The bodybuilders themselves made a dramatic entrance. While everybody was milling around in the lobby sipping white wine, in swept six of the giants from the film, including Franco, Lou Ferrigno, and Robby “the Black Prince” Robinson, who was decked out in a black velvet cape and wearing a diamond earring.
Pumping Iron was finally doing what we’d hoped: bringing bodybuilding into the mainstream. I’d been interviewed in the media all week. And lots of good reviews showed that the critics were getting the message. “This deceptively simple, intelligent movie humanizes a world that has its own cockeyed heroism,” wrote Newsweek, while Time called the movie “beautifully shot and edited, intelligently structured and—to risk what will surely seem at first a highly inappropriate term—charming. Yes, charming.”
The audience at the Plaza liked the movie too, applauding wildly at the end. They stayed in their seats for the bodybuilding demonstration that followed. My main job for the night was to be the emcee. We led off with Franco’s strongman routine, which included bending a steel bar with his teeth and blowing up a rubber hot-water bottle with his lungs. Just before the hot-water bottle exploded, you could see people in the front rows covering their ears. Then the other bodybuilders joined Franco onstage and demonstrated poses as I narrated. At the end, actress Carroll Baker in a slinky dress ran up onstage and started feeling everyone’s triceps, pectorals, and thighs before pretending to faint with ecstasy right into my arms.
My new tuxedo had its second major outing two weeks later at the Golden Globes. The ceremony was at the Beverly Hilton hotel, and again my mom was my date. She spoke only a few words of English and could barely understand what was being said unless I translated. But the hoopla in New York had amused her, and when the photographers yelled, “Pose with your mother!” she grinned and let me give her a big hug. She was impressed that the studio sent a limo to bring us to the Golden Globes. She was really excited about seeing Sophia Loren.
A lot of stars showed up for the Golden Globes because it was less stuffy and more fun than the Oscars. I spotted actors Peter Falk, Henry Fonda, and Jimmy Stewart over near the bar. Actresses Carol Burnett, Cybill Shepherd, and Deborah Kerr were there. I traded jokes with Shelley Winters and flirted with the gorgeous Raquel Welch. Henry Winkler came over to say nice things about Stay Hungry, and I explained to my mom in German that he was the Fonz, star of a big TV sitcom called Happy Days. When we sat down to dinner, I spotted Dino De Laurentiis with Jessica Lange. She was the sexy leading lady in King Kong, which Dino had produced, and was up for the best debut by an actress award. Dino took no notice of me.
Also sitting near us was Sylvester Stallone, whom I knew a little bit because Larry Kubik was his agent too. His movie Rocky was the blockbuster of the year—at the box office, it had blown away all the other hits that were up for awards, including Network, All the President’s Men, and A Star Is Born—and was nominated for Best Film. I congratulated him, and he told me enthusiastically that he was writing a new movie about wrestlers and that there might be a part for me.
After dinner Harry Belafonte, who was emceeing, came onstage. I felt my competition calmness come over me—here, like in bodybuilding, I knew I could relax because I’d done everything in my power to win. When my category came and I won, Sylvester Stallone led the applause. Then Rocky won, and he went nuts, kissing every woman he could reach on his way to the stage.
It was an incredible feeling to get my first award for acting. Winning the Golden Globe confirmed for me that I wasn’t crazy; I was on the right track.
—
I was spending almost as much time in Manhattan as in LA. For me, New York was like a candy store. Hanging out with all of these fascinating characters was so much fun. I was proud and happy to be accepted, and I felt lucky to have the kind of personality that put people at ease. They didn’t feel threatened by my body. Instead, they wanted to reach out to me, help me, and understand what I was trying to do.
Elaine Kaufman, the owner of Elaine’s, was known for being tough and difficult, but she was a sweetheart to me. She made herself my mother on the New York scene. Every time I came in, she would escort me from table to table and introduce me—we’d go to director Robert Altman’s table, and then Woody Allen’s table, and then Francis Ford Coppola’s table, and then Al Pacino’s table. “You guys have got to meet this young man,” she’d say. “Arnold, why don’t I pull out a chair for you, sit down here, let me get you some salad or something.” Sometimes I felt extremely uncomfortable, because she’d have interrupted their conversation, and maybe I wasn’t even welcome. But there I was.
