ABSTRACT

Title of Thesis: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERFORMANCES OF

STRONGMEN IN AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE BETWEEN
1881 AND 1932
Degree candidate: J oshua Michael Buck
Degree and year: Master of Arts, 1999
Thesis directed by: Professor Patti P. Gillespie
Department of Theatre
The purpose of this thesis is to help fill the void in the scholarship of vaudeville
and of strongmen that has been created by a neglect of vaudevillian strength performers.
The question guiding the research of this thesis was, how did the performances of
strongmen in American vaudeville change between 1881 and 1932? To examine the
relationship among strongmen, vaudeville, and American culture, the thesis consists of
five chapters. Chapter 1 identifies the question, justifies its importance, and briefly
sketches the background of physical culture, vaudeville, and strongmen. The rest of the
thesis tries to bring these three strands together. Chapter 2 discusses two major types of
strongmen-lifters and fakers-who, during the early period, performed in circuses and
dime museums. By 1893, the strongman's act was an established part of variety shows,
and Chapter 3 investigates the typical performance of an early vaudevillian strongman by
. . . -.
examining the performances of Eugen Sandow. Chapter 4 traces the changes in the
performances of strongmen in vaudeville after Bernarr Macfadden successfblly promoted
the first physical culture show in America in 1903. This show heightened Americans
interest in posing and muscle control, and some strongmen adapted their act to the
changing preference. Chapter 5 summarizes how the performances of strongmen
developed between 188 1 and 1932 and draws conclusions about the significance of these
developments.
. .-
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERFORMANCES OF STRONGMEN I N
AMEMCAN VAUDEVILLE BETWEEN 1881 AND 1932
by
J oshua Michael Buck
Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland at College Park in partial hlfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
1999
Advisory Committee:
Professor Patti P. Gillespie, Chair
Dr. Cheryl Black
Dr. Lawrence E. Mintz
. - c . I .. I
.^
OCopyright by
J oshua Michael Buck
1999
. . .* . - *. . I . _.C__. ..-
DEDICATION
For
W M and W D
In memory of
P W
11
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I must acknowledge the help of the many people who have assisted me. I would
like to give special thanks to my mother and father for their unending support and for all
of their proofreading and editing. Becky Carson, Norman Hart, J ohn Mills, and Chris
Olsen also deserve thanks for their guidance, support, time, and patience. To Dave
Berryman a special thank you is due for pleasant conversation, delicious dinners, and an
interesting tour of Seattle. Thanks to J an and Terry Todd of the Todd-McLean
Collection at the University of Texas, Austin, for allowing me use of their collection and
answering innumerable emails throughout the process. I would also like to thank them
for giving me the opportunity to present my work to others in the field by publishing my
articles in their journal, Iron Game History. Thanks to Barb Andrelczyk, librarian at the
York Barbell Company, for her help and to Jan Dellinger of the York Barbell Company
for the time he spent talking with me. I cannot forget to thank J oe Roark for his index
and the numerous photocopies he sent me and Larry Aumann for his photocopies as
well. I am indebted to Michael Murphy for the unending stream of photocopies and
information on Otto Arco. Thanks to Gary Bart who offered his knowledge of
Siegmund Breitbart to me. I amgratefbl to Fred Dahlinger of the Circus World Museum
in Baraboo, WI, for his insight and assistance. I also must thank my foreign contacts,
...
111
Sheila and Nat Agensky, Rina Barnklau, and Sylvie Menard, for their help in getting me
the information from the Louis Cyr Collection at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
I must give an extra special thank you to David Chapman for his help and
wisdom. Without him, I would never have found this topic or the answers to my
plethora of questions. Thank you for everything.
In addition, I thank Dr. Patti Gillespie for her insight, support, proofreading, and
for being my advisor although she was on sabbatical.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LISTOFFIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
CHAPTER1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
CHAPTER3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
CHAPTER4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
CHAPTER5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
V
. . . . . .. . . ............ _L I _. .-.*. __- - .. .... .
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Advertisement for the John Robinson Circus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Figure 2: Louis Cyr with his wife and daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Figure 3: Publicity photograph of Louis Cyr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Figure 4: Statuette of Louis Cyr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Figure 5: Louis Cyr posing with his wife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Figure 6: Charles A . Sampson posing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Figure 7: Louis Cyr resisting two horses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Figure 8: Charles A . Sampson straining at the harness lift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Figure 9: Drawings depicting Eugen Sandow performing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Figure 10: A Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles promotional poster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Figure 1 1 : Advertisement for the Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Figure 12: Advertisement for the Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Figure13: Tally-Ho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Figure 14: Siegmund Breitbart entering the stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Figure 15: Siegmund Breitbart performing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Figure 16: Siegmund Breitbart bending an iron bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Figure 17: Siegmund Breitbart lies on the bed of nails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Figure 18: The Arc0 Brothers posing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
vi
..
Figure19: Otto Arcoposing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Figure 20: The Arc0 Brothers performing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Figure 21: Otto Arc0 performing the Rope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
vii
CHAPTER 1
Since vaudeville came into existence, historians have written about it in countless
books and articles; a simple subject-keyword search in WorldCat in 1998 resulted in
almost four thousand citations. Although all of these books and articles discuss
vaudeville, few treat vaudevillian strongmen, and none does so in depth. Anthony
Slide's The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, for example, devotes merely two paragraphs to
vaudevillian strongmen, and he discusses only Eugen Sandow.' Likewise, Bernard
Sobel's Pictorial Histoy of Vaudeville apportions two pictures to strongmen: a publicity
photograph of Florenz Ziegfeld J r. 's Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles and a photocopy of
an evening's bill for that same troupe.2
There is, however, considerable biographical information on many of these
strongmen in the literature of sport. These books and articles, however, examine their
subjects only as the planters of the seeds that would blossom in the 1940s as
bodybuilding and weightlifting rather than as vaudevillian performers in their own right.
Strongmen were, nevertheless, an important part of vaudeville from its earliest
days. They had been performing in circuses and dime museums since the seventeenth
century. It was not until 1893, however, that Ziegfeld introduced Eugen Sandow, a
Prussian strongman, to Chicago and the United States, subsequently raising the
popularity of vaudevillian strongmen. Thus, Ziegfeld helped performances of strongmen
' Anthony Slide, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville (Westport: Greenwood, 1994), 452-453.
Citadel Press, 1961), 50-51.
Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, with a Foreword by George Jesse1 (New York: The
1
transcend sideshows and become part of the family vaudeville show, one which ladies
and children could attend without embarra~sment.~~~ Because of Ziegfelds managerial
acumen, increasing numbers of people wanted to feel Sandows muscles, and children
grew up wanting to be as strong as Sand~w.~
There were other strongmen besides Eugen Sandow. For example, before
Sandow came to the United States, Charles A. Sampson, a French strongman, and Louis
Cyr, a French-Canadian, performed in several American ~i ti es.~ After Sandows death in
1925, strongmen such as Otto Arco, Max Sick, and Anton Matysek, still performed on
vaudevillian circuits.
The purpose of this thesis is to help fill the void in the scholarship of vaudeville
and of strongmen that has been created by this neglect of vaudevillian strength
performers. Additionally, this thesis can offer new insights into the history of American
culture. Between the dates of the study (1 88 1- 1 932), there arose an interest in the ideas
of physical culture-the precursor to modern bodybuilding and exercise-and changes in
the strongmens act reflected changing attitudes that Americans held toward strength and
exercise.
The question guiding the research of this thesis was, how did the performances of
strongmen in American vaudeville change between 188 1 and 1932? These dates are
Ibid., 40.
National Police Gazette, 27 January 1894,63; David Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen
Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding, Sport and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Radar and Randy
Roberts (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), xi.
C. A. Sampson, Strength: A Treatise on the Development and Use ofMuscle (Chicago: Rand,
McNally & Company, Publishers, 1895), 33-120; Ben Weider, The Strongest Man in History, Louis Cvr
Amazing Canadian, with a Foreword by Gerald Aumont and an Introduction by Barry L. Penhale
(Vancouver: Mitchell Press, Limited, 1976), 20-3 1.
2
important in the history of American vaudeville. In 188 1, Tony Pastor opened his
Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York with its new family-oriented bill and so began
family-oriented, American vaudeville, according to historians of vaudeville.6 The last
straight vaudeville show at the Palace [New York] floundered to a halt. . . . in J uly
1932.
In a study of this length, it is not possible to analyze the performances of all
strongmen; therefore, this thesis investigates the careers of five of the most popular
strongmen of their day: Louis Cyr, Charles A. Sampson, Eugen Sandow, Siegmund
Breitbart, and Otto A ~CO. ~ Cyr was one of the few strongmen in vaudeville who truly
deserved the title strongman, for he performed most of his feats with pure brawn.g
Sampson, an almost exact opposite, performed many of his feats through gimmicks and
trickery; he was, nevertheless, extremely successfbl. lo No study of vaudevillian
strongmen would be complete without discussing Sandow, arguably the single most
famous strongman of vaudeville. Ironically, historians of vaudeville have overlooked
Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1940), 10;
Richard I hl an, The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theatre, revised and expanded edition
(New York: Applause Books, 1995), 42.
Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 95.
Although there were strongwomen at the turn of the century, this study did not include any for one
major reason: lack of information. Many names of strongwomen have survived; unfortunately, little
information concerning their performances has remained readdy available. There is an even greater
deficit of research on these performers and a greater need for further investigation. For information on
some of the most famous strongwomen see David Chapman, Gallery of Ironmen: Athleta, Ironman
Magazine, May 1992; David Chapman, Gallery of Ironmen: Kate Vulcana Roberts, Ironman
Magazine, J une 1994; David Chapman, Gallery of Ironmen: Kate Sandwina, Ironman Magazzne, June
1990; and Jan Todd, The Mystery of Minerva, Iran Game History 1, no. 2 (April 1990).
lo W. A. Pullum, Strong Men Over the Years, in The Amazing Samson as Told by Himself, by
Alexander Zass, with a Foreword by W. A. Pullum (London: The Samson Institute, 1926), 30.
Weider, The Strongest Man in History, xi-xii.
3
him, and so he has never received recognition for his contribution to its history.
Moreover, although Sandow was Ziegfelds first successfid venture, few have
investigated their time together.12 Siegmund Breitbart, known as the Iron King, was one
of the most famous and successfbl strongmen during the 1920s. His box office draw was
so large that E. F. Albee hired himto head the bill for the reopening of the Hippodrome
in New York, said to be the largest and finest vaudeville house in the world. . . . 13
Finally, Otto Arcos mastery over his muscles enabled himto be one of the most famous
vaudevillian strongmen during the 1910s and 1920s.
Three kinds of information were helpfbl in answering the thesis question. First,
books and articles by and about Cyr, Sampson, Sandow, Breitbart, and Arc0 provided
background information, as did such materials about other important people in the
history of physical culture and vaudeville. Second, primary sources (contemporary
newspapers, playbills, interviews, reviews of the shows, and in some cases, articles
detailing the personal lives of the strongmen) offered information concerning the
individual performances of the strongmen as well as information on contemporaneous
vaudevillian programs. Third, photographs of these performers served as visual records
that traced the development of the performances of vaudevillian strongmen. Although
many of these pictures are familiar to the sport world, having appeared in sport journals,
There has been much written about Sandow, both fact and fiction; however, the most useful
For more information on Sandows time with Ziegfeld see Josh Buck, Sandow: No Folly with
biography is probably Chapman, Sandow the Magnijcent.
Ziegfelds First Glorification, Iron Game History 5, no. 1 (May 1998) as well as Chapman, Sandow the
Mugnijcent, chapter 4, New York and Chicago, 1893-94 and chapter 5, The Tour of America, 1894-
96.
l 3 David Webster, Siegmund Breitbart: A Box Office Record Breaker, Ironmun Magazine (October
1990), 22.
4
magazines, and books, few historians have brought theatrical questions to the
investigation of these pictures.
Several secondary questions contributed to the answer of the major question
posed. How did strongmen enter the profession? Where did the strongmens
performances appear on the vaudevillian bill? Did the position change over time? Did
the performances or the individual strongmen affect the position of the acts on the bill?
How much did the strongmen receive in wages? What specifically did strongmen say
and do during their performances? Was there a typical banter or shtick that strongmen
used during the performance, or was the patter specific to each performer? How, if at
all, did the costumes change during the dates of the study? Is there evidence of
strongmen, their managers, or both, consciously changing the performance? To answer
such questions requires a preliminary understanding not only of physical culture but also
of vaudeville and strongmen in general.
The late nineteenth century witnessed a tremendous explosion of interest in
physical training for both men and women . . .; however, the origins of this
phenomenon began during the Age of Enlightenment.14 Classicism, or Greek
Revivalism, began in part because of a 1753 folio published by the two English architect-
explorers, James Stuart and Nicholas Revatt. The pair had recently returned from a
two-year trip to Athens to study Greek art and architecture, and their book helped to
topple the reign of Baroque and Rococo. Besides raising peoples interest in Greek art
l 4 Jan Todd, The Classical Ideal and Its Impact on the Search for Suitable Exercise: 1774-1830, Iron
Game History 2, no. 4 (November 1992): 6.
5
-..- __ . . _ _ - ... I . . . 1 . .. I . . . _I , . .
and architecture, the two also brought back to England a largely forgotten aesthetic for
the body: the muscular, symmetrical example of Ancient Greece. The British
Museums 1807 exhibition of the Elgin Marbles, the sculptures from the Parthenon that
Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin brought back from Athens also helped raise interest in this
forgotten aesthetic. l6 According to physical culture historian Jan Todd, as increasing
amounts of Greek art began filling the new museums throughout Europe, people
compared their physical stature to that of the ideal Greek statues. Unhappy with what
they discovered about themselves, early nineteenth century pioneers of physical training
such as J ohann Friedrich GutsMuths began creating exercise systems to improve health.
Fortunately for these early trainers, schools were now incorporating a pedagogy
also consonant with classical Greece:
As the dual nature of the Greek educational system
became more widely appreciated, it provided an acceptable
historical antecedent for introducing physical training and
athletic competitions into the educational process. l 7
The people of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were heavily influenced by the
Calvinist doctrines that denigrated the body in favor of the soul, making physical
activity seem frivolous and even un-Godly.yy With the advent of Greek Revivalism,
however, physical educators had a new philosophical base on which to mount their
argument for exercise.18
l 5 Ibid.
l 6 Edward P. Alexander, Museum Masters: Their A.-.seums and Their InJuence, American Association
for State and Local History Book Series, ed. Sandra Sageser Clark (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press,
1995), 37.
l 7 Todd, The Classical Ideal, 7.
l 8 Ibid., 13. Emphasis in original.
6
I- ..
It was not long before the English interest in exercise crossed the Atlantic and
gained a foothold in the United States. Interest in exercise in America dates back to at
least the 1802 printing in Philadelphia of an English translation of C. G. Salzmanns
Gymnastics for Youth. The early interest reached its pinnacle in the 1820s; however, it
faded in popularity following a cholera epidemic in the early 1830s which shifted
Americas hygienic focus to matters of nutrition, sanitation and public health.
By mid-century, however, exercise regained popularity in the United States.
Historians of sport consider George Barker Windship the impetus for the boom in
American weight training. In 1850 when he entered college at age sixteen, Windship
was the next to smallest student in his Harvard class.2o In an attempt to defend himself
from bullies, Windship turned to gymnastics and weight training. Within a few years, he
had developed his body enough to intimidate his intimidators. After graduating from
Harvard Medical School, Windship began touring, lecturing on the rules of health and
the special benefits of systematic weight training.22 American weight training is said to
have begun on 9 J une 1859 with Windships first successhl
At about the same time that Windship was promoting his views in America, two
other advocates of exercise were emerging in England. These other advocates had a
l9 Ibid., 6.
2o James C. Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness: The History ofAmerican Health Reformers (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1982), 274.
Ibid.
Jan Todd, Strength is Health: George Barker Windship and the First American Weight Training
Boom, Iron Game History 3 , no. 1 (September 1993): 3.
23 Ibid., 4, 7. Madam Beaujeu also deserves mention for her efforts in Boston in 1841 where she opened
a school for the teaching of calisthenic exercise. . . . Todd points out that Beaujeu was to become an
important link in the introduction of womens gymnastics and calisthenic to America. Todd The
Classical Ideal, 1 1.
7
slightly different reason for promoting exercise. In their writings, Thomas Hughes and,
more importantly, Charles Kingsley discussed the divineness of the whole manhood,
the virtue of physical manliness and healthy animali~rn.~~ In an 1857 review of
Kingsleys Two Years Ago, T. C. Sanders coined a term for this emerging philosophy
toward physical training: Muscular Christianity. By the time the movement received a
name, it had spread beyond the bounds Kingsley had had in mind:
an age enchanted by athletics and action could interpret muscular
Christianity to mean a spiritual obligation to cultivate the body, and
suppose that morality could be measured with a tape and weighed
by athletic trophies.25
Muscular Christianity was more than an athletic movement, however. In the same
review that coined the term, Sanders explained that the defining characteristics of
muscular Christianity were an association between physical strength, religious certainty,
and the ability to shape and control the world around oneself. Exercise was
inextricably linked with . . . a physical armor-plating to withstand various potential
threats to religious belief, bodily health, and social stability.26
The other major force in the mid-century revival of interest in physical culture
was the Young Mens Christian Association. Sir George Williams created the YMCA in
London in 1841 as an attempt to substitute Bible study and prayer for life on the
streets. By 1854, there were 397 separate Ys in seven nations, with 30,369 members
Morton, Crusaders for Fitness, 272.
2s Ibid.
26 Donald E. Hall, Muscular Christianity: Reading and Writing the MaleSocial Body, in Muscular
Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age, with an Introduction by Donald E. Hall, ed. Donald E. Hall,
Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, ed. Gillian Beer and Catherine
Gallagher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 7-8.
8
As muscular Christianity grew in popularity, the YMCA became a leading
champion of the movement.28 Within a few years of its appearance in America, the
YMCA began discussing the incorporation of gymnasiums; however, financial difficulty
and the Civil War prevented this expansion. The annual convention of 1864,
nonetheless, had sealed the YMCAs commitment to physical education: Any
machinery will be incomplete which has not taken into account the whole man. We
must add physical recreation to all YMCAs.29
Like the earlier interest at the turn of the nineteenth century, this mid-century
fascination with exercise also lost momentum. Ironically, the impetus for the end of the
mid-century craze was the same as the impetus for its beginning-George Barker
Windship. When Windship died instantly from a massive stroke on 12 September 1876
at the age of forty-two, his death dealt a severe blow to exercise and weightlifting
because those opposed to his theories quickly blamed his death on weightlifting and
exerci~e.~ Nevertheless, like a phoenix, exercise and weightlifting again rose in
popularity at the end of the century. There were several reasons for the renewed interest
in exercise, which by the late nineteenth century was more commonly referred to as
physical culture.
