Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

I was draped in robes and furs, so the Mr. Olympia physique didn’t show. But before we went on location in December 1980, I would have to reshape my body again.

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Heading back to LA from Sydney, I thought about how the tribulations of recent months had united Maria and me. I was so glad I’d tolerated those Teddy Kennedy posters on my Jeep and that I hadn’t make an issue about my own political opinions. Because for the first time, I felt that I really, truly had a partner. Throughout that spring and summer, I’d succeeded in helping her with the ups and downs of the campaign, and I felt that taking her to Europe afterward had been exactly the right impulse. And now I saw how she’d gotten involved and been able to help with my thing, which was as foreign to her world as it could be.

I could imagine the pressure she must be under from the Kennedy friends in Hollywood to move on to a more suitable boyfriend. Older women especially—friends of her mother or of Pat Kennedy Lawford, Peter’s ex-wife—used to say to Maria, “Why are you going out with that bodybuilder? Let me introduce you to this wonderful producer,” or “this young, very attractive businessman,” or “Do I have the man for you! He’s a little older, but he’s a billionaire. Let me set you up with him.”

The outside world looked at our relationship in a simpleminded way, as a juicy success story. “Isn’t it amazing that he wins Mr. Olympia and all these bodybuilding championships, and then he gets this big movie contract, and then he gets a Kennedy as his girlfriend?” According to this way of thinking, Maria becomes part of my trophy collection.

But the reality is that she was not a trophy. It made no difference what the name was. If I hadn’t been her style and she hadn’t been mine, we never would have ended up together. Her personality, her look, her intelligence, her wit, what she brought to the table, and how much she was able to participate without missing a beat were what mattered to me. Maria meshed with everything that I was, what I stood for, and what I was doing. That was a very important reason why I was considering that this woman could be my life partner. I got addicted to her. When I reached Spain, it was hard to be without her.

I understood what Maria wanted to accomplish. She wanted to become the next Barbara Walters. And I wanted to become the biggest movie star, so we were both very driven. I understood the world that she wanted to get into, and she understood the world that I was trying to explore and where I wanted to go, and we could be part of each other’s journey.

I also understood why I appealed to her. Maria was such a forceful personality that she would just run over guys. They would become immediate slaves. So here was me, whom you can’t run over. I was confident, I’d accomplished things, I was somebody. She admired the fact that I was an immigrant who had come over here and built a life. She could see from my personality that I’d figure out her family and feel comfortable around them.

Maria wanted to get away from home as much as I did—and what better way than to fall in love with an ambitious Austrian bodybuilder who wanted an acting career? She liked being away from Washington and the lawyers and politicians and Beltway talk. She wanted to be unique and different.

If there was anything in her family for Maria to compare us to as a couple, it was her grandparents. Joe was a self-made man, and I was a self-made man. He was very aggressive in making money, and so was I. Rose had chosen him when he was penniless and she was the daughter of the mayor of Boston, John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, because she had absolute faith in Joe’s ability to succeed. I was relentless, disciplined, hands-on, and street-smart enough to get there too. That was what made Maria want to be with me.

What I represented physically was also a factor. She liked guys who were athletic and strong. Maria told me that when she was a kid and JFK was president, she would hang out with the Secret Service men in Hyannis. At night, when they were on duty and trying to stay awake, sometimes they’d read muscle magazines—with me on the cover! She was too young to pay much attention, but she did notice that those bodyguards were all working out. It stuck in her mind enough that when the book Pumping Iron came out, she bought it as a gift for her oldest brother, Bobby.

We started decorating our house before I had to leave in December for preproduction on Conan. Maria was into floral curtains and a conservative look, which I liked; it was very East Coast and also a little European. She’d inherited a lot of it from her family. They’d all grown up with floral patterns and certain couches and chairs, some with wooden backs and others that were stuffed. All of their houses, all of their apartments, had a piano in the living room, dozens of framed pictures of family members on all the sideboards and surfaces, and on and on.

My style was more rustic, so when we needed a dining room set, I went to an antique fair in downtown LA and bought a heavy oak table and chairs. Maria took charge of the living room. She ordered big, overstuffed couches and had them upholstered with those floral prints, and then easy chairs to be covered in solids so they complemented the couches. One of Eunice’s friends was a great decorator, and she helped with suggestions.

What Maria and I shared was the idea that our home had to be comfortable. Neither of us wanted a place that was so decorated that you couldn’t put your feet up and kick back. I saw that she had taste, so I let her do her thing, and she saw that I had taste. It was great to have someone who also had strong opinions and yet be able to work together, rather than work in a vacuum where I’d have to do everything myself and always be guessing, Does she like this? Does she like that? Is this house just a reflection of me? She brought a great foundation of knowledge and was a great partner to work with because we both grew.

Maria loved it when I took her to the antique shows and we looked at the old stuff. My taste had developed over the years, partly from watching Joe Weider collect his antiques, but it was still not refined, and I did not buy above a certain level. It always depended on how much money I had and how much I wanted to spend. I’d never had a piece of furniture custom upholstered; I would just buy what was on the floor or look for a deal. But now that I was on a roll with Conan, I felt I could open my wallet a little more and get pieces covered with the materials Maria liked.

All of this developed without arguments. It became clear that we were good mates and could live together, which was something we’d wanted to test. I had a taste for art, once again in part due to Joe Weider’s influence. To develop my own taste, I went to a lot of museums, auctions, and galleries, and Maria and I enjoyed going to see art together. I started collecting. In the beginning, less expensive works were all I could afford, such as lithographs by Marc Chagall, Joan Miro, and Salvador Dali. But I quickly moved up to paintings and sculptures.

The idea of getting married came up shortly before I was scheduled to leave for Spain. I wanted Maria to be with me there and be part of my career. Especially after we’d gone through so much together during that summer and fall, it was obvious that she was the ideal woman for me.

I invited Maria to come to the set and hang out with me, or at least come visit for a month at a time. She said that she couldn’t because her mother and dad would disapprove. It would bother them knowing that she was with me on location and spending nights together, because we weren’t married.

“Well, then why don’t we get married?” I said.

But that was even worse. She kind of flipped out about how Eunice would react. “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head, “I could never go to her with that.”

Eunice had gotten married late—so late that it was part of the family lore. There were a lot of other things she’d wanted to do first. After she graduated from Stanford with a sociology degree during the Second World War, she worked for the State Department helping returned former prisoners of war readjust to civilian life. Then after the war, she worked on juvenile delinquency for the Justice Department as a social worker at a West Virginia federal prison camp for women and at a women’s shelter in Chicago. Sarge, who was movie-star handsome and managed the Chicago Merchandise Mart for Joe Kennedy, fell in love with her in 1946 and courted her for seven years. He had pretty much given up hope when one day she took him into a side chapel after morning Mass and said, “Sarge, I think I’d like to marry you.”

The bottom line was that she didn’t marry until her early thirties and after she’d accomplished a lot. So Maria felt quite comfortable not marrying now when she was twenty-five but rather waiting until thirty at least. There was a lot she wanted to do first.

I was glad to hear that the problem wasn’t with me, it was just that marriage wasn’t in her plans for the time being. Marriage wasn’t necessarily in my plans either at that point, although I wanted to be with her so much that I would have done it. I knew I would miss Maria greatly on the set. On the other hand, this was actually perfect. We could now continue for years without me hearing “Where is this heading? We’ve been going out for four years now, and you still can’t make up your mind …” Or “Am I not good enough? Are you looking for someone else?” Instead, the subject just faded away.