I made some dopey mistakes—like telling the great ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev that he shouldn’t lose touch with his home country and he ought to go back and visit, not realizing that he’d defected from Russia in 1961. But Elaine’s regulars were usually curious and friendly. Coppola asked a lot of questions about the bodybuilding scene. Andy Warhol wanted to intellectualize it and write about what it meant: How can you look like a piece of art? How can you be the sculptor of your own body? I connected with Nureyev because we were each having our portrait painted by Jamie Wyeth, a well-known artist in his own right and the son of the famous painter Andrew Wyeth. Sometimes Nureyev would invite Jamie and me to join him at Elaine’s. He’d sweep in late at night, after one of his performances, wearing an extraordinary fur coat with a big collar and a flowing scarf. He was not tall, but he commanded the room with his attitude. He was the king. You saw it in the way he walked, the way he took off the coat, with every movement striking and perfect. Just like onstage. At least it seemed that way to me: in the presence of someone like that, your imagination takes over, and they become bigger than life. He was a sweet guy to talk to, and he told me about his love for America and the New York scene. Still, I was in awe. Being the top ballet dancer was different from being the top bodybuilder. I could be Mr. Olympia for four thousand years and never be as big as Nureyev. He was on a different plane, like Woody Allen, who could show up for a black-tie event wearing a tux and white tennis shoes, and nobody would object. It was his way of saying “Fuck you. The invitation said black tie, so I wore the black tie, but I also came as Woody Allen, on my feet.” I admired the audacity that he and Nureyev shared.
As for downtown, the Greenwich Village restaurant One Fifth was a great spot. Late on Saturday nights, following Saturday Night Live, that was where cast members John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and Laraine Newman would hang out. Often I’d watch them perform the show at NBC Studios in Rockefeller Plaza, and then meet them down at One Fifth—after which we’d all head back uptown to Elaine’s.
The best downtown parties were thrown by Ara Gallant, a skinny little guy in his midforties who always wore tight leather or denim, high-heeled cowboy boots with silver toes, a little black cap with jingling gold charms, black sideburns, and, at night, eyeliner. In the fashion world, he was famous as a photographer and as the hair and makeup stylist who created the seventies disco look: red lips, spangly clothes, big hair. He’d invite every model he could think of to his parties in his big, exotic apartment, which had red lights, thumping music in the background, and a constant haze of pot smoke. Dustin Hoffman would be there, along with Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, and Gallant’s best friend, Jack Nicholson—all the major players from the movie world. To me it was heaven. I went to every party I was invited to and was always one of the last to leave.
Andy Warhol had loaned Jamie Wyeth space in his famous studio, the Factory, to paint a portrait of me. Usually late in the afternoon I’d go there to pose, and by eight or nine o’clock Jamie would be finished, and we’d head for dinner. But one night Warhol said, “If you want to stay, you are more than welcome. I’m doing some photos in a half hour or so.”
I was fascinated by Warhol, with his blond spiky hair, his black leather, his white shirts. When he talked to you, even at a party, he always had a camera in one hand and a tape recorder in the other. It made you feel like he might use the conversatio
n in his magazine, Interview.
I said yes; I was curious to see him at work. A half-dozen young men came in and took off all their clothes. I thought, “I may be part of something interesting here.” I was always ready for a discovery or new experience. If it got flaky, I would tell myself, “God has put me on this path. He means me to be here, or else I’d be an ordinary factory worker in Graz.”
I didn’t want to stare at the naked guys, so instead I casually walked around talking to Andy’s assistants. They were putting up old-fashioned spotlights around a table in the middle of the studio. It was a big, sturdy table with a white cloth on top.
Now Andy asked a few of the naked guys to climb up on it and form a pile. Then he started moving them around. “You lie there. No, you lie across him, and then you lie across him. Perfect. Perfect.” Then he stepped back and asked the other naked guys, “Who is flexible here?”