27 Young Mens Christian Association of the United States of America, A Brief History of the YMCA
Movement, <http://www.ymca.net/a/history.htm>, 20 J anuary 1999.
28 Nina Mjagluj, True Manhood: The YMCA and Racial Advancement, 1890-1930, inMen and
Women Adrifl: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City, with Prefaces by Clyde GriEen and Joanne
Meyerowitz, ed. Nina Mjaglaj and Margaret Spratt (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 145.
29 M. L. Walters, The Physical Education Society of the Y.M.C.A.s of North America, Journal of
Health and Physical Education 17 (May 1947): 357; quoted in Betty Spears and Richard A. Swanson,
History ofsport and Physical Activity in the United States, ed. Elaine T. Smith (Dubuque: Wm. C.
Brown Company Publishers, 1978), 122.
30 Todd, Strength is Health, 11.
9
..- - ...-. , ._ . . . , .- .... .~*. ... I -
One reason was the growing popularity of the Scottish Highland Games in
America. According to David Webster, Scots traced their presence in the United States
back to 1729, but after the 1745 Rebellion in Scotland, there was a mass immigration of
Scots to the United States. These immigrants began societies to preserve their heritage
and culture-Caledonian Societies, Orders of Scottish Clans, and St. Andrews Societies.
These Scottish Highland Games in America were an extremely popular entertainment
before the Civil War; so popular in fact that organizers began headlining champions from
the Games held in Scotland who came for a particular societys Games.31 Such events
always included strength-testing activities, and it was from this beginning, Webster
suggests, that the physical culture movement began in America. Indeed, Webster states
that in 1868 between 4,000 and 10,000 [people] turned out in New York . . . in spite of
terrible weather, t o watch the New York Caledonian Clubs 12th Annual Games.32
Reflecting on this turnout several days later, J ohn C. Babcock, William B. Curtis, and
Henry E. Buermeyer founded the New York Amateur Athletic
The rapid growth and industrialization of the United States, the rise of big
business, and with it, the rise in sports also probably promoted interest in exercise at
centurys end. The growth and industrialization of America at the end of the nineteenth
century had the effect of promoting optimism about the coming twentieth century: the
late 19th and early 20th century was an era of great optimism, and optimism always
David Webster, Bohbuilding: An Illustrated History (New York Arc0 Publishing, Inc., 1982), 18.
32 Ibid., 19.
33 Ibid. Webster states that the minutes of the New York Caledonian Club. . . give full details of the
assistance the Scots gave in founding the . . . Club. . . . Ibid.
10
.*I
- , .. --._- . , . . . .. .. .... _ . .. .t. ~ .. . __I ._-_ . .
breeds strength.34 On the other hand, it also increased fear that perhaps Americans
were not up to their new challenges. At this time the Rough Rider attitude of Theodore
Roosevelt grew popular and with it his view of sport as a revitalization agent for the
neurasthenic and dyspeptic American male.35 Indeed, as the century ended, there was
a widespread philosophical concern that American men and women werent measuring
up to the demands of m~dernization.~~
With the rise of big business came, not coincidentally, a rise in
sports-particularly football, boxing, and wrestling. Because business prized
competition, more and more schools created teams and competed against one another
These competitive sports had a twofold purpose: . . . they require[d] young men to
develop physically, but they [also] developed team spirit and certain militaristic
tendencies thought essential for success in the business ~ommunity.~
The interest in sports crystallized in still another event-perhaps the most
significant event of the ti methe advent of the modern Olympics in 1896. Here was the
ultimate destination for an athlete, a place where ordinary people could see first-hand
what they could achieve through exercise.
Still another possible catalyst for the rise of physical culture was photography
By the late nineteenth century, photography was easy and inexpensive enough to make it
a practical artistic, and propagandist, medium. J an Todd suggests that the expanding
34 Anthony Serafini, The Muscle Book (New York: Acro Publishing, Inc., 1981), 22.
35 Harvey Green, Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1986), 236.
36 Todd, The Classical Ideal, 6.
37 Green, Fit for America, 233.
11
use of photography . . . made it possible for men and women to compare themselves to
those featured in the many new, popular magazines. . . .38
Finally, the popularity of physical culture at the turn of the century was also
linked to the increasingly popular entertainment now called vaudeville. Indeed, Todd
suggests that the birth of vaudeville and such physical culture performers as
professional strongmen, club swingers and acrobats were a major reason for the
renewed interest in physical culture, and Anthony Serafini reminded his readers that
despite the presence of weightlifting in the first modern
Olympiad and despite the victory of the great Elliot of
England and Jensen of Denmark, modern weightlifting
remained rooted in the public consciousness as a vaudeville
fixture full of tawdry tricks and stunts.39
Clearly, then, any effort to understand the rise of physical culture in the United States
will be enhanced by understanding as well the origins and rise of vaudeville.
The origins of vaudeville, however, are a mystery: vaudeville is as old as
humanity and . . . It would be fair to say that [it] started with the first single, or solo
performer . . . who entertained for either fun or profit.40 In a tongue-in-cheek
observation, J oe Laurie J r. claimed that Vaudeville was first started in the Garden of
Eden! According to this view, Adams eating the apple was the first specialty act; later
Cain and Abel were the first two-man act. Cain was the straight man, hitting Abel with
a club instead of a new~paper.~~ Still another proposal-by far the most
j8 Tow The Classical Ideal, 6.
39 Serafini, The Muscle Book, 22.
41 Joe Laurie Jr., Vaudeville: From the Hanky-Tonkx to the Palace, with a Foreword by Gene Fowler
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953), 8.
Sobel, A Pictorial Histoty of Vaudeville, 13, 17.
12
popular-suggests that a French workman in the fourteenth or fifteenth century started
the phenomenon of vaudeville with his sprightly songs which struck the popular fancy
and achieved a reputation not only in his own town but throughout the c0unt1-y.~~
Vaudeville, as remembered today, most probably began in the sixteenth century
with the Italian intermezzi, short dialogues between acts of serious drama. The
intermezzi were usually dumb acts (performed in pantomime) except when dialogue was
necessary. The intermezzi spread to France where they mixed with satirical ballads.
This new form gave rise to opera c or ni q~e . ~~ Meanwhile, the satirical ballads and
intermezzi crossed the English Channel and gave rise to the popular entertainment
presented in taverns. Gradually, the taverns offered bills longer than mere drinking songs
and ballads. In 1850, Charles Morton built an annex to his tavern where he offered a full
show of variety entertainment. Entrepreneurs quickly copied his annex; these annexes,
along with the entertainment they provided, became known as music halls. Performers
from these British music halls toured the United States and were responsible for
importing variety to America, where it mixed with the various indigenous forms of
entertainment-honky-tonks, dime museums, circuses, showboats, and minstrel and
medicine shows-to become ~audevi l l e.~~
The early variety shows in America were mostly for men only. These shows
presented lewd matter, or blue material, and entertained the tosspots, strumpets,
Brett Page, Writing for Vaudeville, with an Introduction by J. Berg Esenwein, The Writers Library,
ed. J . Berg Esenwein (Springfield Massachusetts: The Home Correspondence School, 19 15), 1.
43 Ernest Henry Short, Ff t y Years of Vaudeville (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978). 2.
44 Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 20.
13
dark-alley lads, and slummers. . . . 45 Beer-halls, music halls, honky-tonks, and
burlesque houses were the realms of this risque form of ente~tainment.~~ Tony Pastor
deserves the credit for leading variety out of the red light district. . . . 47 On 24
October 188 1, Pastor opened the Fourteenth Street Theatre, offering a bill that was
suited for a mixed audience (i.e., both men and woman). Showboats, dime museums,
town halls, and Chautauqua tents all offered clean bilk4 The blue material, however,
persisted, and it remained as the popular form of entertainment now known as
burlesque. 49
Martin Beck continued Pastors trend of cleaning up vaudeville and was the man
who really put class into ~aude.~ Beck wanted a bill to have variety, change of pace
and have something that appeals to e~eryone.~ In 1889, F. F. Proctor popularized
continuous performances: Mer breakfast go to Proctors--After Proctors, go to
bed.52 Proctor also contributed to vaudeville by being the first to offer insurance to his
45 Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 10.
46 Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 22.
47 Albert F. McLean, American Vaudeville as Ritual (Lexington: University of Lexington Press, 1965).
3 1.
49 The real Burlesque consisted of two pieces and an olio, accordmg to Abel Green and Joe Laurie J r.
The two pieces were usually parodies of famous events or plays such as When Caesar Sees Her,
[whch] took the famous meeting between Cleopatra and Marc Antony and made even the most
impressive moment a scream. The olio included bawdy songs (sometimes parodies of popular songs)
and dancing. The dances included the the Salome, the hootchy-kootchy, and, of course, the striptease.
Samuel Paynter Wilson, a prominent smut-hunter of the 19 10s declared that Absolute indecency
reigns supreme. . . . The performers (of burlesque), mostly women of the underworld, are paid to amuse
the audiences by kicking up their heels. The higher they kick, the more they are paid. Abel Green and
Joe Laurie J r., Show Biz, porn Vaude to Udeo (New York: Holt, 195 l), 74-77; Page, Writing for
Vaudeville, 142; Green and Laurie, 75.
Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 22.
Laurie, Vaudeville, 362.
Ibid.
s2 Ibid., 365.
14
employees, to lower ticket prices between ten and eleven in the morning, and to share his
profits with his employees.53 E. F. Albee, as head of the Keith-Albee Circuit and the
United Booking Office, controlled the salaries offered to actors and built elaborate
theatres resplendent with oil paintings, carpet, and marble. These monumental buildings
were the palaces where vaudeville performed in its heyday.54
By 1900 vaudeville had outdistanced . . . its closest rivals-circuses, minstrel
shows, musical comedy. . . . Its own stars had emerged. . . . 55 These performers
presented a variety show that included skits, songs, dances, comic monologues, and
physical acts such as acrobats and, of course, strongmen. Through the late 1920s
vaudeville was king, and then the world began to change. Audiences turned from
theaters to more freakish and ribald entertainment. . . . 56 New competitors, most
notably film and radio, encroached on vaudevilles popularity. This loss of audience
coupled with the spiraling cost of producing big-time vaudevillian bills (major vaudeville
that performed twice, and later five times, a day and consisted of a nine-act bill) spelled
the demise of vaudeville. Entrepreneurs tried to hold the line by combining live shows
with movies, but by the mid-twenties, movies and radio were big business. In 1928,
J oseph P. Kennedy bought out the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit for its theatres and staff
53 Ibid., 369-370.
54 Joseph Laurie J r. succinctly defines the heyday of vaudeville thus: [the] heyday, which started
approximately during the McKinley Adrmnistration [1897-19011 and lasted well into the Volstead Era
[1919-19331. Joseph Laurie J r., Vaudeville Dead? Its Never Been, New York TimesMagazine, 14
October 1951, 25. Most historians, however, define the heyday of vaudeville as being from 24 March
1913 to 9 July 1932. These dates correspond to the operating dates for the Palace Theatre in New York
City as a straight vaudeville theatre. Marion Spitzer, The Palace, with an Introduction by Brooks
Atkinson (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 3, 198.
55 McLean, American Vaudeville as Ritual, 2 1.
56 Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 94.
15
. -.
of entertainers, and he combined it with RCA (Radio Corporation of America) and FBO
(Film Booking Ofice) forming RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum). A major force in the
American media had risen out of the ashes of ~audevi l l e.~~ Vaudeville had brought
nationwide stars . . . into the smallest neighborhoods . . . Radio brought them into the
The onslaught of radio and the Silver Screen rang in a new era of entertainment;
and with this same bell, the death knoll for vaudeville sounded. Although many
vaudevillian stars such as Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, the Marx Brothers, J oe Bonomo
(a vaudevillian strongman turned silent-film stuntman), and Victor McLaglin (a British
music hall strongman turned Hollywood actor) made a successhl transition and became
stars of film, radio, and television, others-including many strongmen-were unable to
adapt themselves to the changing times. Strongmen who could not adapt died with
vaudeville; however, other strongmen returned to circuses and the dying sideshows while
still others (like their vaudevillian compatriots) successfdly made the transition into film
and later television. Still other strongmen leR entertainment and found employment in
the sports world as professional bodybuilders and weightlifiers.
The origins of the term vaudeville are as obscure as the origins of the thing itself
Some propose that early couplets written in the valley of the Vire gave their name to this
type of entertainment. Alternatively, the name may have been derived from chansons du
Vau or du Val de Vire, well known drinking songs. Again, the word may have derived
57 Robert W. Snyder, The Voice of the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 159.
Ibid., 156-157.
16
from the French term voix de ville, songs of the city streets.59 The first time the word
vaudeville was used in the United States to describe variety shows was in the 1880s
when John W. Ransone organized a troupe and toured the backwoods of America.
There is speculation that he may have appropriated the term from the Vaudeville
Theatre, established in San Antonio, Texas, around 1882. Douglas Gilbert points out
that it could have been the other way round: the theatre may have taken its name from
Ransones troupe.60
Although Pastor officially began clean vaudeville, he did not approve of the word
vaudeville. Pastor preferred the term variety to vaudeville, believing the latter to be a
sissy term for the correct variety.61 It was not until the powerhouse impresarios,
Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee, promoted their shows as
vaudeville after 1900 that the term became the standard. Before Keith-Albee, the terms
variety and vaudeville were interchangeable.
Regardless of the origin of its name or itself, by the late nineteenth century,
vaudeville had come to mean variety shows and its productions had established certain
patterns. In 1906, Keith-Albee created the United Booking Office to hire performers
and to ensure their quality throughout the Keith-Albee circuit. These bookings were set
according to the acts placement on the bill.
59 Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 17.
6o Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 4.
1973), 19
John E. DiMeglio, Vaudeville U.S.A. (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press,
17
As vaudeville developed so did the bills offered. Early variety shows like those
offered by Proctor were continuous, opening early in the morning and closing in the
evening. By 1906, however, big-time vaudeville was offering two performances a day
and the standard vaudevillian bill consisted of eight to ten acts.62 The standard bill for
the Palace Theatre was a nine-act show, consisting of two parts. The first part began
with a dumb act. Dumb acts could be anything from dancing to animal acts. The reason
for having a dumb act first was a practical one: visual acts would be easier to understand
than acts that required spoken words to be heard and understood while people still
searched for their seats. There were only two requirements for the second position on
the bill: first, that it was a typical vaudeville act . . . and second, that it was better
than the first. The second position usually went to a good man-and-woman singing act
. . . [and was] position[ed] on the bill . . . to settle the audience and prepare it for the
show. In order to hold the audiences interest, a comic sketch usually held the third
position; the idea was to make the audience believe that nothing could top the previous
act. The first headliner of the bill appeared in the fourth position. The number five
position needed to top the headliner and so comprised either another, bigger star or
grander spectacle, like a large scale dance number or even one of those delighthl
novelties vaudeville likes so well. No matter what filled the fifth position, it had to be
of enough interest to keep the audience from wandering away, for it immediately
preceded the intermission.
62 Ibid., 29.
18
The second part followed a similar pattern. The sixth position, the act
immediately after the intermission, was another difficult position to fill because it needed
to recapture the audiences attention, while at the same time, it needed to be inferior to
the remaining acts. A comic dumb act best fit this position; it easily entertained the
audience and still had no words that late returnees would mi ss. The seventh act usually
consisted of another large number with a star performer; usually this act was a comedy
or serious playlet, but one still inferior to the eighth position, the next to closing act.
The eighth act usually went to a single, a man or woman performing a comedy
routine-always the big name the audience was anticipating. The final-ninth-act was
again a dumb act because so many members of the audience left before the act was
completed.
It must be an act that does not depend for its success upon
being heard perfectly. Therefore a sight act [ Le., a dumb
act] is chosen, an animal act maybe, to please the children,
or a J apanese troupe with their gorgeous kimonos and
vividly harmonizing stage draperies, or a troupe of white-
clad trapeze artists flying against a background of black.
Whatever the act is, it must be a showy act, for it closes the
performance and sends the audience home pleased with the
program to the very last minute.63
As vaudeville expanded, control of the medium was in the hands of a few men.
Although the salaries for performers ranged from $150 to $1,500 per week depending on
their placement on the bill, their lives were anything but easy or glamorous. Not only did
they have to travel between theatres and learn to deal with different crews and managers,
63 George A Gottlieb, quoted in Page, Writing for Vaudeville, 6-10. Gottlieb booked shows for Keiths
Palace Theatre in New York.
19
they had to put up with all sorts of dressing-rooms and hotels, with unheated wings and
indifferent lunch-counter cooks, with cindery train-trips and jolting street-cars, with
winter snowdrifis and delayed baggage and dog-days and melting make up.64
It was into this general pattern of performance that vaudevillian strongmen
eventually fit, but strongmen had been impressing audiences with their amazing strength
long before their emergence into variety and vaudeville. According to Edmond
Desbonnet, a French promoter and historian of physical culture, people had honored
strength since the beginning of history when they chose their leaders and chieftains based
on physical prowess.65 Later, strongmen were represented in religion (Samson in the
Bible and Hercules in mythology). The Greeks placed emphasis on strength as well and
organized such games as the Olympics for religious observance to Zeus and as
entertainment for the citizens of Greece.@ The Romans continued presenting displays of
brawn for entertainment in the form of gladiatorial fights, and the medieval period
offered stories of brave knights who were able to perform seemingly superhuman feats of
~trength.~ The renaissance had its share of strong men, including Leonard0 da Vinci,
and by the late seventeenth century, professional strongmen were actually performing.68
In analyzing the entertainment offered at the fairs of Paris, the breeding ground for the
modem circus, George Speaight discovered that three strongmen and four strongwomen
O4 Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 54.
65 Edmond Desbonnet, The Kings of Strength, trans. David Chapman, unpublished, 1.
66 H. D. Amos and A. G. P. Lang, These were the Greeks (Chester Springs, Pennsylvania: Dwfour
Editions, Inc., 1979), 83-87.
67 Desbonnet, The Kings of Strength, 7-14.
Webster, Bodybuilding, 11.
