September. The English speakers dominated, as in all of bodybuilding—especially the Americans, who probably won eight out of every ten years. All the great bodybuilders I’d idolized growing up had won the Mr. Universe title: Steve Reeves, Reg Park, Bill Pearl, Jack Delinger, Tommy Sansone, Paul Winter. I remembered seeing a photograph from the contest when I was a kid. The winner stood on a pedestal, trophy in hand, while everyone else stood below him on the stage. Being on that pedestal was always my vision of where I would end up. It was very clear: I knew what it was going to feel like and look like. It would be like heaven to make that real, but I didn’t expect to win this year. I’d gotten the list of the bodybuilders I’d be competing against in the amateur class, looked at photos of them, and thought, “Jesus.” Their bodies were better defined than mine. I wanted to finish in the top six because I felt like I couldn’t beat the numbers two, three, and four from the last year. I felt they were too defined and I was not quite there. I was still in the slow process of building up to my ideal muscle mass; the idea was to get the size and then cut down and chisel and perfect it.
They held the competition in the Victoria Palace Theatre, an old ornate place decorated with marble and statues a few blocks from Victoria Station. Major competitions always followed a set routine. In the morning would be the preliminaries, or technical rounds. The bodybuilders and judges assembled in the auditorium—reporters could sit in, but the public wasn’t allowed. The aim was to give the judges the chance to evaluate the contestants’ muscular development and definition, body part by body part, and systematically compare each man with the rest. You’d stand in a line, along the back of the stage, with all the other men of your class (mine was “amateur tall”). Everyone had numbers pinned to their posing briefs. A judge would say, “Number fourteen and number eight, please step forward, give us a quadriceps.” Those two bodybuilders would walk to the center of the stage and strike a standard pose that showed off the four muscles at the front of the thigh as the judges made notes. The results of these technical rounds were factored into the decisions later in the day. Then, of course, the big show would be the finals in the afternoon: a posing competition for each of the classes and ultimately a pose-off among the class winners to crown the overall amateur and professional champs.
Compared to the other competitions I’d seen, Mr. Universe was the big time. The Victoria Palace was completely sold out: more than fifteen hundred seats filled with applauding and cheering bodybuilding fans, and dozens more outside hoping to squeeze in. The show itself was as much circus as contest. The stage was professionally lit, with spotlights and floods, and they’d brought in a whole orchestra to help set the mood. The two-hour program included entertainment between the rounds of competition, like a bikini contest, acrobats, contortionists, and two troupes of women in leotards and mod boots who paraded and struck poses holding little barbells and weights.
To my amazement, in the technical round that morning, I’d discovered that I’d overestimated my competition. The top “tall amateur” bodybuilders were indeed better defined, but put us all together on stage, and I still stood out. The truth is that not all bodybuilders are strong, especially those who have done most of their training with weight machines. But years of power lifting and working with free weights had given me massive biceps and shoulders and back muscles and thighs. I simply looked bigger and stronger than the rest.
By showtime, word had gotten around that this monster teenager had shown up from out of nowhere with an unpronounceable name, and he was a goddamn giant. So the crowd was especially noisy and enthusiastic when our group came on. I didn’t win, but I came much closer than I or anyone else would have expected. By the final pose- off, the contest was down to me and an American named Chester Yorton, and the judges decided for Chet. I had to admit that was the right call: although Chet was at least twenty pounds lighter than me, he was truly chiseled and beautifully proportioned, and his posing was smoother and more practiced than mine. Besides, he had a great suntan that made me look like bread dough next to him.
I was ecstatic being the surprise runner-up; I felt like I’d won. It threw me into the spotlight, so much so that people started to say, “Next year he’s going to win.” Muscle magazines in English started mentioning me, which was extremely important because I had to become known in England and America to reach my goal.
The giddiness lasted only until I had time to think. Then it hit me: Chet Yorton had ended up on that pedestal, not me. He’d earned the victory, but I thought I’d made a big mistake. What if I had gone to London intending to win? Would I have prepared better? Would I have performed better? Would I have won and now be Mr. Universe? Instead, I’d underestimated my chances. I didn’t like the way this made me feel and worked myself into quite a state. It really taught me a lesson.
After that, I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn’t win every time, that was my mind-set. I became a total animal. If you tuned into my thoughts before a competition, you would hear something like: “I deserve that pedestal, I own it, and the sea ought to part for me. Just get out of the fucking way, I’m on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.”
I pictured myself high up on the pedestal, trophy in hand. Everyone else would be standing below. And I would look down.
Three months later, I was back in London, laughing and horsing around on a living room rug with a jumble of kids. They belonged to Wag and Dianne Bennett, who owned two gyms and were at the center of the UK bodybuilding scene. Wag had been a judge at the Mr. Universe contest, and he’d invited me to stay with him and Dianne in their house in the Forest Gate section of London for a few weeks of training. Although they had six kids of their own, they took me under their wing and became like parents to me.
Wag had made it clear that he thought I needed a lot of work. At the top of his list was my posing routine. I knew there is a huge difference between hitting poses successfully and having a compelling routine. Poses are the snapshots, and the routine is the movie. To hypnotize and carry away an audience, you need the poses to flow. What do you do between one pose and the next? How do the hands move? How does the face look? I’d never had a chance to figure very much of this out. Wag showed me how to slow down and make it like ballet: a matter of posture, the straightness of the back, keeping the head up, not down.
This I could understand, but it was harder to swallow the idea of actually posing to music. Wag would put the dramatic theme from the movie
Dianne concentrated on filling me up with protein and improving my manners. Sometimes she must have thought I’d been raised by wolves. I didn’t know the right way to handle a knife and fork or that you should help clear up after dinner. Dianne picked up where my parents and Fredi Gerstl and Frau Matscher had left off. One of the few times she ever got mad at me was when she saw me shove my way through a crowd of fans after a competition. The thought in my head was “I won. Now I’m going to party.” But Dianne grabbed me and said, “Arnold, you don’t do that. These are people who came to see
Even the kids got in on the Educating Arnold project. There’s probably no better way to learn English than to join a lively, happy London household where nobody understands German and where you sleep on the couch and have six little siblings. They treated me like a giant new puppy and loved teaching me words.
A photo of me during that trip shows me meeting my boyhood idol Reg Park for the first time. He’s wearing sweats, looking relaxed and tan, and I’m wearing my posing trunks looking starstruck and pale. I was in the presence of Hercules, of the three-time Mr. Universe, of the star whose picture I kept on my wall, of the man on whom I’d modeled my life plan. I could barely stammer out a word. All the English I’d learned flew right out of my head.
Reg now lived in Johannesburg, where he owned a chain of gyms, but he came back to England on business several times a year. He was friends with the Bennetts and had generously agreed to help show me the ropes. Wag and Dianne felt that the best way for me to have a good shot at the Mr. Universe title was to became better known in the United Kingdom. Bodybuilders did that in those days by getting on the exhibition circuit—promoters all over the British Isles would organize local events, and by agreeing to appear, you could make a little money and spread your name. Reg, as it happened, was on his way to an exhibition in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and offered to bring me along. Making a name for yourself in bodybuilding is a lot like politics. You go from town to town, hoping word will spread. This grassroots approach worked, and the enthusiasm it created would eventually help me to win Mr.