“I’m a ballet dancer,” somebody said.
“Perfect. Why don’t you climb up, get one leg underneath here and one leg on top, and then we will build it sideways . . .”
Once he had the pile just the way he wanted, he started snapping Polaroids and adjusting the lights. The shadows had to be just so—he was fanatical about it. “Come over here, Arnold. See? This is what I’m trying to get. It’s not there yet. I’m frustrated.” He showed me a Polaroid that didn’t look like people, just shapes. “It will be called Landscapes,” he explained.
I said to myself, “This is unbelievable, this guy is turning asses into rolling hills.”
“The idea,” he went on, “is to get people talking about and writing about how we got that effect.”
Listening to Warhol, I had the feeling that if I’d asked in advance to watch him work he’d have said no. With artists, you never know what reaction you’ll get. Sometimes being spontaneous and jumping on an opportunity is the only way you can see art being made.
Jamie Wyeth and I became good friends, and months later, when the weather warmed up, he invited me to the family farm in Pennsylvania, near the Brandywine River Museum, where some of his father’s best paintings are displayed. I met Jamie’s wife, Phyllis, and then he brought me next door to an old farmhouse to meet his dad.
Andrew Wyeth, then sixty, was fencing when we walked in. No one else was there, but it definitely looked like he was facing an opponent because he even had on the mask. “Dad!” Jamie called, waving to get his attention. They talked for a moment, and then Wyeth turned toward me and took off the mask. Jamie said, “Dad, this is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’s in Pumping Iron, and I’m painting him.”
After we chatted for a while, Andrew asked, “Do you want to drive up with me to see the field where I’m painting right now?”
“Sure!” I said. I was curious to see how he worked. Wyeth led me out back to a beautiful, gleaming vintage sports car from the Roaring Twenties called a Stutz Bearcat: a two-seater convertible with huge exposed wheels, big, swooping fenders and running boards, exposed chrome exhaust pipes, and big headlights separate from the hood. It was a beautiful pimp car. I knew about the expensive, rare Stutz Bearcat because Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. each owned one. We started driving up a dirt road, with Wyeth explaining that he’d gotten the car from a vodka company in exchange for working on an ad. Meanwhile, I was noticing that we weren’t driving on a road but on a farm track with ruts for the wheels and with weeds growing up on both sides and in the middle—clearly not meant for cars like this. Then even the track ended and yet Wyeth kept driving up a hill, bumping through knee-high grass.
Finally, we arrived at the top, where I noticed an easel and a woman who was sitting on the ground wrapped in a blanket. She wasn’t beautiful, exactly, but sensuous, strong looking, and captivating—there was something unique about her. “Take it off,” Wyeth said. She dropped the blanket and sat with her breasts exposed, beautiful breasts, and I heard him mutter, “Oh, yeah.” Then he said to me, “I’m painting her now,” and he showed me the beginnings of a painting on the easel. “Anyway, I wanted you to meet because she speaks German.”
This was Helga Testorf, who worked at a neighboring farm and who was Wyeth’s obsession. He drew and painted her hundreds of times over many years, in sessions they kept secret from everyone. A decade later the story of the paintings and the obsession ended up on the covers of Time and Newsweek. But in 1977 I just happened to be there, and he let me in.
—
Running around promoting Pumping Iron ate up a lot of time, but I enjoyed the work. At the Boston premiere, George Butler introduced me to his longtime friend John Kerry, then a first assistant county district attorney. He was there with Caroline Kennedy, JFK and Jackie’s nineteen-year-old daughter who was an undergraduate at Harvard. She seemed reserved at first, but after the movie we all went to dinner and she warmed up. Caroline told me she wrote for the Harvard Crimson, the university’s daily student newspaper, and asked if I would come speak the next day. Of course I agreed happily. She and other Crimson staff members interviewed me about government and my sport. Someone asked who was my favorite president. I said, “John F. Kennedy!”