20
- - .-. ..^ . I . ,. ..
performed between 1678 and 1787.69 In the latter half of the eighteenth century, when
Philip Astley, the father of the modern circus, offered acts to support his equestrian show
at his Riding School near Westminster Bridge, he included a ~trongrnan.~ Indeed, it was
here, with Astleys Riding School, that a partnership between the circus and the
strongman formed, a partnership that would last until the end of the nineteenth century.
Strongmen continued to work in the circuses; however, the arena-style staging of the
circus did not lend itself as well to the strongmens act as did the staging behind a
proscenium arch.71 By the 188Os, therefore, strongmen began to migrate to more
suitable environs-the dime museum.
Dime museums could trace their roots to the Age of Enlightenment when the
intellectuals of the eighteenth century sought to discover the basic laws of nature, the
universe, and humanity, and to preserve their findings of natural specimens as well as
human artistic and scientific creations in museums for posterity.72 From about 1782
until 1840 there were numerous attempts to create an American Museum, instilling
patriotism and documenting American history and culture and . . . [in some cases] the
plight of the American Indian,73 Unfortunately, Americans were less interested in things
scientific and artistic than the museums owners had hoped, and many museum
69 George Speaight, A History of the Circus (London: The Tantivy Press, 1980), 16.
70 John Durant and Alice Durant, Pictorial History of the American Circus, with an Introduction by
Tom Parkinson (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1957), 17.
Otto Arco, My Tribute to Bobby Pandour-Part 11, Strength & Health, February 1942, 21.
l 2 Edward P. Alexander, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of
Museums, with a Foreword by William T. Alderson, American Association for State and Local History
Book Series, ed. Sandra Sageser Clark (Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press, 1996), 8.
73 Andrea Stulman Dennett, Weird & Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America (New York: New York
University Press, 1997), 1, 10.
21
proprietors resorted to sensational novelties and, eventually, live performers to entice the
Such were the dime museums, which by the early 1840s had become a
prominent form of American entertainment.
Dime museums distinguished themselves from genuine historical or art
museums by offering a myriad of entertainment. These various forms of entertainment
ranged from permanently housed collections of art and historical specimens to
educational lectures; and from melodramas performed in the adjoining theatres, to
musicians who strolled through the museum and provided light music. However, the
most compelling, and perhaps enticing, live performances in the dime museums were
promoted not as entertainment but rather as living specimens in the scientific
collections-the freaks who performed in the curio halls of the dime museums. 75
Many of the proprietors of the dime museums must have seen the potential for
financial gain in partnerships with circuses, which numbered close to one hundred by the
end of the nineteenth century.76 The human curiosities, once displayed in dime museums,
now presented themselves in freak shows along the midway. Dime museums did not
stop displaying human anomalies in the curio halls, however; fkeak show entertainers
migrated to the circuses in the warm months and the dime museums in the cold months.77
Ibid., 1-2.
j Ibid., 66. Frederick Drimmer asserts that it is no longer politically correct to use the word freak;
rather, he contends that the proper term now is very special people. Frederick Drimmer, Very Special
People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs ofNuman Oddities (New York: Amjon Publishers, Inc.,
1973), 40-41.
Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Projit (Chcago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1988), 40.
Robert Bogdan, The Social Construction of Freaks, in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the
Extraordinary Body, with a Foreword by Leslie A. Fiedler, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New
York: New York University Press, 1996), 24.
22
There were all sorts of people presented on the platforms of dime museums:
In general, five classes of human anomalies were
displayed in dime museums: natural freaks, who were born
with physical or mental deformities, such as midgets and
pinheads; self-made freaks, who cultivated fieakdom,
such as tattooed people; novelty artists, who were freaks
because of their frealush performances, among them
snake charmers, mesmerists, hypnotists, and fire-eaters;
non-Western freaks, who could be promoted as exotic
curiosities such as savages and cannibals, usually billed
as being from Africa; the fake fieaks, or gaffed freaks,
who faked fi-eakishness, such as Siamese twins who were
not attached or the armless Wonder whose arms were
hidden under his costume.78
It is impossible to say with certainty why people were so fascinated by freaks and
sideshows; however, they clearly were. Many historians, anthropologists, and
sociologists have presented theories to explain this interest. In their book Pictorial
History of the American Circus, two circus historians have suggested one possible
reason for this fascination:
The average man, inherently curious, is naturally
attracted by human oddities. Moreover, the sight of a
dwarf, a giant or a true monstrosity such as a double-bodied
man, gives him, perhaps, a feeling of superiority over his
more unfortunate brethren, makes himmore contented with
his own lot.79
Desbonnet, writing forty-six years earlier, voiced the same views about peoples interest
in strength:
The publics taste for feats of strength probably
comes from the love that we all have for the supernatural.
Athletic prowess has, in fact, a kind of miraculous effect on
78 Dennett, Weird & Wonderful, 66; Bogdan, Freak Show, 6-9.
l9 Durant and Durant, Pictorial History of the American Circus, 98.
23
us since we are accustomed to consider as impossible
certain difficult feats that professional strongmen alone have
the ability to perform. . . . Apparently, we have in our
presence nothing less than a superman-at least in a
physical sense. . . . we praise [the strongman] even more
willingly since we are free to satisfjr our jealousy by quickly
persuading ourselves that the strongman who caused our
enthusiasm is no doubt vastly inferior to us intellectually.80
Modern Samsons [were] generally regarded as freaks in the show world, and
they can be placed into several of the categories defined by Robert Bogdan in his book
Freak Show.81 Obviously, some were natural freaks because it is clear that throughout
history, some people have been born with phenomenal strength. One such person was
Louis Cyr, a French-Canadian who assumed the title of Strongest Man in Canada at the
age of eighteen.82 Many more people who performed as strongmen, however, were born
of average strength and through training built their muscles and power to become strong;
these people were examples of self-made freaks. Strongmen also represented the
category of novelty freaks. For example, in the nineteenth century most urbanized
people were not strong; rather, the preferred body type was plump and weak because
such was a Victorian sign of business acumen, a trait that was valued more than physical
might (in the city at least).83 In such an age where physical vigor was uncommon for
those living in the industrialized cities, people surely viewed the ability to lift several
hundred pounds with one hand as freakish. The fifth category, the fake-or
Desbonnet, The Kings of Strength, 2.
81 Cincinnati Tribune, 16 March 1924; Bogdan, Freak Show, 6-9. For a more succinct list of Bogdans
categories see Dennett, Weird & Wonderful, 66.
George F. Jowett, The Strongest Man that Ever Lived (Montreal: Your Physique Publishing Co.,
Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, 2.
1949), 14-16.
83
24
gaffed-freaks, also contained strongmen. For example, Harry Hercules, the boy
wonder who performed on Coney Island, boasted of his ability to lift an elephant. Harry,
however, was not a Hercules, but rather a weakling and a consumptive who fooled his
audiences with hidden machines that did the heavy lifting for him.84 Pretending to be
stronger than they in fact were was easy for circus, dime museum, and vaudevillian
performers because they could easily execute so many of their stunts through trickery.
P. T. Barnums immortal statement that a sucker is born every minute encouraged
charlatans to ascend vaudevillian stages hoping for what Andy Warhol would later call
their fifteen minutes of fame.
The strongmen were at the nexus of many aspects of social life in late nineteenth
century America. Several of the most important events occurring at this time were the
rise of vaudeville, the rise in popularity of physical culture in America, and the rise of
industrialism. All of these events had profound impacts on American life and
entertainment; the strongmen, likewise, were affected. By investigating the development
of the strongmen in American vaudeville, it is possible to elicit an understanding of how
these events related to American society as a whole.
To examine the relationship among strongmen, vaudeville, and American culture,
the thesis consists of five chapters. This chapter, after identifjring the question and
justifjring its importance, briefly sketched the background of physical culture, vaudeville,
and strongmen. The rest of the thesis will try to bring these three strands together.
84 Edwin A. Goewey, How Feats of Strength are Faked, Muscle Builder, September 1925, 21. For a
detailed account of Harry Hercules, the Boy Wonder see Goewey, How Feats of Strength are Faked.
25
Chapter 2 discusses two major types of strongmen-lifters and fakers-who, during the
early period, performed in circuses and dime museums. By 1893, the strongmans act
was an established part of variety shows, and Chapter 3 investigates the typical
performance of an early vaudevillian strongman by examining the performances of
Eugen Sandow. Chapter 4 traces the changes in the performances of strongmen in
vaudeville after Bernarr Macfadden successfblly promoted the first physical culture
show in America in 1903 . 85 This show heightened Americans interest in posing and
muscle control, and some strongmen adapted their act to the changing preference.
Chapter 5 summarizes how the performances of strongmen developed between 188 1 and
1932 and draws conclusions about the significance of these developments.
~~ ~ ~
85 New York Times, 29 December 1903.
26
CHAPTER 2
In the early period of strongmen (1 88 1- 1 893), which was during the latter days
of circuses and dime museums and the early days of vaudeville, there were two
categories of strongmen: those who could legitimately perform feats of strength and
those who alleged to be able to perform feats of strength. The strongmen who could
honestly perform their stunts could be hrther divided into two groups: self-made freaks
(those who exercised in order to develop their muscles) and natural freaks (those who
were born strong). The strongmen who faked their feats of strength fell into the group
of fake-or gaffed--freaks.' Epitomizing these two major categories were thefin de
siecle strongmen Louis Cyr (can) and Charles A. Sampson (allege). By investigating the
specific careers of Cyr and Sampson, it is possible to uncover information about the
category that each man represents.
Most vaudevillian performers of this period were willing to work anywhere,
regardless of the respectability of the establishment. Some even performed on street
comers and vacant lots, hoping that a booking agent would witness their performance
and offer them a contract.2 Although some strongmen worked in this fashion, most
entered the profession through one of two typical ways. The first was through contests
of strength. The Scottish Highland Games, for instance, proved a good avenue for some
' Strongmen who faked their performances were still strong and therefore could be included in the
category of self-made freaks. Because of the nature of their performance, however, it is more
appropriate to discuss them only as fake freaks.
Citadel Press, 1961), 27.
Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial Histoly of Vaudeville, with a Foreword by George Jesse1 (New York: The
27
-.- .- ..-_.. ... I . . . - - I . . . ... " I ,_ .. .... .
to enter the vaudevillian arena, and Donald Dinnie is a fitting example. He won ten
thousand events during his career in the Games, and performed on the stages of music
halls and vaudeville until he was seventy-six years old.3 Professional strongmen routinely
offered challenges that were open to anyone; sometimes those challengers who accepted
the dare proved to be good vaudevillian strongmen themselves and received contracts of
their own. Additionally, contests held at such functions as harvest festivals, fairs, and
expositions matched local amateur strongmen in competition.
Louis Cyr, at the age of eighteen, entered the strongman profession through an
open challenge; however, two different versions of his first contest survive. The first
version states that he entered an amateur contest in Boston in 188 1 . The challenge
consisted of only one test: lifting a horse. With theatrical flair, Cyr lifted the horses four
hooves off the ground and proved that he was the strongest man at the c~mpetition.~
The other version states that he accepted a challenge offered by David Michaud, then the
strongest man in Canada. In 188 1 Cyr met and defeated Michaud in Sohmer Park,
Montreal. Whichever story is correct matters little, Cyr became a famous vaudevillian
strongman as a result of winning one or both contests.
David Webster, Reconsidering Donald Dinnie: A Response to Frank Zarnowskis The Amazing
Donald Dinnie, Iron Game History 5, no. 2 (October 1998): 18, 21. Webster points out that it was the
London County Councillors concerned about the potential damage to the sturdy veterans health that
ended Dinnies career. Ibid., 2 1.
Ben Weider, The Strongest Man in History, Louis Cyr Xmazing Canadian, with a Foreword by
G6rald Aumont and an Introduction by Barry L. Penhale (Vancouver: Mitchell Press, Limited, 1976),
David Willoughby, The Kings of Strength, photocopy, p. 86, Todd-McLean Collection, University
27-30.
of Texas, Austin.
28
..
. . . . I - . . . I I . . - . - . __. . . -. II. _*_ . . . . .- ...- , . ,
These contests of physical vigor for amateurs offered at fairs and festivals were
similar to the phenomenon of amateur night that began in the English music halls and
was a part of American variety as early as the 1 8 8 0 ~ . ~ Every Friday night, the
management opened the stage to anyone who dared risk the ridicule of the a~di ence.~
Most entrants received fifty cents for participating, and the winner received from one to
five dollars; a few even received contracts.8
The other major path strongmen took to enter the business was through the
circus. Most strongmen who took this route began performing under the big top as
acrobats, gymnasts, trapeze artists, or bareback horse riders-all of which can
significantly develop the body. Many young people, after attending a circus, fantasized
about running away to join the clowns, animals, and performers; a few people actually
did. Charles Sampson began his career in this fashion. Sampson ran away with the
circus, most likely around the age of eleven, and developed his physique through years of
Playbills for The Boylston Museum (Boston) and Grays Opera House (Boston), in The National
Museum of American History Archives Center, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana. Theater,
Collection 60, box 2 of 20. The bill for Boylston Museum was dated 12 January 1884 and the bill for
Grays Opera House for 1880.
Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Burlesque (New York: Bonanza Books, 1956), 96. The
auchence was usually more rowdy and offensive during amateur night than on other nights, and the
police arrested many of the more brazen hecklers. Irving Zeidman. The American Burlesque Show
(New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967), 178.
John E. DiMeglio, VaudeviNe U.S.A. (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press,
1973), 65.
All of these acts help develop the muscles of the body; however, they define the musculature more
than they build the body. It is through systematic, progressive weight training that people acquire
muscle mass. Sandow is an example. Although there is no surviving evidence to support the claim,
Sandow most likely began as an acrobat or gymnast in a circus. Early photographs of Sandow show the
lean, sinewy physique with thickly muscled thighs [that] are the result of his work as an acrobat;
however, he is missing the mass that he possessed later in his career. After his contact with [Professor
Louis] Attila, however, Sandow began to put on more mass and to acquire the body of a bona fide
muscleman because of Attilas interest in heavy weight training. David Chapman, Sandow the
Magnijcent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings ofBodybuilding, Sport and Society, ed. Benjamin G.
Radar and Randy Roberts (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 9, Plate 1, picture 2.
29
gymnastics and acrobatics. Sometime between the ages of sixteen and nineteen,
Sampson lee the circus and began performing solo in unnamed museums and other
places of amusement in America using the talents that he had honed during his time
with the circus. He finally gained fame when he was thirty and performing at the Royal
Aquarium in London.
Although all strongmen embellished their childhood somewhat, genuine
strongmen had little need to do so. The fakers, however, seemed to rely on fantastic
stories to help legitimize their claim to strength. Most of the stories dealt with how the
strongman overcame childhood ailments and weakness. The fabricated autobiographies
usually explained that the strongman decided to commit himself to developing his body
after overhearing the doctor say that he had only a few months to live. Miraculously,
through systematic exercise, he astonished everyone by growing up (supposedly a feat in
itself) to become a strongman.
Although many of these embellished autobiographies have survived, Sampsons is
perhaps the most creative. The story proposes that Sampson was a child of normal
strength until he was fourteen when he awoke one morning to find that he possessed
superhuman power. He claimed he was a healthy, high-spirited boy who enjoyed
living life more than attending school. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out
Sampson was eleven years old. Nevertheless, he claims that he joined the French
C. A. Sampson, Strength: A Treatise on the Development and Use of Muscle (Chicago: Rand,
McNally & Company, Publishers, 1895), 42-44.
l 1 For detailed descriptions of false autobiographies see such famous strongmen and physical culturists
as Eugen Sandow (Chapter 3), Siegmund Breitbart (Chapter 4), Max Sick, and Bernarr Macfadden, to
name just a few.
30
Ambulance Corps and was grazed by a bullet early into his military career; from that time
his health began to fail. In 1873, now fourteen years old, Sampson was lounging in his
house when a bolt of lightening struck him. Mer about a month of complete paralysis,
he awoke one morning to find that he could bend an iron ring by placing it over his upper
arm and flexing his biceps. This version is much more sensational than the true story
(no matter what the true story was), and his autobiography is a prime example of the
way false strongmen would embellish, or in some cases create, their childhood
experience^.'^
Like other strongmen, Louis Cyr and Charles Sampson spent their careers in
venues typical of the time: the circus and the dime museum. Strongmen had been
performing in circuses since the early 1770s and by the 1880s had migrated to dime
museums when the circuses closed during the winter months.14 Because of the close
association between sideshow freaks and strongmen, performers such as Cyr and
Sampson easily found work in the curio halls of dime museums while the circuses closed
for the winter.
Circus life was not as glamorous as it appeared on the surface. The life of a
circus performer was anything but easy, and Cyrs experience with the John Robinson
Circus for the season of 1898 suggests what it was like to perform with a traveling
l 2 Sampson, Strength, 34-42.
l 3 Cf. Sandows story of his childhood in Chapter 3.
l 4 Robert Bogdan, The Social Construction of Freaks, in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the
Extraordinary Body, with a Foreword by Leslie A. Fiedler, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New
York: New York University Press, 1996), 24.
31
show. l5 Cyr and his partner-protege Horace Barr6 toured throughout the American
Midwest from 27 April to 7 November 1898, beginning in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and
ending in Rogers, Arkansas. During the seven months Cyr was touring with the circus,
he never performed in the same city twice, and the circus performed everyday except
Sunday.
Fortunately, the salaries of strongmen matched the strenuous schedule they kept
while employed by circuses. Although Sampson failed to mention his wages for his work
in a European circus, Cyrs salary is available from the ledger books of the J ohn
Robinson Circus kept at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo. Many of the
advertisements for the John Robinson Circus declared that Louis Cyr was engaged at
the princely salary of $2,000.00 per week [Figure 11; however, he and Barre actually
split the more modest sum of $150 per week. Even at a mere seven and a half percent of
their alleged salary, they were still the second highest paid act for that season.16 As late
as 1914, the Berne Brothers (Great Sensational Athletes in Gigantic Feats of Strength,
New and Novel) were offering their services to the Ringling Brothers Circus for $13 5
l5 Although every biography that Qscusses this period mentions that Cyr spent time with the Ringling
Brothers Circus, Cyr actually performed with the J ohn Robinson Circus during 1898. The confusion
apparently arose because Ringling Brothers rented Robinsons property for that year and paid
Robinsons employees salaries.
l 6 J ohn Robinson advertisement in the Prints and Photographs collection at the Library of Congress, cat.
no. LC-USZ61-1285; J ohn Robinson Circus Herald 1898, at the Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI;
J ohn Robinson Show Payroll Record, Workmen s Time Book, Season 1898, no. 1, at the Circus World
Museum, Baraboo, WI. Unfortunately, most payroll records have been lost from that time; however. if
Cyr can be seen to represent legitimate strongmen, it is likely that his salary in the circus is
representative as well. Fred Dahlinger J r., director, Robert L. Parhnson Library and Research Center,
Circus World Museum, Baraboo, WI, interview by author, 26 August 1998.
