Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

spotted actors Peter Falk, Henry Fonda, and Jimmy Stewart over near the bar. Actresses Carol Burnett, Cybill Shepherd, and Deborah Kerr were there. I traded jokes with Shelley Winters and flirted with the gorgeous Raquel Welch. Henry Winkler came over to say nice things about Stay Hungry, and I explained to my mom in German that he was the Fonz, star of a big TV sitcom called Happy Days. When we sat down to dinner, I spotted Dino De Laurentiis with Jessica Lange. She was the sexy leading lady in King Kong, which Dino had produced, and was up for the best debut by an actress award. Dino took no notice of me.

Also sitting near us was Sylvester Stallone, whom I knew a little bit because Larry Kubik was his agent too. His movie Rocky was the blockbuster of the year—at the box office, it had blown away all the other hits that were up for awards, including Network, All the President’s Men, and A Star Is Born—and was nominated for Best Film. I congratulated him, and he told me enthusiastically that he was writing a new movie about wrestlers and that there might be a part for me.

After dinner Harry Belafonte, who was emceeing, came onstage. I felt my competition calmness come over me—here, like in bodybuilding, I knew I could relax because I’d done everything in my power to win. When my category came and I won, Sylvester Stallone led the applause. Then Rocky won, and he went nuts, kissing every woman he could reach on his way to the stage.

It was an incredible feeling to get my first award for acting. Winning the Golden Globe confirmed for me that I wasn’t crazy; I was on the right track.

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I was spending almost as much time in Manhattan as in LA. For me, New York was like a candy store. Hanging out with all of these fascinating characters was so much fun. I was proud and happy to be accepted, and I felt lucky to have the kind of personality that put people at ease. They didn’t feel threatened by my body. Instead, they wanted to reach out to me, help me, and understand what I was trying to do.

Elaine Kaufman, the owner of Elaine’s, was known for being tough and difficult, but she was a sweetheart to me. She made herself my mother on the New York scene. Every time I came in, she would escort me from table to table and introduce me—we’d go to director Robert Altman’s table, and then Woody Allen’s table, and then Francis Ford Coppola’s table, and then Al Pacino’s table. “You guys have got to meet this young man,” she’d say. “Arnold, why don’t I pull out a chair for you, sit down here, let me get you some salad or something.” Sometimes I felt extremely uncomfortable, because she’d have interrupted their conversation, and maybe I wasn’t even welcome. But there I was.

I made some dopey mistakes—like telling the great ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev that he shouldn’t lose touch with his home country and he ought to go back and visit, not realizing that he’d defected from Russia in 1961. But Elaine’s regulars were usually curious and friendly. Coppola asked a lot of questions about the bodybuilding scene. Andy Warhol wanted to intellectualize it and write about what it meant: How can you look like a piece of art? How can you be the sculptor of your own body? I connected with Nureyev because we were each having our portrait painted by Jamie Wyeth, a well-known artist in his own right and the son of the famous painter Andrew Wyeth. Sometimes Nureyev would invite Jamie and me to join him at Elaine’s. He’d sweep in late at night, after one of his performances, wearing an extraordinary fur coat with a big collar and a flowing scarf. He was not tall, but he commanded the room with his attitude. He was the king. You saw it in the way he walked, the way he took off the coat, with every movement striking and perfect. Just like onstage. At least it seemed that way to me: in the presence of someone like that, your imagination takes over, and they become bigger than life. He was a sweet guy to talk to, and he told me about his love for America and the New York scene. Still, I was in awe. Being the top ballet dancer was different from being the top bodybuilder. I could be Mr. Olympia for four thousand years and never be as big as Nureyev. He was on a different plane, like Woody Allen, who could show up for a black-tie event wearing a tux and white tennis shoes, and nobody would object. It was his way of saying “Fuck you. The invitation said black tie, so I wore the black tie, but I also came as Woody Allen, on my feet.” I admired the audacity that he and Nureyev shared.

