Muscle Beach

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Muscle Beach

Hard by the Santa Monica Pier, on an otherwise empty section of beach, there is a plaque which reads, "The Original Location of Muscle Beach. The Birthplace of the Physical Fitness Boom of the Twentieth Century." Although somewhat hyperbolic, the statement is not far wrong. What began as a sort of playground for acrobatic adults in the years before World War II became, after the war was over and people were looking for a little overdue "R & R," a magnet for men and women who were captivated by the sun, the sand, the skin, and the sense of endless summer that resides in the mythology of Southern California. The original Muscle Beach drew, and helped to shape, the careers of many cultural icons, including Steve Reeves, Jack LaLanne, Mae West, Pudgy Stockton, Vic Tanny, Joe Weider, and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

There were, to be sure, other—and earlier—locations where, for a time, physical fitness boomed, albeit under the more precise label of physical culture. Battle Creek, Michigan's Sanitarium, under the energetic, eccentric direction of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg; Bernarr Macfadden's Physical Culture Hotel in Florida; and Robert (Bob) Hoffman's York Barbell Club in York (often called "Muscletown"), Pennsylvania, were among the spots where people came in hopes of improving their strength, their health, their appearance or, more usually, all three. Two things elevated Muscle Beach over these earlier Meccas of strength and health: first, the "Beach" did not depend on the personal force of one man, and second, the location was unbeatable.

American photography, art, advertising, television, and film have traded on the image of a magical Southern California lifestyle since the beginning of the twentieth century. "California dreamin"' is, in a way, the logical extension of the American Dream; and names such as Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Sunset Boulevard evoke glamour, youth, and good vibrations throughout America. All that was needed to ignite an explosion of interest in the beach lifestyle was a group of insouciant young folks who, by their own example, showed Southern Californians and the world how to have fun in the sun.

Although some historians note that a gymnastics "horse" was set up on the Santa Monica beach in 1924, or that Kate Giroux, a playground instructor at the beach, installed parallel bars, rings, and a gymnastics platform in 1934, the real Muscle Beach began when Abbye "Pudgy" Evile (Pudgy Stockton) and her boyfriend, Les Stockton, began to meet in the summer of 1939 with a small group of tumblers and hand balancers at a platform built there by the W.P.A. Soon they were joined in the long summer afternoons by others who either liked acrobatics or who thought they would. By 1940, the Beach was bustling, and in the months before the war, Pudgy and Les were joined by accomplished tumbler-balancers such as Glenn Sundby, Bruce Conner, and Wayne Long. The weekend crowds who came to see the free, circus-like performances grew, and grew again, often reaching several thousand spectators.

In the beginning, there were no barbells or dumbells on the beach, but soon they began to appear, brought by weight trainers who were drawn by the jolly camaraderie of the acrobats, most of whom used weights to strengthen their bodies for the rigor of their stunts. The open use of heavy weights by men and women who were such marvelous athletes had another significant effect on the American culture. The nimbleness of these weight-trained athletes went a long way toward convincing anyone who saw them lift and tumble that the use of barbells and dumbells, contrary to the opinion of almost every coach and sports scientist in the country, would not make a person "musclebound." In 1940, it was believed that the lifting of heavy weights would make a person slow and inflexible, even though there was no scientific evidence to support the belief. But no one who watched Pudgy and Les Stockton lift weights and then perform their stunts could still believe in the myth of the musclebound lifter. Such weight training, now universally accepted by coaches and athletes in all sports, demonstrates the precocity of the Muscle Beach Gang.

A story published in an American magazine during those years described the crowded scene as a "wide stretch of sand between hot dog stands and ocean, [with] dozens of big muscular people throwing little muscular people high into the air, shapely girls doing flip-flops on a long platform, agile teen-age boys twisting through space." One of the most crowd-pleasing stunts the Muscle Beach regulars performed was the building of human pyramids. Stunts of this sort, as well as what is known as adagio (in which people are thrown and caught), require careful cooperation. They fostered, and built on, the sense of fellowship engendered by the non-competitive atmosphere which prevailed in the early days. Harold Zinkin, who years later would help to invent the Universal weight machine, said the acrobats "shared everything we knew. It was a happy atmosphere, like a jam session with everyone playing his part."

The burgeoning of the Beach was cut short, of course, by the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II, although Pudgy and a few others still gathered by the pier from time to time while Les and many of the others were doing their part in the war effort. But when hostilities ended, activity alongside the pier reached a higher level than ever before. In addition, the tumbling platforms were elevated by the city so that visitors to the increasingly famous Muscle Beach weekends had a better view. By that time the bodybuilders had arrived, and their extravagant physiques also drew crowds, like fully fanned peacocks at a zoo. The city soon built a "weight pit" where the competitive lifters and bodybuilders could pump iron and work on their tan all at the same time, cooled by the prevailing Pacific "westerlies."