32
Figure 1: Advertisement for the John Robinson Circus
describing Cyrs supposed salary. In the Prints and
Photographs Collection, Library of Congress, cat., no.
LC-USZ62-24601.
33
.__I *- - . . I . . - , . .. . . . .. ,.
per week. For this rate, the Berne Brothers offered three performers and their own
equipment; however, the horse you must hrni ~h. ~
Working in dime museums was as hard as working in circuses; however, it was
more financially rewarding. Austin and Stones Museum, a dime museum in Boston, for
example, opened at 1O:OO A.M. and offered a show (106 will admit you to everything)
every hour until they closed at 10:30 P.M.18 It was grueling work; however, the return
was high and many actors spent time in dime museums to supplement their income, or
gain experience.
Dime museums were a place where a vaudevillian could make a lot of money in a
relatively short period of time. Performers could easily make $20 to $30 more a week
than the standard minimums on the straight time.20 Sampson stated that he was making
between $200 and $300 per week while he worked at unnamed museums in America
from 1875 to 1878.21 Cyr performed at Austin and Stones Museum intermittently
between 1895 and 1896 where he set many records for lifting. Although no records of
his salary survive, Cyr was probably earning as much as Sampson had, for performers in
the curio halls such as sword-swallowers, magicians, strong-men, and acrobats drew
Berne Brothers, [n.p.], to Ringling Brothers, 15 October 1914, in the Correspondence files at the John
and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida. I am gratefid to Jan Todd for finding, copying,
and sendng me this and other letters from strongmen in search of employment with the bngling
Brothers Circus.
* Boston Globe, 28 May 1895.
l9 Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1940), 20-24;
Bill Smith, The Vaudevillians (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 8.
2o Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 22.
Sampson, Strength, 44.
34
salaries of from $25 to $200 a week while variety acts in dime museums earned $25-
$35 for singles and $50-$70 for doubles.22
The placement of the act on the bill differed between the circus and the dime
museum. This difference was due largely to the inherent nature of the two venues.
When in the circus, strongmen appeared early in the program and usually came after the
trick-riders.
After the whirlwind speed of the voltige [trick-
riding] number, and the ecstatic shouts of the riding troupe,
one needs an act which is quiet and in comparison a little
slow. The routine must not be limp or loose because, at this
early stage of the programme, a feeling of tension must be
maintained. One wants to see some form of effort, but it
must always be under control. The strong man can best
provide
On the other hand, dime museums like Austin and Stones had continuous
performances all day. The theatre half of the museum usually offered a fifty-minute
performance and the curio hall half of the museum performed for fifty minutes.24 In this
fashion, two groups were entertained at the same time: one in the theatre watching the
pefiormance and the other in the curio hall viewing the novelties perform atop their
platforms. The Profe~sor,~ a sort of tour guide for the dime museum, led a group
through the curio hall for the fifty minutes that the theatre troupe performed.25 When the
22 Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 26.
23 Anthony Hippisley Coxe, A Seat at the Circus, Revised ed. (Hamdon, Connecticut: Archon Books,
1980), 61.
24 Boston Globe, 27 September 1896. Advertisements for Austin and Stones explain that they offered
theatre performances every hour. The management most likely needed about five minutes to clear the
audience and five minutes to seat the next group; therefore, it is likely that the performance was actually
only fifty minutes.
Boston Globe, 29 September 1896; William Dean Howells, Literature andLife: The Writings of
William Dean Howells (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1902), 195.
35
show in the theatre was finished, the group in the curio hall was ushered into the theatre
and the professor welcomed the next group into the curio hall. In this manner, platform
acts-the performances that presented in the curio halls on platforms-offered their acts
all day; however, each individual act lasted between five and ten minutes.26 Indeed,
Louis Cyr, while working at Austin and Stones, usually performed his routine no fewer
than nine times a day.27
The performances of strongmen, whether in circuses or dime museums, varied
little. The legitimate strongmen performed feats of pure strength: they entered the stage,
went through a series of lifts, and exited. The fakers, however, were true showmen who
dazzled their audiences, not with brawn but with brain. They entered the stage and
performed amazing tricks that the audience either accepted as-or believed to be-real
demonstrations of strength.
Throughout Louis Cyrs career, his act changed very little. From what he wore
on stage to what he did on stage, Cyrs performance was typical of performances of
other legitimate strongmen of the time. Articles describing Cyrs performance usually
discuss his record setting accomplishments; few discuss his actual performance. What
did the audience witness on the platform or in the circus ring when Cyr performed?
Upon entering the stage, Cyr made an immediate statement by means of costume
alone. He had two distinct types of costumes; however, it is impossible to say whether
26 The sideshow was also called a ten-in-one because they offered ten platform acts in one show.
Although there seems to be no surviving information describing the exact number of acts in a dime
museum, it is likely that they would have had the same number as the sideshows. In order to view ten
acts in fifty minutes, each act could onIy last for five minutes. Of course, some were longer and some
shorter.
Al Treloar, My Reminiscences of Old-Timers, Part Two, Ironmun Magazine, January 1956,54.
36
he used both styles throughout his career or if the costume changed over time.28 Early in
his career, the first type was very flamboyant. He wore green shorts and a vest over a
light colored union suit; trimming on the hems of the shorts and vest was red lace.29 The
vest and shorts had a matching rhinestone or studded pattern. On his feet, he wore
either boots or shoes with straps across his instep. When he wore the shoes, he wore
knee-high socks with green cuffs [Figures 2 and 31.
The second style of the two costumes was much more sedate. There were two
variations of this costume: the plain version and the patriotic version. This costume also
began with a light colored union suit; however, in this version Cyr wore a dark colored,
short sleeved leotard with a low-cut front over the union suit. For shoes, Cyr wore
traditional, shin-high gladiator boots. The patriotic version was the same, except across
the chest of the union suit, in bold letters, was embroidered the word Canada, and under
it was the Union J ack. [Figure 3 shows the plain version of this costume.]
Although his costume may have changed over the years, Cyr's act changed
little.30 Cyr was truly as strong as he claimed, and he made a respectable career by lifting
a weight equal to that which he purported to lift.31 He spent most of his performance
The pictorial evidence suggests that his costume changed over time; however, there is no sure way to
substantiate this claim. In the photographs that show Cyr wearing the first costume, the more
flamboyant of the two, his hair is always long, while in the photographs showing Cyr wearing the
second style, his hair is short. Once he cut his hair short, he never again grew it long. There is a
statuette of Cyr housed at the Weightlifting Hall of Fame Museum at the York Barbell Company in
York, Pennsylvania, which shows Cyr wearing long hair and the second style. Created years after Cyr's
death, the statuette seems to be a stylized portrait of the Canadan strongman [Figure 41. A description
of his costume in the Montreal DazZy Star also supports the claim that the costume changed. The article
describes Cyr's attire as a combination of the two costumes. Montreal Daily Star, 24 November 1891.
29 Montreal Daily Star, 24 November 1891.
30 Cyr &d add new stunts and lifts to his repertoire; however, the style did not change.
31 Boston Post, 19 May 1895.
37
-
Figure 2: Cyr with his wife Melina and their
daughter Emiliana, who used the stage-name
Miss Miliano Cyr. Note the flamboyant
costume. From the collection of David Chapman.
Reproduced with permission.
38
. -. ,
' f Zt ? i f?t ( * 1 i i )
Figure 3: Publicity photograph of Cyr liRing a
237% pound dumbbell. Note that the bell is
merely a wooden cutout painted to resemble a
real dumbbell. Note the plain costume. From
the collection of David Chapman. Reproduced
with permission.
39
- . . . - - , . . . . , . .. ,-.I., ._-__ ... ..-
Figure 4: Statuette of Cyr wearing the
plain costume. Note the long hair. The
statuette is in the Weightlifting Hall of
Fame Museum at the York Barbell
Company, York, Pennsylvania. From
the authors collection.
40
proving that he was indeed as strong as he claimed. In fact, he kept a scale on stage to
measure any weight should someone in the audience doubt his abilities.32 Each night his
manager would offer the same challenge: You can see on the stage, weights which any
one may veri@ for poundage. Is there a strong man in this hall, or several, who would
care to weigh these or try to lift them?33 Few accepted this challenge.
Cyr, like most strongmen, had a large repertoire from which he could vary his
daily (or hourly) perf~rmance.~~ Because he performed nine times a day while in the
dime museums, he probably used different lifts to break the monotony as well as to use
different muscle groups so as not to tire himself.
The list of Cyrs stunts and feats is practically endless; however, it is possible to
recreate Cyrs performance. He typically began his show by lifting 273% pounds with
one hand. He took the weight from the floor to his shoulder, then continued to lift the
weight until it was at full arms length above his head. Next, he liRed a 301-pound
barbell, this time with both hands, in the same fashion. For his next feat, he raised 174
pounds in one sweep fiom the floor at arms length with his right hand. After
replacing the weight on the stage floor, he executed this stunt, a one-hand snatch, again,
this time with his left hand. He then muscled out (held the weight at arms length out,
and perpendicular to, the body and parallel to the floor) 104% pounds. Once this feat
was complete, he proceeded to lift his famous barrel of sand and water said to weigh 3 14
32 bid. It is conceivablethat the scale could have been rigged to read a Merent weight; however,
based on Cyrs official records, it is doubtful he would have needed to resort to such trickery.
33 Weider, The Strongest Man in History, 76.
34 Sampson, Strength, 65.
41
pounds. With one hand and no aid of his knees[,] Cyr lifted the barrel to his shoulder.
In an attempt to show how strong the individual digits of his hands were, Cyr lifted 55 1
pounds with only his middle finger. Finally, he ended his act with a stunt for which he
set records: his famous back lift.35
Cyr had many other stunts for which he was famous. He pushed a hlly loaded
train car up an incline.36 He sometimes balanced a ladder atop his chin and his wife,
Melina, balanced herself atop the ladder [Figure 5].37 In another trick, Cyr called three
volunteers from the audience and escorted them to the stage where they took hold of
Cyrs hair, which for many years he wore to his shoulders like the biblical Samson. Once
everyone was secure, Cyr began spinning until all three men were swinging through the
air. Although this was not truly a lift, it did entertain and please the crowds greatl ~.~
It was only when he worked with a partner that any variation was present. While
Cyr and Barre worked together, they performed on stage (or in the circus ring) at the
same time; however, each man did separate stunts. The solo stunts that each man did
were the usual stunts that legitimate strongmen performed. For their final stunt, together
they lifted a platform holding at least twelve men.39 This last feat was a variation of
Cyrs famous back lift.
The performance style of Charles A. Sampson was also typical of other
strongmen of the period, albeit false strongmen. Sampson was either less photographed
35 Boston Globe, 19 May 1895.
36 David P. Willoughby, Louis Cy: The Daddy of em All, Ironman Magazine, January 1961, 30.
37 Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, Maine), 3 March 189 1.
38 David Nonvood, The Sport Hero Concept and Louis Cyr (MA, University of Windsor, Ontario,
1984), 40. No contemporary newspapers mention this stunt.
39 Leo Gaudreau, The Life of Louis Cyr, Part 4, Your Physique-Montreal, November [n.d.],29.
42
Figure 5: Cyr posing with his wife Melina
and the ladder on which he would balance
her. Note the flamboyant costume. From
the collection of David Chapman.
Reproduced with permission.
43
than Cyr or fewer pictures of Sampson have survived; therefore, scholars have little
visual evidence from which to draw. The only pictorial evidence of Sampson is in his
autobiography and a few scattered pictures in articles. These pictures suggest that
Sampson, like Cyr, dressed according to the standards of the day. He wore a two-piece
tights outfit consisting of pants and a shirt. Sometimes the shirt was sleeveless and white
in the front while along the sides and shoulders it was dark; other times, the shirt was all
one color. Whenever photographed, Sampson was sure to display his various medals
[Figure 6].40 Unlike Cyr, but similar to many strongmen, Sampson sported a
meticulously groomed handlebar mustache, one of the many Victorian symbols of
manliness and power.41
Sampsons performance was apparently similar in style to Cyrs and other
strongmen of the time. Although there are no surviving programs from Sampsons acts,
it is possible to recreate a typical performance but not to place the individual feats in
proper order. Sampsons act consisted of breaking coins with my fingers, and snapping
iron bars and chains by sheer strength of arm, and bursting chains, wire ropes, and straps
by expansive power of my lungs and He broke chains by smashing them with
his fists or with a straight pull. He lifted barbells of various weights: one he claimed
weighed 2,240 pounds; another supposedly weighed 340 Sampson also
Although some of these medals were no doubt fake, Sampson received many from various managers
in commemoration of his performance at various music halls and other venues. Jan Todd, interview by
author. 3 1 January 1999.
4 For more information on the significance of beards, see Reginald Reynolds, Beards: An Omnium
Gatherum (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1950).
42 Sampson, Strength, 76.
43 Leo Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons: The Histoiy of Strongmen, 2 vols. (Alliance: Iron
Man, 1975), 1:165, 167-169.
44
Figure 6: Sampson posing and prominently
displaying his medals. Note the development of his
forearms.
45
. . . - _ , . . .I I . . - . -... . ..I
performed his Flying Dumbbell stunt. For this stunt, a stagehand threw a 160-pound
bell from the flies, and Sampson caught the weight on his forearm.44 He ended many of
his performances before 1889 by lifting an iron bar upon which six young men grasped
either side.45 Mer 1889, Sampson ended his performances by purportedly lifting an
elephant.
The elephant lift, like most of Sampsons lifts, was a trick, for Sampson was as
dishonest as Cyr was honest, and he executed most of his lifts through trickery. There is
little doubt, based on surviving pictures of Sampson, that he was indeed a strong man;
however, as will become evident, Sampson faked all of his most famous stunts through
either sleight-of-hand, gimmicks, or machines. Unfortunately for Sampson, people
exposed himas a fraud throughout his career.
There was more to strongmens performances than merely lifting heavy objects
and breaking chains and coins. Whether real or fake strongmen, they competed against
one another and against anyone who accepted a challenge. Competitions among
strongmen were important for many reasons. Contests sometimes served as a sort of
strongman audition. Some managers tested aspiring strongmen in both feats of strength
and showmanship by arranging contests between their current employee and their
prospective employee.46 Perhaps the most important reason, however, was to help
legitimize the strongmens claims to strength.
J 4 Sporting Life, 13 November 1891.
45 Sampson, Strength, 58-61.
40 Siegmund Klein, Sandow-Truth and Fiction, Strength & Health, December 1948, 32.
46
There were two major ways strongmen proved (or tried to prove) to the audience
that their strength was genuine: contests between other professional strongmen and open
challenges to anyone present. Contests of strength between professional strongmen at
this time had no official rules. By tradition, each contestant selected several feats from
his own repertoire, and the other strongman attempted to duplicate them. Whichever
strongman performed the others feats better was the winner. The winner of these
professional contests won any money wagered, sometimes belts, and always the
recognition of superiority. There was much argument, and many contests between
professionals ended in di sp~te.~
Strongmen officially arranged these contests between professionals. Many
competitions began with offers to specific opponents placed in newspapers; sometimes
the instigator of the contest went to the offices of a newspaper or periodical and asked
the treasurer to hold the money, belt, or whatever was being wagered.48 Usually these
contests took place in vaudevillian theatres, and they always drew a large crowd.49
Sometimes they were part of the bill offered, and sometimes they were an added
attraction.
Open challenges with monetary prizes were common as a way for strongmen to
legitimize their claims to strength.
if there were a chance of losing it.
The logic was that strongmen would not offer money
A strongman offering a large sum of money must
47 Dick Bachtell, Pennell and Cyr Contest, Strength & Health, April 1943, 40.
2 March 189 1; Weider, The Strongest Man in History, 76.
49 Edmond Desbonnet, The Kings of Strength, trans. David Chapman, unpublished, 276.
Montreal Gazette, 24 June 1885; Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, Maine), 23 February 1891,
47
- -
. . . . . , . . -,. . .... . .. . . .._I. ... . - , . . -. . . - .
truly be a strong man; otherwise, such an offer would not be financially sound.50 If there
was a winner in an open challenge, he usually won the amount of money that the
strongman offered. Even more than the professional contests, the open challenges
worked to heighten the theatricality of the performance, for there was always a certain
dramatic tension during the pause in anticipation of an acceptance. The open challenge
was a significant part of the strongmens performance.
No matter in which venue (the circus, dime museum, or straight vaudeville), the
strongmen offered open challenges. The only apparent difference between open
challenges in the various venues was the amount of money offered. While Cyr toured
with the circus, he was always promoted with John Robinsons Big Feature $25,000
challenge open to the world to produce his equal. [Figure 11 There is no record of
anyone accepting this challenge. While Sampson worked at the Royal Aquarium, he
offered 2500 during his open challenge^.^^ Throughout his career, Cyr offered $100 to
any man who could duplicate one of his feats.53
Contests between professionals usually warranted higher stakes. When Cyr
toured the United Kingdom in 1892, Richard K. Fox, the famous boxing promoter and
publisher of The National Police Gazette, offered a &1,000 purse (which was equal to
about five thousand dollars at that time) to any strongman who could defeat Cyr in a
50 Sampson, Strength, 58.
John Robinson advertisement in the Prints and Photographs collection at the Library of Congress, cat.
no. LC-USZ62-24601.
* In his autobiography, Sampson says that the wager was &500; however, Sandow, Qscussing the same
challenge recounts that the wager was &1000. Sampson, Strength, 61; Eugen Sandow, My
Reminiscences, The StrandMagazine, March 1910, 167.
53 Gordon Venables, Mighty Men of Old: Being a Gallery of Pictures and Biographies of Outstanding
Old Time Strong Men (York: Strength and Health, 1940), [20].
