Benarr
Macfadden was named Bernard McFadden by his parents; he chose the modified
name to suit himself. He was born into severe poverty in the Missouri Ozarks shortly after the Civil War. He would become a self-made millionaire famous for his physique, his stunts
and his opinions. Mark Adams recounts his story in Mr. America.
Macfadden became
fascinated with health and bodybuilding as a youth in St. Louis, where is visited a gym with his uncle. He had been sick much of his childhood, which is not surprising given the poverty,
malnutrition and undeveloped medicine of the time. With hard work and a
knack for self-promotion, he was eventually able to afford to join the gym (it
cost $15 for an initial membership, close to $400 today).
Macfadden pursued a lot
of jobs as a kid and young adult, spending very little time in school. In bodybuilding and training he
found his way into a career. Particularly, he started to follow a
career path that had been blazed by another strongman, Eugen Sandow. Mcfadden saw Sandow’s performances,
organized by Franz Ziegfeld, Jr., at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. He began doing a version of Sandow’s
act and even took it to his distant mentor’s adopted homeland, England.
When he returned from
his year in England, he brought back another idea borrowed from Sandow. He
began publishing a magazine titled Physical
Culture. The
magazine was an outlet for him to sell exercise equipment and promote his ideas about
fitness, diet, sex, nudity, marriage and other topics related to health
and happiness. It was the foundation of what grew
into a publishing empire in which Macfadden helped to pioneer true confession (long before Jerry Spring and Oprah Winfrey), celebrity culture and tabloid journalism. He is promotion of health
information set the path for American health experts that followed with a
mix of quackery and sound notions that turned out to be ahead of their time.
I’d be glad to go on
about Macfadden, his accomplishment and his sometimes strange life. Instead, I
should just suggest you read Mr. America.
Actually, I had been
looking forward to reading Mr. America.
I’ve seen Adam’s book referenced by other who have discussed Macfadden in the
context of fitness, health culture and popular publishing. Macfadden led and
interesting life suitable for a novel. Adam’s biography doesn’t quite read
like a novel, but it is entertaining and approachable, and I recommend it to
those interested in Macfadden or in the popular culture of the early 20th Century.
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