Mr. America by Mark Adams

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 20^th Century.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

Adams, Mark. Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet. New York: It Books, 2009.

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

In Making the American Body, journalist Jonathan Black explores the history of health and fitness from aerobics to Zumba. Promotion of physical fitness goes back to the founding of the United States; Black notes that Benjamin Franklin praised the use of dumbbells. Franklin was known to be a fan of swimming, too. It began to gain some momentum in the middle 1800s when German immigrants brought the gymnasium (they called it a Turnverein) to the U.S.

I was draw to the book because it has a touch of Missouriana in the person of Bernarr Macfadden, self-proclaimed “Father of Physical Culture.” Macfadden had a classic story of the early bodybuilder. He was a sick, weak kid from the Ozarks who was transformed into a paragon of masculine pulchritude by his commitment to weight training, healthy eating and clean living. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Macfadden believed clean living included an active sex life and he campaigned against prudery. His magazines, headed by Physical Culture, featured photographs of nearly naked men and women in swimsuits.

Fitness promotion is a small world, and many of its leading figures are connected. Macfadden organized a contest (probably fixed) that crowned Charles Atlas the “World’s Most Beautiful Man.” Atlas’ ads in pulp magazines and comic books are probably some of the most well-known ever, especially the bully of the beach ad. The story of this ad, told in comics form, is based on a real event in Atlas’ life when he was shamed by a muscular life guard for his scrawny form and weakness while on a date at the beach.

Macfadden and many others were inspired by Prussian strongman Sandow. They saw him at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, where his show was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.

California became a focus of health and fitness trend that would spread across the country. Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach was a place for weight lifters and gymnasts to have fun and show off. Steve Reeves, known for playing Hercules in several films, was a product of Muscle Beach. Jack LaLanne, another wimpy kid transformed, opened gyms, brought workouts to television, and encouraged women to exercise and do strength training.

Other trends gained popularity, especially fitness focused on cardiovascular health. This brought into popular culture Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a physician to astronauts whose 1968 book Aerobics launched an industry. That industry provided a career for Richard Simmons and a second career for Jane Fonda, who was the first to emphasize exercise as a way for women to lose weight (though this was an unspoken appeal long before the 1970s). Bodybuilding made a comeback, though, especially fueled by the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’m not especially interested in the health and fitness industry, but I found this book to be very interesting. It provides a historical context for many of the health and fitness trends that are still part of American culture.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Black, Jonathan. Making the American Body: The Remarkable Saga of the Men and Women Whose Feats, Feuds, and Passions Shaped Fitness History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.