Eunice snapped, “Don’t ever say that again in this house, do you hear me?”
“Sorry, Mom, but I am so full. Your cooking is unbelievable.” Of course that was a wisecrack too. Eunice did not even know how to soft-boil an egg.
“Be happy that you were fed,” she said.
Maria’s parents certainly had a much more casual approach to childrearing than Meinhard and I had experienced. We were always told to shut up, whereas the Shriver kids were encouraged to join in the conversation. If, let’s say, the subject came up of Independence Day and what a great celebration it was, Sargent would ask, “Bobby, what does the Fourth of July mean to you?” They would talk about policy issues and social ills and things that the president had said. Everyone was expected to come up with something and take part.
—
Although Maria and I lived on opposite coasts, our lives became intertwined. She came to my graduation up in Wisconsin—after a decade of course work, I was awarded a degree in business, with a major in international fitness marketing. She was just starting her TV career, producing local news shows in Philadelphia and Baltimore. I’d visit her there, and once or twice I went on a show with her buddy Oprah Winfrey, who was also just starting out and had a talk show in Baltimore. Maria always picked interesting friends, but Oprah really stood out. She was talented and aggressive, and you could tell she believed in herself. For one of her shows, she came to the gym and worked out with me to demonstrate how important it is to stay fit. Another time we talked about the importance of teaching kids to read and getting them interested in books.
I was proud of Maria. For the first time I saw how determined she was to make her own niche. There were no other journalists in the family. When she went for her job interview, they asked, “Are you willing to work fourteen hours a day, or do you expect to be pampered as a Shriver?” She said she was willing to work hard, and she did.
We traveled together to Hawaii, LA, Europe. Our ski trip to Austria in 1978 was her first Christmas away from her family. I would also accompany Maria to family get-togethers, of which there were many. An aspect of being a Kennedy cousin, I quickly learned, was that you were never completely free. Maria was expected to go to Hyannis Port in the summer, accompany the family on winter vacation, and be home at Thanksgiving and Christmas. If someone had a birthday or a wedding, she had better be there. Since there were so many cousins, the number of command performances was high.
When Maria could get away from work, she visited me in California. She warmed up really well to some of my friends, especially Franco, and also to some of the actors and directors I knew. Others she didn’t like: guys she felt were hangers-on or were trying to use me. She and my mom got to know each other too, during my mom’s annual Eastertime visits.
The more serious we became, the more Maria talked about moving to California. So for us, Teddy’s 1980 presidential campaign was well timed. I was ready to buy a house, and our first major decision as a couple was to look for it together and to call it our place. In late summer we found a 1920s Spanish-style house in a nice section of Santa Monica off San Vincente Avenue. We called it our house, but it wasn’t really. It was mine. It had a curved stairway to the left as you entered, lots of nice vintage tile, a big living room with a beamed ceiling, and beautiful fireplaces in the living room, the TV room, and the master bedroom upstairs. There was a long lap pool and a guesthouse for my mom to stay in when she visited.
The fact that it was our house was just between Maria and me, because she didn’t want her parents to know we were living together—especially Sarge, who was very conservative. She told them she lived a few blocks away, on Montana Avenue, and we actually rented and furnished an apartment so that when Sarge and Eunice visited, Maria could invite them over for lunch there. I’m pretty sure that Eunice knew what was going on, but the separate apartment was important for the family image.
Of course, total anonymity is almost impossible in Hollywood, especially for a Kennedy cousin. One of the real estate agents who knew of Maria’s Kennedy connection said to us while we were house hunting, “I have a fascinating house to show you in Beverly Hills. I’m not going to tell you what makes it so interesting; you just have to see.” We went, and she showed us around. Then she said, “Do you know who lived here? Gloria Swanson!” And she took us to the basement and showed us a tunnel that led to another house nearby. Joe Kennedy had used that tunnel during his and the actress Gloria Swanson’s long-running affair in the late 1920s. Afterward, Maria asked me, “Why did she show us this?” She was partly fascinated and partly mad and embarrassed.