48
contest of strength.54 Later, while Cyr was working for Austin and Stones, one
advertisement that ran in the Boston Globe declared that
Cyr is at all times ready and anxious to meet any of the
alleged strong men from any nation-Sandow
preferred-and will cheerfdly forfeit the sum of $1000 to
any of them who can duplicate his feats.55
This advertisement demonstrates that while Cyr offered $100 throughout his entire
career to the person who could duplicate one of his feats (i.e., open challenges), he
offered $1,000 to other strongmen (Le., contests between professionals) if they should
win. 56
Challenging others in competition was not unique to the strongmen; it was
common among other vaudevillian performers as well. During the 1880s, variety acts
entered an interesting phase as contests among performers became popular. Such acts
as clog or jig dancers, harmonica players, and pantomimists would compete for titles or
even silver cups.57 For example, Harry Houdini, perhaps the most famous magician and
escape artist from vaudeville, offered to participate in any challenge or test levied to
prove his legitimacy. Oscar and Willie Hammerstein offered another famous challenge at
their Victoria Theatre in New York: anyone who thought that they could make Sober
Sue laugh was welcome to try. Audience members would receive a prize while
comedians already on the bill would receive a raise should they succeed. No one
Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons, 1: 188.
Hy Steirman, Mighty Butterball, True: The Man s Magazine, May 1955, 79; Weider, The Strongest
55 Boston Globe, 19 May 1895.
Man in History, 65.
57 Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 24.
49
succeeded because Sue was deaf and near-~ighted.~ Even amateur night was a contest
of sorts, and there was little difference between contests involving dancers or musicians
and contests involving strongmen.
Louis Cyr used both forms of competition. Everywhere he went he participated
in contests with the current local champion, and he defeated everyone who met the
Brawny Canadian Oak.59 The list of challengers reads like a Whos Whoof the
strongman world: David Michaud in Quebec in 1881; Richard Pennell in Philadelphia in
1886; Sebastian Miller in Montreal in 1891; Cyclops and Sandowe, the False (whose real
name was Montgomery Irvingm), in Montreal in 1891 ; Donald Dinnie in Potarch,
Scotland in 1892; The McCann Brothers in England in 1892; August J ohnson in Chicago
in 1896; Otto Rinaldo in Montreal in 1899; Hector Decarie in Montreal in 1906; and
others still.
Cyr never backed down from a contest with another professional, and many were
afraid to face him. Eugen Sandow was one such person. In 1892, Sandow was at the
top of his profession in England; however, when Cyr arrived in London, Sandow refbsed
to face the French-Canadian.61
5a DiMeglio, Vaudeville U.S.A., 33, 125.
59 Boston Globe, 27 September 1896.
6o There is some confusion about Sandowes real name. David Champan refers to him as Irving
Montgomery in Sandow the MagniJcent based on court documents from a San Franscisco case between
Irving and Florenz ZiegFeld J r. An original publicity poster in the Todd-McLean Collection, however,
uses the name Montgomery Irving, as do most press clippings from that era.
Professor Edmund Desbonnet asserts that Cyr and Sandow did meet; however, such a match is
doubtful. If Cyr had met and beaten Sandow in England as Desbonnet claims, it seems unlikely that
Cyr would have used a challenge to Sandow for promotion while working in Boston after his return
from England; rather, he would have declared Sandows defeat. Desbonnet, The Kings of Strength, 275;
Boston Globe, 19 May 1895.
50
Since his early days touring Montreal, Cyr had always offered an open challenge
of one hundred dollars to any man who could duplicate one of his feats.62 One night,
while playing in Michigan, a man named Therrien succeeded in duplicating one of Cyr's
lifts. Cyr immediately shook hands with the amateur and gave himthe one hundred
do1la1-s.~~ Although this seems an insignificant story, its implications are not. Cyr freely
admitted that someone was able to win his challenge, and Cyr held to his side of the deal
by paying Therrien; not many strongmen were that free with their money.
The charlatans of strength also participated in competitions. It seems, however,
that the false strongmen were less inclined to participate in contests between
professionals and used the more theatrical open challenges. While legitimate strongmen
like Cyr were confident in their physical prowess with weights, fraudulent strongmen like
Sampson resorted to trickery to ensure victory
George Hackenschmidt, a Russian wrestler and strongman, wrote an article that
offers the only evidence of Sampson's ever arranging a professional contest. While
performing in St. Petersburg, Sampson challenged Hackenschmidt to come on stage and
lift a barbell that he, Sampson, had just finished lifting. Hackenschmidt, wise to the trick,
exposed Sampson on stage in front of a packed house. Sampson had raised a hollow bell
and returned it to the stage floor in such a way that a curtain partially obstructed the
audience's view of the bell. %le Sampson offered his challenge to Hackenschmidt, the
stage crew filled the empty bell with lead. Hackenschmidt agreed to the challenge on the
62 Weider, The Strongest Man in History, 65.
Venables, Mighty Men of Old, [20].
51
condition that Sampson lift the bell once more; Sampson refused. Hackenschmidt turned
to the audience and exposed Sampson as a fiaud. Sampson countered the accusations
and offered to meet Hackenschmidt that Friday for a true contest of strength. He never
arrived for that match: When the time came for Sampsons act, a man stepped in front
of the curtain and announced that owing to an accident to his hand Sampson would be
unable to fulfill his engagement. Thus ended his appearance . . . in St. Peter~burg. ~~
Many mistakenly think that Sampsons most famous match was a professional
contest; however, it was actually an open challenge. This challenge occurred in 1889
while he was working at the Royal Aquarium in London with his assistant and protege
Franz Bienkowski, who used the stage-name Cyclops. Sampson offered 2500
(equivalent to $2,500 in 1889) to the person who could duplicate his performance.
Inasmuch as Sampsons salary at the Aquarium was only 510 ($50 in 1889) per week,
this offer was quite risky.65 On 28 October 1889, when Sampson made his nightly
challenge, Sandow, hitherto unknown outside of Belgium and the Netherlands, accepted
the dare and defeated Sampson. Sampson fled the stage and refused to pay Sandow,
asserting that Sandow had cheated.&
Strongmen of Sampsons caliber were confident in their abilities during open
challenges, and Sampson offered many such challenges. The reason for their confidence
was simple: most of their challenges did not rely on strength as much as on skill and
64 George Hackenschmidt, Charles Sampson: k n g of Showmen and Knave of Strongmen, Mr.
.-lmerica, June 1962, 68.
Sampson, Strength, 52. The conversion is based on Sampsons book where he states that &lo was
equivalent to $50. %id.
66 Chapman, Sandow the Magnilficent, 30-3 1; Times (London), 4 November 1889. See Chapter 3 for a
more detailed description of the contest.
52
deception. These false strongmen used tricks and relied on the ignorance of the audience
members who did not know the secret to their tricks. The way in which Sampson
prevented spectators from lifting his barbell is a case in point. While he was performing
at the Canterbury Theatre of Varieties, Sampson offered an open challenge to the
audience: who could lift the 2,240 pound-barbell? No matter who accepted the
challenge, it was impossible to lift the weight. The secret of the liR was not Sampsons
phenomenal strength; rather, the secret lay in the small holes at the bottom of each bell.
During Sampsons managers perfectly timed speech describing the feat about to be
attempted-lifting one imperial ton-the holes opened and the sand escaped into the
barrels upon which the barbell was per~hed.~ Unfortunately for Sampson, two
spectators exposed the gaffed challenge on stage.
While performing at the Royal Aquarium in London, Sampson offered another
impossible challenge to all who did not know the secret. Sampson challenged anyone to
come to the stage and lift the barbell that sat atop a small wagon. Try as the challenger
might, it was to no avail. Again, there was a trick to the feat. Two inconspicuous
spring-clips secured the barbell to the wagon. As audience members returned to their
seats, Cyclops busied himself polishing the audiences fingerprints off the shiny bell. The
polishing was merely a diversion to cover his real task, which was to release the spring-
clips so that Sampson could IiR the weight.68 This particular ruse must have worked well
for Sampson; he continued to use it throughout his career.69
61 Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons, 1: 165; Chapman, Sandow the Magnijcent, 24.
69 Hackenschmidt, Charles Sampson: King of Showmenand Knaveof Strongmen, 68.
Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons, 1: 167-169.
53
Contests between professionals and open challenges were a big business.
Seeing the potential for both publicity and financial gain, strongmen and managers
meticulously planned the contests. They sometimes decided the champions before the
strongmen met on stage. Alan Calvert, who made it his mission to expose fakery among
strongmen, wrote in one of his books about how an unscrupulous promoter wanted to
fix several matches. He recorded this conversation, which supports the claim that at
least some promoters fixed matches:
there have been matches between minor strong-men;
those in the show business; . . . a series of matches would be
projected in this style. . . . I was to win the first match in
T . A second match was to be held in 0 9
at the other fellows lifts, and he would win that. Then
having worked it up, a third match would be held in
M- the other fellows home town, at still another
set of lifts; and since my tricks are the best, I was bound to
win. J ust the same, you see, as in the fighting bu~iness.~
These planned contests led strongmen to specialize. To ensure victory,
strongmen sometimes actually hired their challengers. Shortly after departing the
Aquarium, Sampson and Cyclops played the Days Music Hall in Birmingham, England.
In order to energize their act, Sampson again offered his nightly challenge; however, no
one was accepting.72 Sampson consulted with Edward Lawrence Levy, a local
weightlifter and coach, to find a local strongman who was willing to accept the
challenge. Levy suggested Montgomery Irving. Irving was the perfect person for the
O Desbonnet, The Kings of Strength, 276.
Alan Calvert, Confidential Information on Lifting and Lifers (Philadelphia: by the author, 1926), 15.
Emphasis in original.
Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, 80.
54
..- . .-
. . . , _- . . . .-. . . - - - . . I . _. ~. I _ . .
match because there was little chance he could win, and if he did prove to be the
superior, Irving was willing to throw the match for an extra &5.73 Not long after this
match, Cyclops and Irving teamed up and toured North America.
Cyclops was most likely a professional loser. Besides being Sampsons partner
and accomplice, Cyclops perticipated in other incidents that support this possibility. The
contest on 28 October 1891 between Cyclops and Cyr (perhaps Cyrs most famous
contest) illustrates this idea. Cyclops had a specialty-breaking coins with his
fingers-that he never used during this competition. Certainly if he had wanted to beat
Cyr, he would have used a stunt that he knew the French-Canadian could not
accomplish. The way in which Cyclops promoted himself also substantiates the
hypothesis that he made a career of losing matches. Sampson referred to Cyclops as his
student and protege for the entire time they worked together. Several historians argue
that it was Cyclops who conceived the idea of touring the United States, thought to
change Irvings name to Sandowe (presumably in an attempt to capitalize on Eugen
Sandows fame), and engineered the tour of Montreal while Cyr was in New England.74
If Cyclops was the architect of this scheme, then it is curious that his position had not
changed from protege. While in Canada, Cyclops was promoted much the same as he
was in England, as The champion pupil of World Champion Sando~e. ~~ Just as many
73 E. Lawrence Levy, The Autobiography of an Athlete (Birmingham: Hammond, [1913]), 47.
74 George F. Jowett, The Strongest Man that Ever Lived (Montreal: Your Physique Publishing Co.,
1949), 25; Unidentified clipping in the Willoughby files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of
Texas, Austin; Weider, The Strongest Man in Hi st oy, 72.
75 W. A. Pullum, Louis Cyr, The Strength Colossus: From Siegmund Kleins Scrapbook, [n.d.],
clipping in the Willoughby files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
55
actors have made a career of playing only criminals, the world of vaudevillian strongmen
may have had their crop of professional losers.
The professional loser was the straight-man to the winners comedian. The
straight-man was also called the feeder because it was this pe~ormer who fed the
set-up to the comedian.76 This feeding is similar to what professional losing strongmen
accomplished. It is impossible to have winners without losers, and certainly, if managers
were looking to hire winners like Cyr, there had to be people willing to be losers. It
seems that two-person acts paid better than one-person acts, and two-person acts drew
larger crowds. 77
Both legitimate and fake strongmen participated in such back-door dealings;
however, the legitimate strongmen did so for seemingly different reasons. Fake
strongmen usually organized such matches in order to help reinforce their claims of
strength and, perhaps, their bank accounts. Legitimate strongmen often had nobler
motives, however. Cyrs final contest is an example of one such other reason.
On 26 February 1906, Cyr entered, and won, his last c~mpetition.~ The contest
was with Hector Decarie at Sohmer Park in Montreal, and Cyr came out of retirement
and off his sickbed to maintain his right to the title of The Strongest Man in the World.
Cyr neither won nor lost; the match was a draw and allowed Cyr to retain the title. A
cursory look at the contest suggests that either man (or, perhaps, both men) was guilty
76 Brett Page, Writing for Vaudeville, with an Introduction by J. Berg Esenwein, The Writers Library,
ed. J. Berg Esenwein (Springfield, Massachusetts: The Home Correspondence School, 1915), 1 18-1 19.
l7 Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 26; Joe Laurie Jr., Vaudeville: From the Honhy-Tonks to the
Palace, with a Foreword by Gene Fowler (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953), 86.
For more information on the contest see Martin Franklin, Louis Cyrs Last Match, Muscle Power.
October 1947, andMontreal Star, 27 February 1906.
56
..
I .+. . .-. . .-... . .. - . - , .
. . . - - , . .
of deception. Throughout the night, each man conceded the point to his opponent; by
the end of the evening, each man had won the four tests that he pre~ented.~ Once the
referee declared the match a draw and Cyr still the title bearer, Cyr stepped forward and
announced:
Hector Decarie [sic] is perhaps the strongest man I
have ever met in all my years in the arena. It gives me deep
pleasure to recognize him as my successor to the title of
Strongest Man in the World, and my championship Belt.
I sincerely hope that he will respect and do justice to this,
the highest honour that can be bestowed upon an athlete.
Cyr relinquished the title although he did not lose it, thus raising suspicions that
this contest was little more than a publicity stunt to help establish Decarie. Because Cyr
abdicated the title and belt voluntarily, it would be impossible for anyone to argue with
Decaries claim to them. The two strongmen were friends, and Cyr, who was dying
from Brights Disease, probably realized that this was going to be his final appearance in
public as a strongman. It is likely, therefore, that the two strongmen staged the
challenge, thus allowing Cyr to leave the arena as the victor and for Decarie to enter with
the legitimate claim to the title bestowed upon himby its old possessor
79 Bcaries first lift was a right-arm side-press, and he won the point when Cyr refused to match 171
pounds, odd inasmuch as Cyr, just seven years earlier, had pressed 273% pounds by the same technique.
The fact that Cyr was dying of Brights asease, a debilitating and deadly kidney condtion, might
account for his early concession; however, Cyrs illness did not explain Decaries refusal to try to match
Cyrs third choice. The sixth test (Cyrs third choice) was the shouldering and jerkmg aloft, without
any leg splitting, of two dumbbells, one in each hand. In this fashion, Cyr lifted 227 pounds, six
pounds more than the record. Ncarie declined to try to match Cyrs weight. By the end of the night,
each man had only won the feats that he presented and many of the spectators felt cheated by the highly
publicized contest. The headline in the following days Montreal Star declared, Cries of Fake were
Heard. Franklin, Louis Cyrs Last Match, 35; Montreal Star, 27 February 1906.
Quoted in Franklin, Louis Cyrs Last Match, 37.
57
..^ . . - ._L .... I. _ _
. . I .- L . ...
There is also evidence that suggests that some legitimate strongmen participated
in rigged contests for less noble reasons. On 28-29 October 189 1, Louis Cyr entered a
match against Cyclops and Sandowe (Montgomery Irving). Cyclops and Sandowe
arrived in Montreal shortly after Cyr left on a tour of New England, and they began to
challenge Cyr by saying that Cyr was afraid to face these two world champion
challengers. Cyr broke his engagement in the United States and quickly returned to
Montreal. On the night of the twenty-eighth, Cyclops made the challenge that he had
been making for several days: where was the Canadian Samson who was supposed to be
so strong?82 From the audience Louis Cyrs voice resounded with the now immortal
retort, Je suis ici. J e suis arrivee! (I amhere. I have arrived!) Cyr quickly
ascended the stage and beat Cyclops feat for featg3 The following evening Cyr returned
and offered $1,000 to Cyclops if he could duplicate Cyrs performance. Cyclops refused
to compete, and Cyr was the undisputed winner.84
A closer examination of this contest suggests that this was a planned incident
rather than a spontaneous defense by Cyr. During the contest, for example, Cyclops
never used his specialty of breaking coins with his fingers. Whether Cyclops truly
performed this feat or faked it, he should have been able to include it in the contest that
night. If the stunt were real, there would be no problem; even if faked, there still should
have been no problem because the stage and the stunt were already set for Cyclops
* Jowett, The Strongest Man that Ever Lived, 25-27.
82 Weider, The Strongest Man in History, 73.
83 Jowett, The Strongest Man that Ever Lived, 29.
84 Ibid., 30-31.
58
perf~rmance.~ Another point of contention is Cyrs return the next day to
counterchallenge Cyclops and Sandowe. Inasmuch as Cyr was prepared to face Cyclops,
there seemed to be only one reason to postpone the counterchallenge: money. With
more time to advertise the counterchallenge, there was time to gather a larger audience
and so a larger box office revenue to split. Such a strategy was not unprecedented.
Many strongmen had clauses in their contracts assuring that they would receive a
percentage of the box ofice receipts.86 Finally, it seems likely that Cyclops was the
mastermind behind the operation. If this assumption is true then it is odd that he
continued to let promoters bill himmerely as student and protege rather than as the star.
Although there is little besides speculation concerning this contest, it suggests
that even legitimate strongmen probably participated in fixed matches. Cyr had little
reason to break his engagements in New England and travel back to Montreal at his own
expense merely to compete against Cyclops. Some have suggested that Cyrs pride was
the motive for his actions; however, Cyr and his fellow citizens knew that he was
stronger, and Cyclops was no threat to the French-Canadians title. Most likely Cyr was
guilty of participating in a contrived match for money and publicity.
J ust as all strongmen participated in contests between professionals and in open
challenges, all strongmen also had trademarks-special routines for which they were
famous-and there was legitimacy and fakery in them as well. When strongmen arrived
* It is interesting to note that Cyclops did not use this feat with Sandow in 1889 either. Strength
through the Ages: Cyclops Bienkowski Breaking a Coin, March 1962, in the Willoughby files in the
Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
86 Sampson, Strength, 52; Marjorie Farnsworth, The Zieafeld Follies: A History in Text and Pictures
(New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1956), 14.