All of this was fun, and it was also a good investment in my future. By promoting Pumping Iron and bodybuilding, I was also promoting myself. Every time I was on the radio or TV, people became a little more familiar with my accent, the Arnold way of talking, and a little more comfortable and at ease with me. The effect was the opposite of what the Hollywood agents had warned. I was making my size, accent, and funny name into assets instead of peculiarities that put people off. Before long people were able to recognize me without seeing me, just by name or by the sound of my voice.
The biggest promotion opportunity on the horizon was France’s Cannes Film Festival, in May. In preparation, I decided to do something about my clothes. Up until now, my uniform had pretty much been double-knit pants, a Lacoste shirt, and cowboy boots. One reason for this was lack of money. I couldn’t afford to have a wardrobe custom made, and the only off-the-rack clothes that could be made to fit came from big men’s stores, where the waist had to be taken in by a foot and a half. Another reason was that up to now, clothes were just not part of the plan. Every dollar should be invested to turn into two or three dollars and make me financially secure. With clothes, the money was gone. George told me the best tailor in New York was Morty Sills. So I went to him and asked, “If I had to pick one suit to own, what would it be?”
“Where are you wearing it?” he asked.
“First of all, a month from now, I’m going to the Cannes Film Festival.”
“Well, that’s a beige linen suit. There is no debate about that.”
So Morty made me a light beige linen suit and picked the tie and the shirt so that I would look really snappy.
Without question, the clothes were important when I got to Cannes. Decked out in the suit I was so proud of, with the right shirt, the right tie, the right shoes, I circulated among the thousands of journalists there and drummed up a lot of press for Pumping Iron. But the biggest splash I made there was on the beach, where George had the idea of staging a photo op featuring a dozen girls from Crazy Horse, the Parisian strip club and cabaret. They were outfitted in frilly summer dresses, bonnets, and bouquets—and I was just in my posing trunks. Pictures of that scene appeared in newspapers around the world, and the Pumping Iron screening was packed to overflowing.
So many famous stars were at Cannes—like Mick and Bianca Jagger!—and I was part of it. I kicked around a ball with the great Brazilian soccer star Pelé. I went scuba diving with French military frogmen. I met Charles Bronson for the first time. The woman who headed European distribution for his movies hosted an evening for him at the hotel on the beach. She sat next to him at the head table, and I was close enough to hear their conversation. It turned out that Bronson wasn’t an easy guy to talk to. “You’re contributing so much to our success,” she said to him. “We’re so lucky to have you here. Isn’t the weather wonderful? We’re so lucky
to have sunshine every day.” He waited a beat or two and then answered, “I hate small talk.” She was so shocked that she turned to her other dinner partner. I was stunned. That’s the way he was, though: rough around the edges. It never seemed to hurt his movies, but I decided I’d stay with a friendlier style.
Now that I was interested in clothes, my agent Larry Kubik was happy to take me shopping after I got back to LA. “You can find those same pants in this other store that’s not on Rodeo Drive for fifty percent less,” he’d say. Or, “Your brown socks won’t go with that shirt. I think you should have blue socks.” He had a good eye, and for both of us, shopping was a welcome diversion from turning down terrible parts. The most recent offers were for me to play a muscleman in Sextette, starring eighty-five-year-old Mae West, and, for $200,000, to be in commercials about automobile tires.
For months it seemed like the only action for me in LA was in real estate. Partly because of inflation and partly because of growth, Santa Monica property values were going through the roof. My apartment building wasn’t even on the market, but around the time that Pumping Iron came out, a buyer offered me almost double what I’d paid for it in 1974. The profit on my $37,000 investment was $150,000—I’d quadrupled my money in three years. I rolled the whole amount into a building twice the size, with twelve apartments rather than six, with the help of my friend Olga, who, as always, had found just the place to buy.
My secretary, Ronda Columb, who had been running the Arnold mail-order business and organizing my crazy schedule for years, was tickled to see me turning into a real estate minimogul. She was a transplanted New Yorker, four times divorced and ten or twelve years older than me. Her first husband had been a bodybuilding champ in the 1950s. I’d met her through Gold’s Gym. Ronda was like an older sister. Her latest boyfriend was a real estate developer named Al Ehringer.
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Page 23