Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

Other pictures in the magazine showed scientists and technicians in white lab coats developing nutritional supplements in the Weider Research Clinic. “Weider Research Clinic,” I would say to myself, “this is unbelievable!” And there were pictures of airplanes with “Weider” painted on the side in big letters. I’d imagined an outfit the size of General Motors, with a fleet of planes flying around the globe delivering Weider equipment and food supplements. The writing in the magazine sounded fabulous too when my friends translated it for me. The stories talked about “blasting the muscles” and building “deltoids like cannonballs” and “a chest like a fortress.”

And now here I was, six years later, on Venice Beach! Just like Dave Draper, only now it was me with the dune buggy and the surfboard and the adoring girls. Of course, by this time I was aware enough to see that Weider was creating a whole fantasy world, with a foundation in reality but skyscrapers of hype. Yes, there were surfboards, but the bodybuilders didn’t really surf. Yes, there were pretty girls, but they were models who got paid for the photo session. (Actually, one of the girls was Joe’s wife, Betty, a beautiful model whom he didn’t have to pay.) Yes, there were Weider supplements and, yes, some research took place, but there was no big building in Los Angeles called the Weider Research Clinic. Yes, Weider products were distributed around the world, but there were no Weider planes. Discovering the hype didn’t bother me, though. Enough of it was true.

Not only was I fascinated to be in the middle of this, I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. “I have to pinch myself,” I would think. I told my friends that my worst nightmare would be to feel somebody shaking me and hear my mother’s voice say, “Arnold, you overslept! You have to get up! You’re going to be two hours late for work. Hurry! You have to get to the factory!” And I’d be saying, “Noooo! Why did you wake me up? I was having the most incredible dream. I want to see how it turns out.”

Joe himself wasn’t the easiest guy to like. Starting in the Great Depression, he and his younger brother, Ben, had clawed their way out of the slums of Montreal and built their businesses from scratch. The Weider magazines, equipment, nutritional supplement businesses, and competitions were bodybuilding’s biggest empire, bringing in about $20 million a year, which made Joe and Ben the men to know in what was still a money-starved sport. The only other people who actually made a living out of bodybuilding were a few promoters and gym owners; none of the bodybuilders themselves did, and I was the only one I’d ever heard of getting paid just to train.

Joe and Ben were always pushing to expand, and they didn’t mind invading other people’s turf. In 1946 they created their own association, the International Federation of Body Building (IFBB), to challenge both the American Athletic Union, which controlled Olympic weight lifting and bodybuilding in North America, and the National Amateur Body-Builders’ Association (NABBA), which regulated bodybuilding in the United Kingdom. They started feuds by promoting their own versions of the Mr. America competition, which belonged to the AAU, and Mr. Universe, which belonged to NABBA. Just like in boxing, the duplication of titles caused a lot of confusion but helped bodybuilding to expand.

Joe was also the first to offer a cash prize for winning a bodybuilding championship. When he invented Mr. Olympia in 1965, the prize was $1,000 and an engraved silver plate. In any of the other contests, like Mr. Universe, all you got was a trophy. Joe’s competitions also offered the best deal for contestants. He’d pay for your hotel and plane fare. But he would always hold onto the return ticket until you’d done your stint posing for his photographers after the event. Actually, Joe would have preferred to shoot the bodybuilders before the event, but the bodybuilders usually didn’t feel ready to be photographed beforehand and Franco Columbu and I were the only ones who would agree. We liked it because being photographed forced us to be in good shape and gave us a chance to practice posing.

Mr. Olympia itself was sheer promotional genius. The idea was to choose a champion of champions and Mr. Olympia was by invitation only, and you had to be a present or past Mr. Universe to qualify. So Joe was cashing in on the proliferation of titles he’d created! No wonder the Weiders drove people crazy. Their latest campaign was lobbying the International Olympic Committee to recognize bodybuilding as an international sport.

I liked the fact that Joe Weider was a hustler. He had magazines. He had a federation. He had knowledge. He shook things up and wanted to make bodybuilding really big. He had something to offer that I needed, and he felt I had something to offer that he needed.

Plus, I was not a lazy bastard. The first thing I told him when I got to California was “I don’t want to hang around. I don’t want to take your money for nothing. Give me something to do where I can learn.” He had a retail store on Fifth Street in Santa Monica that sold nutritional supplements and weight-lifting equipment. So I asked if I could work there. “I want to help customers,” I told him. “It helps me to learn business and practice my English, and I like dealing with people.”

Joe loved hearing this. “You see, Arnold,” he said in his Canadian accent, “you want to work, you want to build yourself, you are German, you are a machine, you are unbelievable. You are not like these lazy bastards! ”

I loved the way Joe’s mind worked. He had already spun a whole myth about me: that I was this German machine, totally reliable, there’s no malfunction, it always works. And he was going to apply his know-how and power to make this machine come to life and walk around like Frankenstein. I thought this was very funny. I didn’t mind him thinking of me as his creation because I knew that meant that Joe Weider would love me. This fit right in with my goal of becoming the world champion, and the more he thought about me that way, the more generous he was.

Right from the beginning, I felt that he looked at me as the son he never had. I felt that this was a unique opportunity to learn. My own father gave me advice about being disciplined, tough, and brave, but not advice on how to succeed in business. I was always searching for mentors who could pick up where my father left off. Having Joe around was like having a father who appreciated what I was trying to do.

The company was still based back east in Union City, New Jersey, but the Weiders were building a new headquarters in the San Fernando Valley. Joe would come out every few weeks to supervise. He took me along to the construction meetings and let me hang around with him to see how the business worked. When it came to the publishing side of his business, he was always looking for printers who could do a better job and charge less, and he’d include me in those discussions, too. I’d visit him in New York and sit in on meetings there also. After my English improved, he took me on a business trip to Japan, to learn how he conducted negotiations overseas and see how essential distribution is—not just in magazines but in the success of any business.

Joe emphasized the importance of going global rather than doing business in just one country. He knew that was where the future was headed. On every trip, he had multiple goals: in Japan, for example, we also met with the national bodybuilding federation, and Joe advised them on how to improve their contests. Long plane rides with Joe were always stimulating. He’d talk about business, art, antiques, sports. He was a student of world history and Jewish history. He was also heavily into psychology. He must have gone to a shrink.