Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

With my business and movie careers expanding, I’d finally broken down and hired more assistants. Ronda was still my mainstay. She’d worked for me since 1974, and now she was in charge of investments and keeping the books. Although she had run a toy store, she had no formal training as a businesswoman, so she took business classes at Santa Monica College and UCLA. I remember a few years later, the first time we got a million-dollar check as part of a real estate deal. She came running into my office holding it and said, “Oh my God, I’ve never held this much money. What am I supposed to do with it? I’m so nervous.”

Anita Lerner, a thirty-year-old assistant who had to learn about travel, took over scheduling and trip planning, while the mail-order business went to an artist in her twenties named Lynn Marks. We’d bring in a fourth assistant to handle special projects such as books, photo permissions, seminars, and bodybuilding events in Columbus in partnership with Jim Lorimer. Mail order still provided a lucrative income stream because of those Ohio events and because stories about me were still a key element of Joe Weider’s magazines. Scarcely an issue of Muscle & Fitness or Flex appeared without at least one picture of me, attached to an Arnold retrospective, or an essay under my byline about training or nutrition, or a report on my adventures in the movie world. Every mention helped sell more Arnold courses and T-shirts.

Sales of my books, meanwhile, were going great guns; I had a mainstream publisher and a literary agent taking care of those. We were just putting the finishing touches on the Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding , a huge project I’d been working on for three years with photographer Bill Dobbins. To cash in on the fitness craze touched off by Jane Fonda’s exercise videos, I also did my own video, Shape Up with Arnold Schwarzenegger , as well as updated editions of my books Arnold’s Bodyshaping for Women and Arnold’s Bodybuilding for Men . All this involved my going out on more promotional tours, which I didn’t mind a bit.

We all had new things coming our way. Lynn might point out, for example, “We’re getting an enormous amount of mail from people who want a lifting belt like you wore in Pumping Iron .”

“Let’s add that,” I’d say. So then we’d all team up to create the product. You couldn’t buy the belts ready-made, or there would be no profit. So where would we get the leather? We’d need to commission a manufacturer. And what about the buckle? How would we make the belt look aged and spotted with sweat so that it seemed authentic? We all started calling our contacts and calling companies and found all the elements. Within a couple of days, we’d have it figured out. Then the next question would be, How do we package the belts? How do we deliver them fast and cheap?

I was pushing all the time, and from the perspectives of Ronda, Anita, and Lynn, the work could be incredibly hectic. We were juggling projects in movies, in real estate, in bodybuilding. I was flying around constantly, schmoozing with people from all walks of life. Everything just nonstop. But they were not average workers with a punch-the-clock mentality. They became like members of my family. They looked out for one another and saw me as a challenge. They would accelerate to my speed, and when I sped up, they sped up.

Fostering this atmosphere didn’t require extraordinary effort or management genius. For starters, all three were warm, wonderful people. I paid them fairly and drew on my Austrian upbringing to make myself a good employer. A pension plan and great medical insurance were automatic—nobody had to ask for that. And I paid fourteen months of salary per year rather than twelve—the thirteenth month was your summer vacation pay, and the fourteenth was your holiday bonus so that you could take care of your family at Christmas. That was the tradition in Austria, and my office was not on a tight budget, so I could afford it.

My other technique was to make them feel included. They were learning on the job just like I was. When I was in the office, we would analyze all the stuff that was happening to me. The women would sit around, and each would give her point of view. Even if I didn’t agree, I’d take it in. The funny thing was, they were all liberal Democrats. Even as we added more people, it was rare to find another Republican besides me in the office for many years.

To me the work didn’t feel intense at all—just normal. You do a movie or a book, you promote the hell out of it, you travel around the world because the world is your marketplace, and in the meantime, you work out and take care of business and explore even more. It was all a joyride, which is why I never thought, “Oh my God, look how much work there is. It’s so much pressure.”

When I had to work at night, it might mean going to a meeting to talk about movies. How bad was that? I was talking about movies! Or some business guys would ask me to fly to Washington. That was great too—always the laughs and the stogies. I’d get to see Ronald Reagan give a speech. Then at midnight, we’d all go to adult shops and look at the latest of the latest. Seeing the other side of some of these straitlaced conservative guys was pretty funny.

So for me work just meant discovery and fun. If I heard somebody complaining, “Oh, I work so hard, I put in ten- and twelve-hour days,” I would crucify him. “What the fuck are you talking about, when the day is twenty-four hours? What else did you do?”

I loved the variety in my life. One day I’d be in a meeting about developing an office building or a shopping center, trying to maximize the space. What would we need to get the permits? What were the politics of the project?

The next day I’d be talking to the publisher of my latest book about what photos needed to be in it. Next I’d be working with Joe Weider on a cover story. Then I’d be in meetings about a movie. Or I’d be in Austria talking politics with Fredi Gerstl and his friends.

Everything I did could have been my hobby. It was my hobby, in a way. I was passionate about all of it. My definition of living is to have excitement always; that’s the difference between living and existing. Later, when I learned about the Terminator, I loved the idea that he was a machine that never had to sleep. I said to myself, “Imagine what an advantage that would be to have those extra six hours every day for something else? Imagine, you could study a whole new profession. You could learn an instrument.” That would be unbelievable, because for me the question was always how to fit in all the stuff I want to do.

Therefore, I seldom saw my life as hectic. The thought rarely even crossed my mind. Only later, as Maria and I went from being boyfriend and girlfriend to being engaged and then married, did I pay any attention to balancing my work and my home life.

When I wanted to know more about business and politics, I used the same approach I did when I wanted to learn about acting: I got to know as many people as I could who were really good at it. One place to find them was the Regency Club, a newly opened retreat for LA’s business elite. It occupied the top floor and penthouse of a new high-rise on Wilshire Boulevard, with sweeping views of the whole LA Basin. Both the building and the club belonged to David Murdock, one of the city’s richest men. His life was another of those great American rags-to-riches stories. David was an Ohio-born high school dropout who, after serving in World War II, turned a $1,200 loan into a fortune in Arizona and California real estate. Now he owned huge stakes in International Mining, and Occidental Petroleum, as well as real estate and hotels, and was a collector of animals, orchids, fine furniture, and chandeliers. His wife, Gabrielle, an interior designer who was born and raised in Munich, decorated the new club in a formal, elegant, Old World style. That reinforced the tone: very proper, very genteel. You couldn’t go there without a tie.