Even though the period from 1946 through the late 1950s lacked the sweetness and purity of the pre-war Muscle Beach, it featured ever-larger crowds and an ever-greater percentage of bodybuilders in the cultural mix. Some of these people made major contributions to the world of weights. One such was Jack LaLanne who, although he lived in San Francisco, would drive down to Santa Monica almost every weekend to lift and do stunts with his friends. In 1951, he began a pioneering fitness program on television that ran for 34 years and made his name a household word. Steve Reeves was also a regular at the weight pit, and those who were there say that no one ever drew crowds like the handsome, Greek God-like Mr. America of 1947. After a bit of earlier film, stage, and television work, Reeves was chosen for the lead role in Hercules (1959), and this film launched a 16-year career during which, for a time, Reeves was the number one male movie star in the world.

Other regulars at Muscle Beach were Vic Tanny and his younger brother Armand, an outstanding lifter. In the 1950s, Vic founded a nationwide chain of modern "health clubs" that bore his name. They were the first of their kind, and although the chain grew large and unwieldy and eventually failed, Tanny's influence was felt by millions of Americans who had their first taste of progressive resistance exercise in his glittering, chrome-filled clubs. Lesser known early on than Tanny but with more "legs," Joe Gold developed his muscles as well as his famous tan at Muscle Beach before opening what would eventually become the second West Coast bodybuilding Mecca—Gold's Gym—training headquarters of the leading bodybuilders in the world during the 1960s and 1970s. Eventually, Gold sold his legendary gym, and promised not to start another in which his name was used. However, once he opened his new place, called World Gym, it attracted so many of the top bodybuilders that he was able successfully to franchise the name around the United States.

By the late 1950s Muscle Beach had begun to draw what many of the old-timers considered unsavory characters, and a series of incidents, some of which were criminal in nature, caused the city to close Muscle Beach and haul away the weights. Some close observers believe that the city, although somewhat worried by the sorts of people who had been joining the throng, was primarily motivated by a desire for more parking for shoppers and tourists. Whatever the reason, Muscle Beach ceased to exist in its original fabled form. Unwilling to be without a place to train by the beach, however, a dedicated group of bodybuilders convinced the city of Venice to put in a small weight pit two miles south of the old location. In time, Venice Beach began to draw a regular crowd, which reached its apex during the heyday of the bodybuilding career of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Venice Beach was often the location chosen by magazine publisher Joe Weider for photo shoots of Arnie for Muscle & Fitness, the leading magazine in the field. These photographs helped both Weider and Schwarzenegger, and they perpetuated the legend of Southern California as the terminus ad quem for bodybuilders everywhere.

In 1974, Schwarzenegger was training for his sixth victory in the International Federation of Bodybuilders' Mr. Olympia contest, the premier title in the sport. His training—along with that of several of his rivals, and the competition itself—became the subject of a remarkable documentary film, Pumping Iron (1976). Conceived and scripted by Charles Gaines and filmed by George Butler, the film was a huge critical success and, in the process, made a celebrity of Arnie, leading to his casting in the title role of the successful Conan the Barbarian (1981). Pumping Iron and Arnold introduced bodybuilding to a wider public, and in so doing gained acceptance for weight training as a way to develop a leaner, healthier body.

As bodybuilding rode Arnie's broad back to ever greater popularity, Venice Beach, which officially adopted the name, "Venice Muscle Beach" in 1986, finally decided to expand the weight training area, and a much larger facility was built with a stage which can accommodate bodybuilding competitions. In the late 1990s, in a major change of heart, Santa Monica also built a new facility on the site of the old Muscle Beach platforms, complete with an open-air weight pit and a place for children to exercise. Muscle Beach has seen many changes in the years since the 1930s, and the changes have not all been good ones. Drugs now play a major and sinister role in competitive bodybuilding and they have allowed bodybuilders to develop a combination of muscle mass and definition that the health-conscious bodybuilders of earlier decades could not have imagined. The men and women who were first drawn to Muscle Beach trained hard in the fresh air, ate carefully, and were healthy as horses. Good health was at the heart of their lifestyle. Many of the top competitors in the 1990s have made a Faustian bargain and sacrificed health for appearance. Some of the bodies that a visitor to Muscle Beach might see at the beginning of the twenty-first century, unlike those in the middle of the twentieth, might only look healthy.

—Jan

Terry Todd