—
Teddy’s campaign gave me an amazing opportunity to see what it is like to jump into a presidential race. I went to New Hampshire with Maria in February to experience the primary. The campaign staff was staying in a little hotel that buzzed like a beehive with media and campaign staff and volunteers and people with newspapers under their arm scurrying off to read the latest coverage. Organizers would send Maria out to some local factory to shake hands.
The operation seemed Mickey Mouse to me, because I didn’t understand the way campaigns work. Teddy Kennedy was a big-shot politician who made the cover of Time magazine when he decided to run. So I imagined that he would be addressing huge rallies. I’d already been to several rallies for Republican candidate Ronald Reagan that year, and he always drew one thousand to two thousand people, sometimes more. Even if Reagan was just stopping off at a factory somewhere to talk to the workers, it still looked like a rally, with flags, banners, patriotic music.
But there we were in this rinky-dink hotel. Shaking hands, going to shops, going to restaurants. “This is so odd,” I thought. “Why stay at this awful little hotel? Why not a grand hotel?” I didn’t know that when you start out, it is all about one-to-one contact. I didn’t know you can’t have campaign staff staying in grand hotels because somebody will inevitably write a story about how you are wasting the campaign money that hardworking people had donated. I didn’t understand that some events are big and some are smaller and more intimate, depending on the circumstances.
The 1980 Democratic race developed into something especially brutal. Before he jumped in, Teddy was ahead of President Carter in opinion polls by a margin of more than two to one. Everyone was egging on Teddy to run. Journalists were writing about how fantastic and powerful he was and how he would win easily against Jimmy Carter and save the day for the Democrats. He could do no wrong. But as soon as he announced his candidacy in November 1979, everything turned. The attacks were relentless. I couldn’t believe the difference. It didn’t help that in a national interview on CBS, Teddy couldn’t give a convincing answer when asked why he wanted to be president. People challenged his character because of the 1969 car crash on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, that killed his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker for RFK. They also claimed that Teddy was just living off his brothers’ reputation, even though he’d been a senator for eighteen years.
I was shocked. It was amazing to be in the front row and watch it all play out in front of my eyes.
Teddy lost the crucial early primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, and that caused some of his funding to dry up—which meant that the campaign had to downsize even before the primaries in the larger states. But then he fought his way back enough to win several major states, including New York in March, Pennsylvania in April, and—thanks in part to Maria’s efforts—California in June. However, he lost in dozens of other states, and in the national opinion polls, he never caught President Carter again. Teddy ended up winning only ten primaries out of thirty-four. On the first day of the Democratic National Convention in August, it was clear that President Carter had enough delegates to lock up the nomination, and Teddy was forced to drop out.
All of a sudden, after months of intense effort, it was over, and Maria was sad and depressed. The family had experienced so much devastation just in her lifetime, starting with President John F. Kennedy’s assas
sination when she was eight, and Bobby Kennedy’s when she was twelve, and the Chappaquiddick incident the following summer. Then on top of those, she saw her father lose in a landslide as George McGovern’s vice presidential running mate in 1972, and lose when he tried to get the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. And now Teddy had run, and they’d been handed another loss.
She’d put her heart into the campaign. I could see how overwhelming politics can become and how totally out of control. When you run for president, you feel the public pressure every day. The national and local media track everything you say and do, and everyone is analyzing you. Seeing her uncle go through that and lose was really, really tough. I was happy to play a supportive role in these difficult circumstances. “You did a fantastic job,” I told her, “the way you spoke to the media, the way you busted your butt for Teddy.” The experience confirmed Maria’s dim view of politics as a career choice.
I used all the skills I had to cheer up Maria. I whisked her away to a vacation in Europe, where we had a great time visiting London and Paris and going all around France. Soon Maria stopped feeling like a beaten-down campaign worker, and her enthusiasm and sense of humor returned.