59
in the city and performed, like other vaudevillians they always offered their
trademarks-songs, dances, skits, or shtick by which audiences remembered them from
tour to tour. Many vaudevillians made careers out of performing the same routine for
many years.87 The comedy team of Smith and Dale, for example, always performed their
Dr. Kronkheit in the more than fifty years they worked together, and Bert Lahrs
managers never allowed himto deviate from his famous routines.88
Cyr, like other vaudevillians, had trademarks, the most famous of which was the
back lift. For this stunt, Cyr crawled under a platform placed on sawhorses and raised
the platform off its supports with his back. Throughout his career, Cyr liRed mostly pig
iron and, of course, people. While performing in Maine in 1891, Cyr back lifted a
platform weighing 261 pounds upon which he placed twenty men whose combined
weight with that of the platform . . . aggregated 3790 Great Canadian Sport
Stories asserts that Cyrs greatest record was set in 1894 at Sohmer Park, Montreal. At
this performance, he supposedly lifted 4,562 pounds of living weight @e., eighteen fat
men). According to Whos w-ho in Canadian Sport, Cyrs heaviest back lift occurred
in Boston in 1895 when he lifted 4,337 pounds. However, contemporary accounts
assert that Cyr raised 4,400 pounds of pig iron on his back in May 1895 and again
Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 83.
Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, Maine), 3 March 1891.
(Toronto: The Canadian Centennial Publishing Company, Limited, 1965), 106.
91 Bob Ferguson, Who s Who in Canadian Sport (Scarborough, Ontario: Rentice-Hall of Canada, Ltd
1977). 62.
DiMeglio, Vaudeville U.S.A., 78-79.
Trent Frayneand Peter Gzowsla, Great Canadian Sports Stories: A Century of Competition
90
60
sixteen months later in September 1896.92 Regardless of the exact poundage, it is certain
that Cyr lifted well over two tons.93
Louis Cyrs second most famous trademark was holding back horses [Figure 71.
He performed this stunt officially for the first time at Sohmer Park, Montreal, in 1891;
however, there is evidence that he was performing this act before that date.94 While
touring throughout Canada, Cyr used this display of strength more than once, and he
usually performed it on a bet.95 Certainly, the most famous time he resisted the pull of
horses was on a bet. While performing in England, Cyr was the guest of the Marquis of
Queensbury, the man who codified the modern rules of boxing and who effected Oscar
Wildes incarceration. Wagering one of his horses, the Marquis challenged Cyr to resist
the pull of two dapple-grays. Having performed this stunt with as many as four horses,
keeping the Marquis two horses at bay was easy for Cyr. Cyr received one of the
horses as a reward, and it lived for many years on his farm in Montreal.96
Pretend strongmen, including Charles Sampson, also used trademarks, which
they accomplished mostly through fakery. Sport historians argue as to the legitimacy of
the first of Sampsons two most famous trademarks, breaking coins. Although Sampson
alleged that he could break any coin offered, most historians believe that his talent was
92 Boston Post, 19 May 1895; Boston Globe, 27 September 1896.
93 On 17 September 1898, Patrick J. McCarthy crushed Cy s record by lifting on his back 6,370
pounds. Cyr s record Seems to pale in comparison to this figure; however, McCarthy had been training
with weights since boyhood and Cyr had not. Edwin A. Goewey, How Good Were the Old-Time
Strong Men?, Muscle Builder, March 1926,44.
94 Many history books cite 20 December 1891 as the date that Cyr performed this feat at Sohmer Park;
however, David NoMiood has proven that Cyr was already in Europe by this time and therefore the date
is incorrect. Norwood, The Sport Hero Concept and Louis Cyr, 78-80.
95 Steirman, M~ghty Butterball, 78.
% Jowett, The Strongest Man that Ever Lived, 4 1.
61
~. -. . . . - x - . . . - . . .-. , _-._ . I. ..I.. . .,.- . ... .- . . ~ ..
Figure 7: Cyr resisting the pull of two horses. Services des archives et de gestion
des documents de 1Universite du Quebec a Montreal, fonds Louis Cyr, 120P3cl12.
Reproduced with permission.
62
more likely sleight-of-hand than finger strength.97 Indeed, one theory suggested that
Sampson carried prepared coins of every denomination to be ready for any occasion.98
The second of Sampsons two most famous trademarks was breaking chains
around his biceps: he wrapped chains around his upper arms and then burst the chains by
merely flexing his biceps. The secret was that he partially cut the first link through.99 He
then filled the hole with solder and passed the chain among the audience for
investigation. People seldom seemed to look at the first link; rather, they gave the chain
a good yank and passed it on. Sampson wrapped the chain around his arm and
connected the two ends with an S-link. As he flexed his biceps, the solder easily broke
away and the prepared link bent; he used the same technique for breaking chains around
his chest.
Like trademarks, finales were quite common in the world of vaudeville. In order
for a performer to ensure that the audience would remember himor her until their next
pass through the city, vaudevillians would end their turns on stage with a sensational
finale. Hadji Mis talent, for example, was regurgitation. At the end of his act, Ali drank
from first one jug that contained water and then from a second that contained kerosene.
Mer proving that he had swallowed it all, he would all of a sudden, spit out this
kerosene, which would put the little house . . . in flames. . . . [Then he would] bring up
97 Sampson, Strength, 1 18; David Willoughby, Sampson & Cyclops-The Coin Breakers,
miscellaneous article in the Willoughby files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin.
98 Willoughlq, Sampson & Cyclops-The Coin Breakers.
99 Ibid.
63
this gallon of water and spit it all out. The fire would go out and . . . that was the finish
of the
Similarly, Cyr concluded his show with a tour de force. Assistants brought out a
barbell and Cyr immediately shouldered it. Once Cyr had the bell on his shoulder, Pierre,
Cyrs brother, sat on it while eight men affixed themselves to either side of the bell (i.e.,
four men to a side). Cyr then walked around the stage and spun himself and his cargo
like a carousel. The bell weighed 232 pounds, his brother weighed 168 pounds, and the
combined weight of the eight men, the bell, and his brother would be anything around
1800 ibS.77101
Sampson, too, had a finale stunt-harness lifting. His finale was as contrived as
the rest of his performance; harness lifting is one of the easiest lifts to fake because of the
nature of the apparatus used.* In harness lifting, weights are loaded onto a platform
that has chains attached to all four corners. The chains go up to a second platform
above the first where they are fitted to a leather harness that is usually worn around the
hips. When all is ready, the strongman, beginning in a squatting position, straightens up
to stand hlly erect and thus lifts the weight on the platform below. Because of the large
area of stage the platform covers, it can easily conceal machinery.
loo Al Fenton quoted in DiMeglio, Vaudeville U.S.A., 3 1.
lo Wilfrid Diamond, Thomas Inch and the Strong Men He Knew, Muscle Power, September 1947,
15. Although there is every reason to believe he had more than this one finale, no records exist that
definitively describe other finales. David Chapman believes that the balance act with Cyrs wife may
have been another finale. David Chapman, interview by author, 20 January 1999.
lo* For a detailed illustration how this lift can be used to dupe the public see Edwin A. Goewey, How
Feats of Strength are Faked, Muscle Builder, September 1925.
64
For his finale, Sampson usually lifted an elephant. After the pachyderm was in
place, Sampson ascended the ladder to the upper platform and donned the harness.
Grunting and groaning, Sampson slowly lifted the elephant about six inches off the stage
floor whereupon he fell down on the platform unconscious, supposedly from the strain,
and dropped the lower platform and its huge cargo back down to the stage [Figure 81.
Assistants rushed to revive Sampson with a glass of brandy.lo3 Newspaper reporters
exposed Sampsons secret to this fraudulent finale.lo4 Sampson, however, did not let this
discrediting-or any for that matter-slow himdown. George Hackenschmidt summed
up Sampsons scrapes with exposure thus: But did such a disastrous defeat faze
Sampson? No. He bounced right back in another city with a new bag of tricks!05 This
account suggests that no matter how conclusively some strongmen were exposed as
fakes, they could continue to get bookings and audiences continued to pay to see them.
Miscellaneous clipping in the Coulter files of the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin; W. A. Pullum, Strong Men Over the Years, in The Amazing Samson as Told by Himself; by
Alexander Zass, with a Foreword by W. A. Pullum (London: The Samson Institute, 1926), 30.
There are two versions of how reporters debunked Sampson. The first is that Sampson performed
hs lift and fell to the ground as planned; however, the platform and elephant mysteriously stayed
suspended in mid-air. Apparently, something had gone wrong with the hoisting machinery below the
platform and it stuck in the up position. The second version of the story has the weight never leaving
the ground. In this version, after ten thousand pounds of stone (rather than an elephant) was loaded,
Sampson began his routine as always; however, the platform refused to rise. In an attempt to mask the
backstage error, assistants rushed out and removed one thousand pounds of rock, and Sampson tried
once more. Again, his attempts were futile. Again, his assistants came out and removed weight.
Finally, after enough failures to enrage the audience (who began hissing and demandmg refunds) the
journalists in the audence jumped onto the stage to investigate. The journalists discovered the platform
rigged to an apparatus designed to lift the platform from the bottom; the chains over Sampsons neck
were merely cosmetic. The stagehand in charge of running the I& had passed out from intoxication
with one hand still on the lever of the hoisting machine. There are other ways to fake the harness I& as
well. Sometimes, the hole that the chains passed through squeezed the chains together causing the
platform to lift in a similar manner that a swing will rise when the swinger squeezes both chains
together. Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons, 1: 167; Goewey, How Feats of Strength are
Faked, 43; Jan Todd, interview by author. 3 1 J anuary 1999.
lo5 Hackenschmidt, Charles Sampson: King of Showmen and Knave of Strongmen, 67.
65
.I I. - . . . I ... . . - . . _ I- ,. .. . ,. . ~
- ,.e. -
Figure 8: Sampson straining at the harness lift
and then collapsing. From the Coulter files in
the Todd-McLean Collection, University of
Texas, Austin. Reproduced with permission.
66
Although not quite fakery, there are instances where legitimate strongmen
deceived their audience. Cyrs stunt of holding back horses is a case in point. There is
more science to this feat than strength. Although someone with little strength could not
perform it, someone like Cyr need not use as much energy to resist the horses as
spectators probably believed. In 193 1, Science and Invention described how a person
could resist the pull of four husky individuals, each one more rugged than you. . . .06
According to the article, all that the performer needs is a rope tied in a circle with about
an eight-inch diameter and at least two volunteers. The performer grips the rope and
two volunteers grip the elbows of the performer (if four volunteers are used, the second
two grip the waists of the first two). At the signal, the volunteers begin pulling in
opposite directions while the performer remains in the middle. The technique for
resisting horses is the same, and as long as the pull is equal and opposite and the
performer keeps balance between the two pulls, there is little strength involved, for the
person becomes merely a link in the human chain. The people who are pulling are
actually pulling against each other. Nevertheless, to the nonprofessional this feat will
prove to be an amazing and thrilling exhibition of true Herculean Might.o8
Legitimate strongmen also deceived their audience in order to endure the long
hours that circuses and dime museums required. Although capable of performing what
they claimed, liRing huge weights twelve hours a day for months at a time was
06 Seymour A. Davidson, Strong Man Tricks Which You can Do, Science and Invention, April 193 1,
1083.
lo Ibid.
Performance OfAuthentic Feats of SYrength (New York: Super Strength Publishing, 1979), [ 171.
Super Strength Systems, Feats of Strength: A Step-by-step Illustrated Guide in the Practice and
67
impossible, even for the strongest of strongmen. While Cyr worked at Austin and
Stones Museum, he performed his act nine times a day. Therefore, it was necessary
to deceive his audience occasionally. Usually strongmen accomplished this deception by
labeling the poundage of their weights as heavier than they in fact were. Of course, false
strongmen used this same technique; however, their purpose was to dupe the audience
while the legitimate strongmens purpose was to reserve strength.
Another cause for legitimate strongmen to misguide their audiences was for the
sake of novelty and extra money. The late nineteenth century saw the rise of a new
technology-photography. Photographers quickly found that the freaks of the sideshow
were among their best customers: freaks had their pictures taken and then bought
thousands of prints. On the back of these photographs, they wrote their autobiographies
(fabricated to be sure) and sold the photographs to the patrons of the sideshow tents to
make a few extra dollars.
It is also possible that many strongmen in fact took advantage of this new fad,
but for some reason, their photographs have not survived. Nevertheless, many of Cyrs
pictures are still readily available. At the turn of the century, the process of taking
photographs necessitated that the strongman fake his lift. Because of the length of time
needed to expose the film, the subject for a photograph had to sit still for a very long
time. Figure 3 shows clearly that the dumbbell in Cyrs hand is merely a wooden cutout
IO9 Treloar, My Reminiscences of Old-Timers, Part Two, 54.
lo Indeed, Cyr kept a scale on stage and was willing to lift what he claimed should an audence member
challenge his legitimacy.
Side Show: Alive on the Inside, prod. and dir. Lynn Dougherty, 90 min., The Learning Channel.
1997, videocassette.
68
with the number 273% painted on it. This need for the photographic subject to hold still
for a long time was the reason for the deception, not Cyrs inability to lift the weight. It
would have been impossible to hold the weight for the time required.*
Real strongmen could lift the true weight if challenged, whereas the pretenders
would not be able to lift the true weight. A conversation between Alan Calvert and a
celebrated weight-lifter--a real strongman-explained:
. . . Calvert . . .said, you are perfectly capable of
handling the amount of weight you claim, so why do you
only handle one-third of that weight? . . .
think I am working. They would believe I lifted 480 if I said
so. . . . Whats the sense of lifting 240 if I can get by with
807*13
The reply was: Whats the use? I make the people
For all of the differences between these two types of strongmen-the legitimate
lifters and the fakers-it is interesting that they performed in the same venues: in the
circus and the dime museum before the 1890s, and in vaudeville after the 1890s. It
seems that audiences were not concerned with whether authentic strongmen or merely
performers portraying strongmen were on stage to entertain them.
Cyr was truly one of the strongest men in modern times. Canada recognized his
contribution to history by inducting himinto the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and
naming schools, streets, and parks in his honor. Although clearly popular with
audiences, governments and historians neither feted nor revered Sampson. In the few
articles written about him, most belittle Sampsons place in history by stating that his
I z For more information on early photography see Gus Macdonald Camera: Victorian Eyewitness
(New York: Viking. 1979).
I 3 Goewey, How Feats of Strength are Faked, 4 1.
69
only significance was as the stepping stone for Eugen Sandows fame.14 Louis Cyr
and Charles A. Sampson were much more than a record setting weightlifter and an
accomplished fraud; they were the essence of j n de siecle strongmen. Through their
styles of performance, it is possible to see into the past and understand the different types
of strongmen who were performing within vaudeville before the turn of the century.
Cyr and Sampson, however, symbolized the end of an era. Their large bodies
and massive weights worked well in circuses and dime museums but were less suited to
vaudevilles smaller stages and more glamorous surroundings. Change, however, was
inevitable. A young Prussian strongman and a prescient Chicagoan would transform the
idea of what a strongman should look like and how he should act.
I 4 Hackenschmidt, Charles Sampson: King of Showmen and Knave of Strongmen, 67.
70
CHAPTER 3
There is little argument that Bernarr Macfadden was instrumental in promoting
physical culture in America-some argue that he was the father of American physical
culture. There is also little doubt that his Most Perfectly Developed Man in the World
contest is a direct ascendant of the modern Mr. America, Mr. Universe, and Mr. Olympia
contests. Where did Macfadden develop his ideas of physical culture and contests for
pefiectly developed physiques? The answer is unascertainable; however, a singular event
in Macfaddens life was most probably the impetus. He went to the event that ushered in
the middle period of strongmen (1 893- 1903), the Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893
in Chicago. Here he witnessed something that would affect the world and make people
reevaluate their concept of health and strength. From the audience of a strongmans act,
the young Macfadden realized he wanted to devote his life to physical culture.
The strongman was Eugen Sandow. Sandow was born Friedrich Wilhelm Muller
in Konigsberg, East Pmssia, on 2 April 1867. Like Sampson and other strongmen
before him, Sandow (or, as one scholar believes, the vaudevillian impresario Florenz
Ziegfeld J r.) greatly embellished his childhood.2 By his own account, he was a pale,
frail, delicate, even weakly child. He claimed that he did not know what a strong body
William R. Hunt, Body Love: The Amazing Career of Bernarr Macfadden (Bowling Green: Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1989), 10, 12; Robert Emst, Weakness is a Crime: The Life of
Bernarr Macfudden (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 17. See both books for more
information on the life of Bernarr Macfadden.
Leo Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons: The History of Strongmen, 2 vols. (Alliance: Iron
Man, 1975), 2:70.
Eugen Sandow, My Reminiscences, The Strand Magazine, March 1910, 164-165. Sandows story
seems to have softened from 1897 where he went so far as to say, More than once, indeed. my life was
despaired of. Eugen Sandow, Strength and How to Obtain It (London: Gale & Polden. 1897), 89.
71
was until he was ten years old and accompanied his father to Rome. There he saw the
statues of Greek and Roman gods and heroes. He knew immediately that he must
become like them, that he must work hard and develop his body to emulate the Farnese
Hercules or The Laocoon and his sons.4 The validity of the story is irrelevant. What is
important is that Sandow became a professional strongman and that he is still important
today, seventy-odd years after his death and burial in an unmarked grave in Putney Vale
Cemetery near London. He was the Great Sandow, and the world of bodybuilding still
honors himtoday in the statuette given to the new Mr. Olympia each year.
How Sandow went from a frail child to a nineteenth century popular figure is a
long and interesting journey.6 There is almost no information about Sandow from his
birth until 1886 when he met Professor Louis Attila in Brussels; historians dispute the
available information. For example, David Websters chronology of Sandows life
claims that in 1882 Sandow joined a traveling circus and became an acrobat but that two
years later Sandow was stranded in Brussels when the circus went bankrupt. David
Chapmans chronology, on the other hand, claims that in 1885 Sandow began studying
anatomy at the Universitat Gottingen, and moved to Brussels to hrther his education.
Little evidence supports Chapman except for Sandows knowledge of proper names of
Sandow, My Reminiscences, 164-165.
David Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings OfBodybuilding, Sport
and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Radar and Randy Roberts (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 1.
ti For a full account of Sandows life see Chapman, Sandow the Mugni$cent.
History 2, no. 4 (November 1992): 17.
David Webster, A Chronology of Si mc ant Events in the Life of Eugen Sandow, Iron Game
David Chapman, Sundow Chronologj, Unpublished [n.d.].
72
muscles-something Sandow could have learned from any anatomy book. Websters
theory is probably closer to the truth: most strongmen began their careers as circus
performers. Whether Webster, Chapman, or neither is correct about the reason, Sandow
was in Brussels in 1886 where he met Attila.
