go to the Pumping Iron book party at Delfina’s. The moment I walked in the door, I was the rookie. Delfina had a giant three-floor apartment, very decorated, very hip. There were paintings on the ceilings rather than on the walls so you could lie around getting stoned and look up and see the art.
An endless stream of people filled the huge rooms. The party was catered and seemed really well done, although I had never witnessed anything like this before, so I had no way to know. It was extraordinary. I had never seen this quality of people, the elegance, the high heels, the jewels, the extraordinary-looking women, actors, directors, people from the art scene, people from fashion, and a lot of people I did not know at all. I could see that it was kind of a Euro-thing, with people very sophisticate
d, with their clothes, or lack thereof, gay people, strange people—everything was there.
All I could do was shake my head and say, “This is going to be an interesting life.” I did not at all expect this. I was getting my first taste of what came with show business and fame in New York. No matter how many times you go there as a tourist or on business, you’re never an insider. But now I felt I was being accepted—or at least like I was watching the show from the front row.
I sat down with Joe Weider, the kingmaker of bodybuilding, on a hotel patio in Miami, hoping to pump him for training advice; I could hardly believe it when he started interviewing me instead. Jimmy Caruso / Courtesy of Weider Health and Fitness
California’s Venice Beach was an amazing scene where gymnasts, circus performers, and bodybuilders loved to show off. Here we put on an impromptu acrobatics show. Art Zeller
My training partners (from top) Franco Columbu, Frank Zane, and Pete Caputo at Gold’s Gym piled on as I did donkey raises to build up my calves. Art Zeller
Joe Weider’s wife Betty and I often posed for ads in his magazines. The pitch was simple: if you get muscles, you can go to the beach and pick up girls. Art Zeller
Franco Columbu and I billed ourselves as European experts in construction and hired other bodybuilders to help in our first business doing masonry and repairs. Art Zeller
Joe Weider and I pore over photographs, working on magazine layouts. Albert Busek
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Page 18