Before Maria had left the East Coast, she’d made a gutsy career change. She’d started with the goal of being the producer, the person in the control room. Now she decided to go on camera and compete for one of those scarce top jobs in network news. I’d always advanced by starting with a clear vision and working as hard as possible to achieve it, and I could see that same determination unfolding in Maria. I thought it was great.
No one in the Kennedy family had ever been an on-camera journalist. It was a totally new thing, and it was hers. I’d watched some of her cousins carve out their niches, but it almost always involved specializing in a cause or issue within the framework of the family beliefs. For Maria to go out and be in front of the camera was a real declaration of independence.
As soon as we got back to Santa Monica, she set to work making connections and getting the necessary training, much as I had done with my acting. What did it take to succeed in front of the camera? She had to figure that out. What did she need to change about her looks, her voice, her style? What should she keep the same? Her teachers would say, “Your hair’s too big, you have to cut it down. Or can you pull it back? Let’s try that. Your eyes are too strong; maybe let’s tone down the eyes.” There was all this shaping and molding going on. She had to learn what makes you easy to look at and listen to day after day on TV, and not be overly dramatic and divert attention from the news, which should be the focus.
During my Conan shoot in Madrid the following winter, we couldn’t see each other for five months. She mailed me photos showing that she’d lost ten pounds and shortened her hair and put a little wave in it. Conan, meanwhile, had been scheduled and postponed several times. We were supposed to go on location in Yugoslavia in the summer of 1980, but Yugoslavia became unstable due to the death of its dictator, Marshal Tito, in May. The producers decided it would be cheaper and simpler to move the production to Spain in the fall. Then when Maria and I got back from Europe, I learned that the project had been delayed again until after New Year’s.
—
This opened the way for a crazy plan that I’d only been toying with up to now: to make a surprise comeback and reclaim the world bodybuilding championship and the title of Mr. Olympia. Bodybuilding had grown tremendously in the four years since Pumping Iron. Health clubs were sprouting up all over the country, and strength training was a key part of what they offered. Joe Gold sold his original gym to franchisers and built a big, new establishment near the beach called the World Gym, which welcomed women as well as men.
The Mr. Olympia competition was thriving. In one of Joe Weider’s periodic pushes to expand worldwide, the International Federation of Body Building (IFBB) was holding this year’s contest in Sydney, Australia. In fact, I was due to work the event as a color commentator for CBS-TV. This would pay very well, but the appeal of doing it melted away once I felt the fire to compete again. The vision became irresistible as it crystallized in my mind. Reconquering the sport was the perfect preparation for Conan. It would show everyone who was the real king—and the real barbarian. Frank Zane had held the title for three years, and at least a dozen contenders were jockeying to win, including guys I saw at the gym every day. One was Mike Mentzer, a five-foot-eight Pennsylvanian with a dark, droopy mustache who’d finished a close second the previous year. He was promoting himself as the up-and-coming guru of weight training and spokesman for the sport and was always quoting the philosophy of the novelist Ayn Rand. Often there were rumors that I would return to competition, and I knew that if I denied everything and waited until the last minute to jump in, the uncertainty would gnaw at people like him.
Maria thought all this was unwise. “You run competitions now,” she pointed out. “You left bodybuilding as the champion and this could turn people against you. Besides, you might not win.” I knew she was right, but the desire to compete wouldn’t go away. “If you have so much extra energy, why don’t you learn Spanish before you go to Spain for the movie shoot?” she said. Having just seen Teddy lose the Democratic presidential nomination, she didn’t want another risk in her life. The night before, she’d freaked when Muhammad Ali, who was coming out of retirement to try to become the first four-time World Heavyweight Champion, was beaten convincingly by the current champ Larry Holmes. It was like that was symbolic.
But I just couldn’t let it go. The more I thought about it, the more I dug in on the idea.
Then one night, to my surprise, Maria turned around. She said that if I was still determined to compete, she’d support me. She became an extraordinary partner.