Professor Louis Attila was the professional name of Louis Durlacher. Born in
Baden, Karlsruhe, Germany, on 2 July 1844, Durlacher, as Attila, became one of the
most influential trainers in the history of the Iron Game. Attila had been in the
entertainment business for many years performing in song and dance routines; he was
even an accomplished pianist. During his tenure in music halls, he met a professional
strongman named Felice Napoli. Having decided that he wanted to become a
strongman, Attila apprenticed himself to Napoli.12 By the end of his career, Professor
Louis Attila claimed to have invented the Bent Press, the Roman Column, and other
feats of ~trength.~ He was known throughout the strength world as a weight trainer,
educator, and general mentor:
Chapman points out in footnote 5 of his first chapter that an anonymous obituary writer in the journal
D Excelsior claimed that early in his career Sandow was employed as a model by a Parisian professor of
physiology and that he knew how to profit so well from the lessons and the lectures which he attended
that he acquired sufficient anatomical knowledge to allow hm to establish an entire system of physical
culture. Edmond Desbonnet, La Mort de 1Athlete Sandow, La Culture Physique 29.427 (November
1925), 287, quoted in Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, 198.
l o For Professor Attilas influence see Mark Berry, The Rising Generation Indebted to Attila,
Strength, March 1930, 28-31, 89.
11 Chapman, Sandow the Magnijcent, 8.
I David Webster, Bodybuilding: An Illustrated History (New York: Arc0 Publishing, Inc., 1982), 15.
For more information on Napoli see David Webster, The Iron Game: An Illustrated History of
Weightlifting (Irvine, Scotland: by the author, 1976), 143.
l 3 According to Webster, Napoli also claimed to have invented the Roman Column; however, Webster
reminds the readers of lronmun that he had published copies of posters predating Napoli or Attila where
the Roman Column is in use. David Webster, The Catalyst-Prof. Louis Attila, Ironman Magazine,
March 1985, 34.
73
. . I -_ , . x l . . .. ... -. . . . . . .
It was to Attila that strong men went when they needed help
or advice. He would help them put an act together; he
would show them how to move on the stage and milk the
last drop of applause. He would sell them stage weights
and equipment or buy theirs when they came upon hard
times.14
Attila was more than a trainer and educator; he was an innovator. At this time in
Europe, there was a shift occurring within strongmens acts and Attila perhaps hastened
that shift. As is true with all things, it is impossible to assign change to a single event;
nevertheless, Attilas tutelage of Sandow and his subsequent promotion of the young
Prussian had a long lasting effect on vaudevillian strongmens performances. Sandow
was the first of the new type of strong men. He was handsome, had golden hair and
sparkling blue eyes. His coming sounded the death-knell of the old, cumbersome type of
strong man. Attila, having met Sandow in Brussels, trained himin muscular posing
and progressive weight training.
Attila was a master showman who, before meeting Sandow had a successfbl
strongman act, and it was to Attila that young inexperienced strongmen turned to learn a
crowd-pleasing act.16 Chapman points out that even at one of Sandows performances
in England, when Sandows manager jumped on the stage brandishing a heavy club, the
crowd went wild cheering the teacher and performer who was Professor Attila.
Another scholar asserts that [Attilas] success was due largely to a well-costumed and
l 4 Webster, The Catalyst-Prof. Louis Attila, 34.
l 5 Wilfrid Diamond, Thomas Inch and the Strong Men He Knew, Part 2, Muscle Power, November
1947, 50.
l6 Webster, The Catalyst-Prof. Louis Attila, 34.
Chapman, Sundow the Mugn$cent, 3 5 .
74
pleasing physique, impressive props, a gracefbl manner of working his performance, and
superb howm mans hip."'^ Sandow had many of these same attributes, and it is likely that
Attila helped Sandow refine these qualities. Attila, aware of Sandows superb physique,
encouraged Sandow to develop his posing proficiency. He also honed Sandows
grace, suavity, and stage presence2 When Attila felt the time-and Sandow-was
right, he brought Sandow to England to face Sampson and Cyclops.
Charles Sampson, while working at the Royal Aquarium in London, offered his
usual challenge: 2500 to the person who could duplicate his performance. On the night
of 28 October 1889 Attila stood up and accepted the challenge on behalf of Eugen
Sandow. Sampson rehsed to face his challenger until he was satisfied that the
challenger was worthy. Sandow established his worth by a test of strength with
Cyclops, Sampsons assistant and protege. Sandow easily won this qualiQing match and
earned the 2100 that was the reward for beating Cyclops.21 Sandow, however, was not
after a mere &loo; rather, he was seeking the one thousand pounds offered by Samson
[sic] to anyone who defeated him.22 Sampson refbsed to face Sandow immediately and
postponed the match until the following Saturday, 2 November.23
l 8 Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons, 1 : 160.
j9 Webster, The Catalyst-Prof. Louis Attila, 34; Berry, The Rising Generation Indebted to Attila,
28; Chapman, Sandow the Magnijcent, 9.
2o Chapman, Sandow the Magn@cent, 9.
21 W. A. Pullurn, Strong Men Over the Years, in The Amazing Samson as Told by HimseK by
Alexander Zass, with a Foreword by W. A. Pullum (London: The Samson Institute, 1926), 12-13.
22 Sandow, My Reminiscences, 167. Sources differ as to whether the challenge was $1,000 that
Sandow mentions in My Reminiscences or &SO0 that Sampson mentions in his autobiography.
23 Sandow, My Reminiscences, 167.
75
When Saturday came, Sampson was ready, but Sandow was mysteriously absent.
A famous anecdote pertaining to the match claims that because the theatre was so
packed, there was no way for Sandow and his entourage to enter. Sandow finally was
able to gain entrance only aRer a violent blow to the stage door-and just in time, for
Sandow almost lost the match because he was close to being late.24 Meanwhile,
Sampson was trotting up and down the stage prematurely exultant in the belief that his
rival had funked [sic] the ordeal; when Sandow finally arrived on stage, the historic
match began in earnest.25 Sandow defeated Sampson and instantly rose to fame. It was,
however, thanks to a bit of trickery.
Sampson was not as strong as some strongmen and made up for it through
trickery. His specialty was to wrap chains around his upper arms and then burst them by
merely flexing his biceps, after having secretly cut partially through the first link.26 Mer
successfblly performing the feat, Sampson presented a second chain to Sandow. It was
obvious that the chain would not fit Sandow, as Sandow had thicker forearms than did
Samp~on.~ At this point Sandow presented his own chain and, according to Sampson,
broke it without offering it for examination or test .28 Although Sampson was correct
to be skeptical of the chain, several facts indicate that Sampson lied when he claimed
that Sandow would not offer his chain for inspection. Without proper inspection of the
chain, it would be easier to doubt Sandows ability. Also, it would have been much
24 Pullum, Strong Men Over the Years, 18-19.
25 bi d. , 19.
26 David Willoughby, Sampson & Cyclops-The Coin Breakers, miscellaneous article in the
Willoughly files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
27 Times (London), 4 November 1889.
28 hi d.
76
more theatrical to pass the chain for inspection, and Sandow was a performer. The third
reason is, however, the soundest. The chain Sandow passed through the audience was a
real, untreated chain, but a plant in the audience switched it for a gimmicked chain.
Sandows accomplice was Lurline, the Water Queen, a vaudevillian whose claim to fame
was the fact that she could remain underwater for two and a half minutes. On the night
of the contest, she positioned herself so she was the last person to handle the chain and,
with sleight-of-hand, switched the real chain for a prepared one.29 Sampson also
claimed that the judges would not allow himto perform several feats during the contest,
perhaps because they feared that Sandow did not know the secret to those particular
feats.
The events of 2 November are even more suspicious. Most books or articles
about Sandow or bodybuilding mention this event, and most historians discuss the
challenge to show how Sandow beat Sampson, thus propelling himself to fame.30 Some
skepticism seems warranted, however. Although history relates that Sandow surprised
Sampson by jumping on the stage to accept the open challenge, several facts raise
questions about this usual account. First, at least one source states that promoters faked
matches between strongmen for mutual financial gain. Alan Calvert explained that an
unscrupulous promoter wanted to prearrange the winner of a particular strongman
match, just the same, you see, as in the fighting business.31
29 Unidentified newspaper article dated 2 July [ 18931 in Attilas scrapbook in the Todd-McLean
Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
3o Most of the major papers of the time covered the challenge. Many biographies of Sandow also
describe the match. Perhaps the most detailed albeit somewhat inaccurate, description of the event is
Pullum. Strong Men Over the Years.
31 Alan Calvert, Conjdential Information on L@ng and Lgers (Philadelplua: by the author, 1926), 15.
77
Second, Sampson appeared perhaps too well prepared-in fact, he was prepared
enough to have a 1100 note on hand. According to Sampson himself, 2100 was worth
about $500 at that time-a large sum of money to have handy while performing in a
music hall, wearing only tights.32 Even if the 2100 was simply prop money, as Chapman
believes, its presence undercuts Sampsons claim of complete
Molesworth, the manager of the theatre, received the money for ~afekeepi ng.~~ Not only
was the Captain the holder of the booty, he was also accepted as referee, and the
audience as Was the Captain the best person to hold the money and the most
neutral person to be playing referee? Unquestionably, Sandow was well prepared; he
went to the show to be the challenger. For his challenge, he wore formal eveningwear, a
dress-coat and shirtfront, which came away in one piece, [to reveal him] in a sleeveless,
businesslike jersey. . . .36
Captain
Third, and perhaps the most damning evidence, is Sampsons postponement of
the match. Sandows assessment of the situation was that Sampson was so taken aback
that he declared himself unprepared to continue until the following Saturday evening.37
It is conceivable that this assessment is correct; however, the second part of W. A.
Pullums reasoning is probably closer to the truth. Pullum suggests that Sampson was
too out-of-sorts to continue and that the management was very happy to comply with
32 C. A. Sampson, Strength: 4 Treatise on the Development and Use ofMusc1e (Chicago: Rand
McNally & Company, Publishers, 1895), 61.
David Chapman, interview by author through electronic mail correspondence, 12-14 June 1998
Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, 26.
Chicago Tribune, 30 October 1889.
Sandow, My Reminiscences, 167.
Ibid.
78
his request for a postponement, thus giving themselves ample time for hrther
ad~erti si ng.~~ Sampsons contract with the Aquarium stipulated that in addition to his
weekly salary of 510, he would also receive halfof the gross receipts.39 This sort of
contract does not seem to be out of the ~rdinary.~ It is reasonable to assume that
Sampson, Sandow, and Attila got a percentage of the box office sales for the nights of
28 October and 2 November. If this is true, there is little doubt that they were quite
content to postpone the second half of the match.
Whether real or contrived, the postponement was profitable. Sampson recorded
that box seats sold from ten to twenty guineas and that even standing room sold
Perhaps this information was the root of the stories that Sandow could not gain
entrance. It is most likely true that Sandow was late getting to the stage (every account
says so). Pullurns account of the reason, however, seems no more compelling than an
alternative: that Sandow, in an attempt (and quite a successfid one) at dramatic tension,
was waiting-not behind a blocked stage door but rather behind a greenroom door.
Perhaps Sandow was waiting for the precise moment to enter rather than muscling his
way into the theatre. Indeed, Tom Pevier, the Amateur Heavyweight Champion of
Britain from 1901 to 191 1, was there and did not mention the backdoor story at all.
Rather, he wrote: At last, Sandow appeared [on stage] with Capt. Mol e~worth.~ ~~
38 Pullum, Strong Men Over the Years, 16-17.
39 Sampson, Strength, 52. Emphasis in original.
the gross ticket sales.
41 Sampson, Strength, 6 1.
42 Quoted in Gaudreau, Anvils, Horseshoes, and Cannons, 1: 163.
Later, when Florenz Ziegfeld J r. hired Sandow, they agreed that Sandow would receive ten percent of
79
As a result of losing this match, Sampson forfeited on his contract with the Royal
Aquarium, a fact that makes it hard to believe that he was part of the fraud, if it was a
Sampson undoubtedly made a hefty sum from the contest, and he went on to
tour the provinces of England, tour America, and publish a book. Unfortunately for
him, he was never as successid as he had been during his reign at the Royal Aquarium.
That Attila, Sandow, and the managers of the Royal Aquarium were in cahoots is more
likely. Challenges sometimes served as a sort of strongman audition. In the case of the
match between Sandow and Sampson, there were callbacks as well.
That famous contest propelled Sandow into the limelight and fame. Yet, there
was more of the world to conquer. On 12 J une 1893, Sandow opened a six-week
contract at the Casino Theatre in New York City, where the main attraction was a
musical farce called Adonis, with Henry Dixey in the title role. The final scene of the
farce consisted of a tableau with "the delicate and wispy Dixey" striking a classic pose
while the curtain was being drawn. The curtain immediately reopened to reveal a true
Adonis: Eugen Sandow. The performance then continued with Sandow striking various
poses to display his muscles and ended with the finale he had been using in Europe.
While in the Tomb of Hercules position, Sandow allowed three horses to walk across a
plank that lay over his stomach.& Although the audiences were meager, the press
43 Chapman, Sandow the Magnijicent, 30.
44 Ibid., 49-50.
80
praised Sandows performance; possibly, these reviews were what enticed the man who
would make Sandow a household name at the turn of the century to visit the Casino.45
About a month before Sandow premiered at the Casino Theatre, the Worlds
Columbian Exposition of 1893 had opened in Chicago, Illinois. This Expo was to be
pivotal not only for Sandows career but also for that of a young, aspiring impresario
named Florenz Ziegfeld J r. Florenz Ziegfeld Sr., director of musical events for the
Exposition, found his Trocadero Theatre in serious financial straits, and so early that
summer, the Ziegfelds sought a way to rescue it.46 Aware of the publics growing
interest in vaudeville, Ziegfeld J r. went to New York City and headed for the Casino
Theatre, known for its variety
Historians have attributed Ziegfelds interest in the Casino simply to its
popularity in the vaudevillian circuit. This explanation overlooks the possibility that even
before he departed for New York, Ziegfeld knew of Sandow. Four years earlier on
Wednesday, 30 October 1889, the Chicago Tribune ran on its front page the news that
an Unknown was Stronger than Samson [sic]. * This was a reference to the
previous night at the Royal Aquarium, when Sandow had beaten Sampson and assumed
the title of the Strongest Man in the World.49 Upon arriving in New York, Ziegfeld quite
possibly bought a newspaper and scanned the advertisements to see who was performing
at what theatre. Perhaps he had read the earlier article in the Chicago Tribune and,
Almost all of the major newspapers (Harper s Weekly, National Police Gazette, New York Herald,
New York World) in New York had reviews of the Adonis, and all commented on the poor attendance.
Charles &&am, Ziedeld (Chicago: Regnery, 1972), 10-12.
47 Ibid., 12.
Chicago Tribune, 30 October 1889.
49 Ibid.; Chapman, Sandow the Magn@cent, 23-32.
45
81
when he saw Sandows name at the Casino, remembered the story. It is therefore
possible that Ziegfeld sought Sandow out for the financially troubled Trocadero rather
than simply stumbling upon the strongman through serendipity, as Patricia Ziegfeld
suggested in her a~tobiography.~ No matter what brought Ziegfeld to the Casino, the
fact remains that he signed Sandow as the main attraction for the Trocadero Theatre.
With Sandows signature, a partnership formed that would last several years and propel
both men to international fame.
Sandow premiered in Chicago on 1 August 1893. His performance caused a gale
in the Windy City, and many people became fascinated with the young Prussian. One
such person was Bernarr Macfadden, who saw on the lighted Trocadero stage what
many called the perfect and strongest man and through himthe potential of exercise and
weight training. What exactly did Macfadden-and others-see in the darkened
Trocadero Theatre that they would attempt to emulate and, in some cases, imitate?
Sandow had been performing for several years in Europe, and so he had a rather
large repertoire of feats by the time he arrived in America. However, America had a
different perception of what constituted a strongmans act than did Europe. In the music
halls of the Old World, more than mere feats of strength were expected; the strongmen
would perform in pantomimes, as well. According to Ernest Edwin Coffin, the self-
professed Worlds Greatest Sandow Authority and Biographer, Sandow wrote one
such pantomime titled L A fficheur (The Bill Poster, The Bill Sticker, or The Poster
50 Patricia Ziegfel4 The Ziegfelds Girl: Confessions of an Abnormally Happy Childhood (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1964), 35-36.
82
Hanger). Sandow and an out-of-work circus performer named Franqois performed the
pantomime around France and Italy under the name les fi-eres Rijos (the Rijos
brother^).'^ The piece was, however, little more than a vehicle for presenting feats of
strength, with Sandow portraying the athlete and Franqois as Harlequin. Sandow
displayed his strength by using Franqois as his weights. Franqois
. . . was dressed as a huge doll which Sandow, nonchalantly
and with an easy freedom of movement, juggled and tossed
about the stage, . . . pitched in at windows. . . . [threw]
against walls, to which he [Franqois] clung, exhibiting in
ingeniously contrived changes of dress, the pictorial
embellishments of the bill-stickers art.52
However exciting such performances may have been, Sandow was to stop using them
very shortly after arriving in America.53
During his time at the Casino, Sandow continued to perform his act as part of the
farce Adonis; however, with his premiere performance in Chicago, he no longer needed
the support of the pantomime-he was the main attraction. His audiences now saw
displays of physique and of strength. As the main attraction of the Sandow Trocadero
Vaudevilles, the strongman was placed as the last act on the bill, causing the audience to
sit through a number of other acts. Although the bill changed from time to time as
5 Ernest E. Coffin, The Great Sandow, Your Physique, August-September [n.d., circa 19451, 16. The
third possible translation is Chapmans. Chapman, Sandow the Mugnzjcent, 15.
52 Coffin, The Great Sandow, August-September, 16.
53 It is interesting to note that later in his career Sandow returned to using the pantomime. He
performed in one that consisted of a realistic sketch, descriptive of an incident in the war in South
Africa [i.e., the Boer War]. Frank Parker wrote the sketch about a bridge that the Boers had destroy4
which prevented the British from crossing. A young British soldier dressed in khaki stepped forward
and offered a solution. He would support the bridge, thus allowing his unit to cross the river safely.
Immedtately, Sandow assumed the Tomb of Hercules position and supernumeraries, dressed as British
soldiers, laid a board across his shoulders and knees. After he was in place, the supernumeraries, some
on foot, some on horseback, crossed the human bridge to safety, thus ending the sketch [Figure 91.