As for downtown, the Greenwich Village restaurant One Fifth was a great spot. Late on Saturday nights, following Saturday Night Live, that was where cast members John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and Laraine Newman would hang out. Often I’d watch them perform the show at NBC Studios in Rockefeller Plaza, and then meet them down at One Fifth—after which we’d all head back uptown to Elaine’s.

The best downtown parties were thrown by Ara Gallant, a skinny little guy in his midforties who always wore tight leather or denim, high-heeled cowboy boots with silver toes, a little black cap with jingling gold charms, black sideburns, and, at night, eyeliner. In the fashion world, he was famous as a photographer and as the hair and makeup stylist who created the seventies disco look: red lips, spangly clothes, big hair. He’d invite every model he could think of to his parties in his big, exotic apartment, which had red lights, thumping music in the background, and a constant haze of pot smoke. Dustin Hoffman would be there, along with Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, and Gallant’s best friend, Jack Nicholson—all the major players from the movie world. To me it was heaven. I went to every party I was invited to and was always one of the last to leave.

Andy Warhol had loaned Jamie Wyeth space in his famous studio, the Factory, to paint a portrait of me. Usually late in the afternoon I’d go there to pose, and by eight or nine o’clock Jamie would be finished, and we’d head for dinner. But one night Warhol said, “If you want to stay, you are more than welcome. I’m doing some photos in a half hour or so.”

I was fascinated by Warhol, with his blond spiky hair, his black leather, his white shirts. When he talked to you, even at a party, he always had a camera in one hand and a tape recorder in the other. It made you feel like he might use the conversation in his magazine, Interview.

I said yes; I was curious to see him at work. A half-dozen young men came in and took off all their clothes. I thought, “I may be part of something interesting here.” I was always ready for a discovery or new experience. If it got flaky, I would tell myself, “God has put me on this path. He means me to be here, or else I’d be an ordinary factory worker in Graz.”

I didn’t want to stare at the naked guys, so instead I casually walked around talking to Andy’s assistants. They were putting up old-fashioned spotlights around a table in the middle of the studio. It was a big, sturdy table with a white cloth on top.

Now Andy asked a few of the naked guys to climb up on it and form a pile. Then he started moving them around. “You lie there. No, you lie across him, and then you lie across him. Perfect. Perfect.” Then he stepped back and asked the other naked guys, “Who is flexible here?”

“I’m a ballet dancer,” somebody said.

“Perfect. Why don’t you climb up, get one leg underneath here and one leg on top, and then we will build it sideways …”

Once he had the pile just the way he wanted, he started snapping Polaroids and adjusting the lights. The shadows had to be just so—he was fanatical about it. “Come over here, Arnold. See? This is what I’m trying to get. It’s not there yet. I’m frustrated.” He showed me a Polaroid that didn’t look like people, just shapes. “It will be called Landscapes,” he explained.

I said to myself, “This is unbelievable, this guy is turning asses into rolling hills.”

“The idea,” he went on, “is to get people talking about and writing about how we got that effect.”

Listening to Warhol, I had the feeling that if I’d asked in advance to watch him work he’d have said no. With artists, you never know what reaction you’ll get. Sometimes being spontaneous and jumping on an opportunity is the only way you can see art being made.

Jamie Wyeth and I became good friends, and months later, when the weather warmed up, he invited me to the family farm in Pennsylvania, near the Brandywine River Museum, where some of his father’s best paintings are displayed. I met Jamie’s wife, Phyllis, and then he brought me next door to an old farmhouse to meet his dad.

Andrew Wyeth, then sixty, was fencing when we walked in. No one else was there, but it definitely looked like he was facing an opponent because he even had on the mask. “Dad!” Jamie called, waving to get his attention. They talked for a moment, and then Wyeth turned toward me and took off the mask. Jamie said, “Dad, this is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’s in Pumping Iron, and I’m painting him.”

After we chatted for a while, Andrew asked, “Do you want to drive up with me to see the field where I’m painting right now?”

“Sure!” I said. I was curious to see how he worked. Wyeth led me out back to a beautiful, gleaming vintage sports car from the Roaring Twenties called a Stutz Bearcat: a two-seater convertible with huge exposed wheels,