Maria was the only person I told. Of course Franco guessed. My longtime friend was a chiropractor now and was working as my training partner in preparation for Conan. He’d been saying things like “Arnold, the Olympia is coming up. You must go into it and shock everybody.” Some of the guys in the gym were really uneasy. When they saw me start blasting two-hour workouts twice a day, they couldn’t figure it out. They knew that I was supposed to play Conan, and I’d told them that being ripped was required for the part. Yes, I was going to Sydney, but that was to do TV commentary, wasn’t it? Besides, Mr. Olympia was only five weeks away: nobody could start heavy training this late and get ready! Still, they weren’t sure, and I fed the uncertainty. As weeks passed and the competition drew near, I would drive Mentzer crazy just by smiling at him across the gym.
It was the hardest training I’d ever done, which made it fun. I was amazed by how deeply Maria involved herself in every step, even though she was focused on her own goal. She’d grown up around sports, of course: not bodybuilding, but baseball, football, tennis, and golf, but it is all the same thing. She understood why I had to get up at six in the morning to train for two hours, and she’d come with me to the gym. At dinner she’d see me about to dig into some ice cream, and she’d literally take it away. All the enthusiasm she’d focused on Teddy’s run for president was now transferred to me.
The Mr. Olympia contest was staged in the Sydney Opera House, the spectacular architectural masterpiece shaped like a row of sails on the edge of Sydney Harbour. Frank Sinatra had performed there just before us. It was an honor to appear in such a place—and a sign of how bodybuilding was moving up in prestige. The prize money was $50,000, the most ever offered in a bodybuilding competition, and fifteen champions registered in advance, making it the largest field ever.
An opera house turned out to be the perfect setting because from the day we arrived, the contest was full of drama, emotion, and intrigue. It caused an uproar when I announced that I was there not to observe but to compete. The federation officials had to debate: could a contestant jump in without registering beforehand? They realized there was no rule against it, so I was allowed to participate. Next came a rebellion against certain rules of the competition itself, in the form of a petition signed
by all of the bodybuilders except me. The organizers had to negotiate to avoid chaos. After much commotion, they agreed not only to adopt the changes but also asked the contestants to approve the judges.
All this backstage maneuvering brought out a side of Maria that made me think of Eunice in action. Even though Maria tried to separate herself, she had her mother’s political instincts and was wise beyond her years. In politics, when disputes arise and camps form, you have to grasp what’s happening and move very quickly. She was right there with lightning-fast perceptions and really good advice. She talked to the right people and helped me avoid getting isolated or blindsided. She was a total animal. I wondered how someone who had never been involved in the bodybuilding world and who had barely even met the players could step in so quickly and be so effective.
In the end I won my seventh crown as Mr. Olympia. But that victory remains controversial to this day. The judges awarded a split decision, voting 5–2 for me against the closest competitor, Chris Dickerson of the United States. It was the first nonunanimous decision in Mr. Olympia history. When my name was announced, only half the two thousand people in the opera house cheered, and for the first time in my life, I heard boos. Right afterward, one of the top five finishers threw around chairs backstage, while another smashed his trophy to smithereens in the parking lot and yet another announced he was quitting bodybuilding for good.
Training for competition and winning again gave me pleasure, but in hindsight, I have to admit that the episode was not beneficial for the sport. It created a lot of divisiveness, and I could have handled it differently. The old camaraderie of bodybuilding was gone. Eventually I reconciled with all those guys, but with some it took years to patch up.
Conan wasn’t due to start filming in earnest for a couple more months, but I had to fly to London in late October to shoot a preliminary scene. When I arrived, John Milius took one look at me and shook his head. “I’ve got to ask you to retrain,” he said. “I can’t have Conan looking like a bodybuilder. This is not a Hercules movie. I want you to be chunkier. You need to gain a little weight. You have to look like someone who’s been a pit fighter and a warrior and a slave chained for years to the Wheel of Pain. That’s the kind of body I want.” Milius wanted everything to look as consistent as possible. That was logical, even though Conan was entirely a fantasy world. In the scene we shot in England, I was made up to look like Conan the king in his old age, giving a soliloquy meant as the introduction of the film:
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Page 27