Unidentified clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
83
Figure 9: Several drawings depicting Sandow
performing his various stunts. In the top right
drawing, Sandow is performing the Roman
Column. In the bottom drawing Sandow is in
the Tomb of Hercules position. From the
Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin. Reproduced with permission
84
entertainers came and went, there was always a myriad of performers, all with varying
levels of ability: N. E. Kauhann, The champion bicycle trick rider; Tom Browne,
Rival to the Mocking Bird; Miss Scottie, The Calculating and Card-Playing Collie
Dog; and the J ordan Family, the Astonishing Aria1 [sic] Artists, to name just a few.54
Although this aggregation sounds more like circus than vaudeville, there is good
reason. The 1890s were a transitional time for vaudeville, yet there is surprisingly little
scholarship concerning this interim period. On 24 October 1881, Tony Pastor opened
his Fourteenth Street Theatre. One vaudevillian described Pastors clean bill as moral
enough that a child could take his parents.55 From the days of the Fourteenth Street
Theatre, historians usually skip ahead to the early 1900s when Benjamin Keith and
Edward Albee became partners and, at one point, controlled the major theatres and
circuits across the country. After Pastor introduced his new version of clean vaudeville,
other managers began to take notice and soon began changing their bills. This process,
however, was a slow one and the vaudeville remembered today (the two-a-day, big time,
the Palace) did not develop until after the turn of the century. The Palace, the Mecca of
vaudeville, did not open until 19 13. History has forgotten the transition, and therefore
the Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles seem out of place; however, Ziegfeld was right with
the times.
54 Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, with a Foreword by George Jesse1 (New York: The
Citadel Press, 1961), 51; Chicago Times, 20 January 1895; Philadelphia Press, 7 October 1894;
Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 2 1 October 1894.
55 Fred Stone quoted in Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1940), 10.
85
~.
.^._ .
. ... I - . , . . . _. - , . . . . I _-. .I . . .. . . .
Ziegfelds context becomes clearer upon reconstructing vaudevilles transitional
years (ca. 1881-1913). In the early 1890s, there were still two major schools of thought
concerning vaudeville. The first school consisted of manager-producers like Tony Pastor
who, in an attempt to lure women and children into their theatres, offered clean, family-
oriented entertainment. On their bill could be found singing and dancing, comedy skits,
and even tab shows, condensed versions of longer plays.56 Ironically, Pastor got his start
working for such managers as P. T. Barnum, who was the father of the second school,
the promoters and managers of the dime museums. Dime museums, along with medicine
and minstrel shows and showboats, helped shape American vaudeville. The dime
museums offered both theatrical entertainment (usually separated from the main
exhibition hall) and the main exhibit-the curio hall.57 It was in the curio hall that, for a
dime, people could gape at bearded women, tattooed people, fire-eaters, and strongmen.
Even after Pastors clean bill took hold and Keith and Albee were making millions off
their clean bills, the idea of variety and the dime museum persisted. Oscar Hammerstein,
for a single example, was a staunch rival with his Victoria Theater and its Roof Garden,
offering variety of the Barnum style. It was to this school of variety that Florenz
Ziegfeld J r. allied himself.
Although Barnums style of variety heavily influenced Ziegfeld, the Trocaderos
possessed traits that warrant discussion, for they point clearly to the transitions
rg It is interesting to note that Pastor offered hls clean bill for few other reasons than what Martin W.
Laforse calls mercenary motives. Martin W. Laforse and James A. Drake, Popular Culture and
American Life: Selected Topics in the Study of American Popular Culture (Chicago: Nelson-Hall,
1981), 106.
57 Ibid., 102.
86
, . ._ . . ..,. .- . -.___ .. . . .
. . . -- . ,
underway. First, Ziegfeld billed his troupe as vaudeville rather than variety. Most
managers were still using the more popular term variety to describe their shows, and so
Ziegfeld may have been taking advantage of the novelty of the word vaudeville. At this
time, the terms were interchangeable. Vaudeville was only just coming into vogue;
therefore, Ziegfeld was slightly ahead of his time in adopting the word. True, the term
vaudeville did not evoke the same meaning as it did after 1913. Second, Ziegfelds
placement of acts on the bill is not like that previously found in variety houses. This
change in placement was likely due to the inherent differences between a traveling troupe
and a permanent museum. Dime museums had permanent homes and offered as many as
twelve shows a day in the theatre. The last acts on their bills, called chase acts, were
usually of poor quality and intentionally placed at the end in order to encourage the
prompt withdrawal of the a~dience.~ The Trocaderos were a traveling troupe that
performed mostly evening performances (with two matinees per week). As such, there
was no need for chase acts; rather, Ziegfeld decided to place his main attraction at the
end of the bill thus building the anticipation of the audience.
Third, the acts themselves were transitional between the clean and the
grotesque. True, the acts on Ziegfelds bills were occasionally bizarre; however, they
were not on a par with Barnums or those of other curio halls. They were bicyclists,
whistlers, aerial acts, and animal acts. For example, the bill for the performance on 16
October (1 893?) offered the following entertai ~ment:~~
58 Ibid.
59 Although there is no date, this program is likely from 1893 given the billing of The Jordan Family
and the presence of Marlo.
87
1. Overture. . . ORCHESTRA
2. Trapese [sic] Burlesque . . . ROWE & BRENNAN
3. The English Dancer . . . CISSYLIND
4. Original Spanish Songs and Dances . . . BEAUTIFUL
TORTAJARA AND TROUPE
5. Europe's Greatest Impersonator . . . AhL4NN
6. The Wonderfbl . . . GLINSERETTI BROS.
FIVE MINUTES INTERMISSION
7. The World's Greatest Cornetist . . . JULESLEW
8. The World's Famous Exponents of Gymnastic Feats on
Triple Bars. . . MARL0 &DUNHAM
9. The Star Musical Troupe . . . BARRA MUSICAL
TROUPE
10. The Midway Piasance-World's Fair Musical Burlesque
1 1. The Marvelous Aerial Acrobats in indescribable feats .
12. The English Favorite and Immense New York Success .
13. The Perfect Man . . . SANDOW THE STRONGEST
14. March. . . 0RCHESTRA6O
. . THE JORDAN FAMItY
. . MARIE COLLINS
ATHLETE ON EARTH
On 23 December 1895, for another example, the Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles
presented this bill for its audience:
Descriptive Piece-"A Hunting Scene" . . .
March-"The Real Thing" . . .
HERR AUGUST DEWELL-The Eminent Scandinavian
THE LUCIFERS-Grotesque from. . . London . . .
STACK and LATELL-Premier Triple Bar Performers . . .
N. E. KAUFMANN-The champion bicycle trick rider of
5-THE FIVE JORDANS-5 . . . Performing the most
Gymnast.
the world . . .
gracehl and daring aerial acts ever witnessed. . . .
INTERMISSION FIVE MINUTES
6o Unidentified playbill in the Billy Rose Collection, New York Public Library, New York.
88
THE GREAT AMAN- . . . greatest impersonator. . .
BILLY VAPXomedi an
! ! SANDOW! !-THE MONARCH OF MUSCLE^^
It is impossible to say if Sandows fellow Trocaderos were famous in their time
(although Ziegfeld promoted them as such in newspapers).62 There is scant evidence of
any of them in Anthony Slides Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Bernard Sobels A Pictorial
History of Vaudeville, or in the indices of several other popular books on vaudeville.
Billy B. Van, a successhl comedian and later a successhl businessman, is the only
Trocadero besides Sandow to survive in the history books; however, even they seem to
have forgotten that Van got his start with the Sandow Trocadero vaudeville^.^^
Fortunately, information about Sandows act has survived.
Sandows act consisted essentially of two parts-his posing and his feats of
strength. Although normally part one would be described before part two, for reasons
that will become clear this discussion will begin with the second part and work back to
the beginning of the act.
Sobel, A Pictorial Histoty of Vaudeville, 51.
62 Philadelphia Record, 17 February 1895, Philadelphia Sunday Item, 17 February 1895, Pittsburgh
Dispatch, 17 March 1895, and Philadelphia Press, 17 February 1895, to name just a few.
63 The histories of vaudeville consulted were: Anthony Slide, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville
(Westport: Greenwood 1994), 521; Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 289, 355; Henry J enkins, What made
Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1992), 81; Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 200; Parker Zellers, Tony Pastor: Dean of the
Vaudeville Stage (Ypsilanti: Eastern Michigan University Press, 1971), 29; J ohn E. DiMeglio,
Vaudeville USA. (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1973); Abel Green and Joe
Laurie J r., Show Biz, @om Vaude to Edeo (New York: Holt, 1951); Joe Laurie J r., Vaudeville: From the
Honky-Tonks to the Palace, with a Foreword by Gene Fowler (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1953); Albert F. McLean, American Vaudeville as Ritual (Lexington: University of Lexington Press,
1965); Ernest Henry Short, Fifiy Year.. of Vaudeville (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978);Bill Smith,
The Vaudevillians (New York: Macmillan, 1976); Charles W. Stein, American Vaudeville as Seen by Its
Contemporaries (New York: Knopf, 1984).
89
~.
- .- .- _^._ . ~ . . .. . _I__ - - .
. . . . _ . . . . . ... ..* ,
Immediately upon the conclusion of the first half of his performance Sandow
exited the stage for a quick costume change and reentered wearing a leotard, belt, wrist-
straps, and Roman sandals.@ Now looking every bit the strongman that he was, Sandow
was ready to lift and demonstrate his prowess with weight. He started with one of his
trademark stunts. He lifted two fifty-six pound dumbbells (one in each hand) high into
the air, performing several acrobatics, and even performed somersaults while still holding
the In an attempt to show his agility and speed, Sandow next tied his ankles
together, blindfolded himself, and repeated the somersault and weight stunt; for this
routine, he usually performed a backward somersault.66 Then he proceeded to a number
of other feats.
Unfortunately, the lifts and stunts Sandow performed or in what order he
performed them is unknown. Vaudevillian performers like Sandow had a large pool of
routines from which to choose. For example, Tony Pastor supposedly knew more than
fifteen hundred songs that he could use at any time.67 There were many reasons that a
performer might need to amend his or her performance: to add local color and flavor, to
avoid managerial censorship, or to extend or shorten the evening. Whatever the reason,
the vaudevillian performer was able to adapt, thanks to his or her large repertoire, and
like the others, Sandow had a great number of feats from which he built his vaudevillian
performances. He, like many others, used various bits to add local color. Specifically
64 Alan Calvert, Eugen Sandow: An Appreciation, Klein s Bell, June 1932, 4; Roger Austen, Flo
Ziegfelds Blond Bodybuilder, California Library Magazine, 4 June 1978, 32.
65 Chapman, Sandow the Magn$cent, 50.
66 Ernest E. Coffin, Sandow: The Physical Marvel of the Universe,Muscle Power, February 1948, 9;
LosAngeles Times, 4 June 1894.
67 Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 121.
90
._. .. . ..-.
, . ,. , , . . .
for his audience in Chicago, home of the meat packing industry, Sandow (and Ziegfeld to
be sure) devised a feat where a half of a steer was hanging center stage. Taking a
cleaver in hand, Sandow proceeded, with one clean stroke, to split the half in two.68
Sandow had similar routines of strength for outside Chicago. For another single-
stroke feat, Sandow threw a piece of oak board into the air and, when it reached
shoulder level, he punched it so hard that it hit the stage floor in two pieces.69
Newspapers reported the board to be as thick as three inches. Sandow also often tore
whole decks of cards. Albert Treloar, a former apprentice of Sandows and later the
director of the Los Angles Amateur Athletic Club, carried a table downstage with six
decks of cards on it. The first deck Sandow ripped easily at shoulder height and arms
length. Then Sandow took two decks of cards and, bending forward for leverage, tore
all 104 cards. Finally, he took the last three decks and
pressing them against his right thigh, and at the final effort
holding them against his right shin, below the knee, and
seeming to break them as one would break a stick across
the knee. These were then wrapped up in rubbers-and he
would throw them to the audience.71
For another set of feats, Sandow used living weights. The two major props for
these feats were a giant soccer ball (the sport was just coming into vogue) and the
human dumbbell. The soccer stunt was easier to fake. Assistants brought a large soccer
ball onto stage, where Sandow kicked it around and performed a few simple drills.
68 Siegmund Klein, Sandow-Truth and Fiction, Strength & Health, December 1948, 34.
69 Ibid.
70 Unidentified clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin.
71 Quoted in Coffin, The Great Sandow, August-September, 24.
91
Finally, appearing to grow bored with the ball, Sandow gave it a good firm kick, sending
it offstage into the wings. Promptly, it rolled back onto stage, this time opening to
reveal an assistant sitting inside the ball.72 The human dumbbell, another of Sandows
trademark feats, was much harder to fake. Assistants again brought the prop on stage;
this time it was a dumbbell with two huge wicker baskets on either side. Sandow then
lifted the dumbbell high into the air. Once he had it at arms length above his head, the
baskets opened to reveal two assistants, sometimes men, as in the picture in Figure 10,
and sometimes women and
Sandow had still other stunts from which to choose. In one, he strapped a pair
of fifty-pound weights to his arm and wrote his name on a large bl a~kboard.~~ In
another, he raised a two hundred eighty-pound dumbbell with one hand, lay down, and
stood up again. Then he raised another dumbbell, this one weighing 220 Ibs., to his
chest, fasten[ed] some chains around his arms and burst them asunder before releasing
[the d~rnbbell].~~ The Roman Column was also popular with Sandow, who may have
learned it fiom Professor Attila.76 On the traditional Roman Column-a large pole
secured to the deck of the stage-Sandow placed his ankles in straps about six feet high
on the pole and hung upside down. Sandow would reach down, grab various weights,
72 Klein, Sandow-Truth and Fiction, 34.
7 3 Austen, Flo Ziegfelds Blond Bodybuilder, 32.
74 Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 16 February 1895.
75 Unidentified clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-Mckan Collection, University of Texas,
Austin; Diamond, Thomas Inch and the Strong Men He Knew, Part 2, 50.
7b It is unknown if Attila really &d invent it, but if he di4 Sandow most likely learned from Attila how
to use it.
92
6
and bring them up to a sitting position, or other interesting positions. He also performed
this feat leaning off the back of a horse. This time he secured his feet in the stirrups of
the saddle, lay back across the horses back, and picked various weights, or even a
person, off the floor [Figure 91.77
No matter which performance he gave, Sandow always ended his act with one of
two finales. The first of these two endings was one that Sandow had brought from
Europe. Sandow assumed the Tomb of Hercules position, placing both feet firmly on the
ground, his hands on the ground behind him, and his back arched up away from the stage
floor. Assistants then placed a board across his knees and shoulders. Once all was in
place and Sandow braced, three trained horses walked onto the bridge where Sandow
balanced them for a moment; they then continued across the human bridge [Figure 11 1.
According to one newspaper Sandow was supporting a dead weight of 800 pounds,
and according to another a dead weight of nearly 3,000 pound^."'^ Sandows other
finale was holding a viciously kicking horse at arms length above his head [Figure
12].79 Sandow did not make this spectacle a finale until around 1895. Newspapers of
1895 in several cities mentioned the horse-lift as new to the act since his last visit to their
particular city. Although not exactly faked, this incredible feat was not all that the
papers claimed for it.
77 Unidentified clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin.
78 Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 6 October 1894; Philadelphia Evening Item, 9 October 1894.
79 Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 16 February 1895.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, 17 March 1895; and Philadelphia Press, 17 February 1895, to name just a few.
bid.; Philadelphia Record, 17 February 1895; Philadelphia Sunday Item, 17 February 1895;
94
Figure 11: Ziegfeld commonly used this picture in newspaper advertisements
for the Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles. The picture displays Sandow
performing one of his two trademark finales.
95
Figure 12: Ziegfeld also commonly used this picture
in newspaper advertisements, and many companies
used it in advertisements for products that Sandow
endorsed. Here, Sandow performs the second of his
two trademark finales.
96
Siegmund Klein explained that Sandow performed this stunt in two ways; both
turned this assumed lifting feat into a supporting feat. Klein commented that it was a
small horse weighing between five hundred fifty and six hundred pounds, the type seen in
a particularly famous shot of the Trocadero Troupe [Figure 131. In order to execute
the first lift, Sandow led the horse up an incline to a bench about as high as a footstool.
Sandow then slid his arm through a series of straps on the horse and finally grasped the
uppermost handle. The trained horse allow[ed] his head and rump to round over
Sandows shoulders and head, thus forming an inverted U At this point Sandow
straightened up and walked around the stage, appearing to hold the horse with one hand,
but actually supporting its weight on his shoulders.*2 The other method for lifting the
horse was very similar. Sandow led the horse up the same incline; however, this time he
connected it to the fly system in the theatre. Once the horse was in place, the flyman
hoisted it high enough that Sandow could get under it, but not so high that the audience
could see the mechanism. Sandow then stood so that, as the flyman lowered the animal,
its fore legs were on Sandows right and its hind legs were on his left. Sandow
completed the same arm-through-the-straps move as before; however, this time the horse
was already on his shoulders. With whatever cue Sandow had prearranged, a deckhand
released the fly rigging, and Sandow walked around the stage with the horse. Although
Sandow had turned what was supposed to be a lift into a support, he was still holding
Klein, Sandow-Truth and Fiction, 35
82 Ibid.
97
Figure 13: The famous Tally-Ho photograph of the entire Sandow Trocadero
Vaudevilles troupe. Note the diminutive size of the horse in the foreground. This,
according to Siegmund Klein, was the type of horse that Sandow lifted during his
performances. From the collection of David Chapman. Reproduced with permission.
98
over five hundred pounds of horse, and so even this faked trick required strength and
dexterity.
All of these displays of strength, faked or not, were spectacular. Despite their
impressiveness, it was not for his displays of such feats that posterity has remembered
Sandow. Rather, the brief opening sequence of his act made Sandow a nineteenth
century icon of popular culture. At a time when managers promoted their acts with such
superlatives as the worlds strongest, tallest, or fattest, it was easy for Ziegfeld to bill
Sandow as the worlds most perfectly developed man.83 To bolster this claim, Ziegfeld
challenged doctors to find flaws with Sandows body. When they could not, Ziegfeld
advertised the doctors findings of perfe~ti on.~~ It was with a scene to capitalize on such
bodily perfection that Sandow began each performance.
Sandow began with the house and stage lights out. To display his physique, he
used a device known as a posing box which was usually a large cabinet lined with black
velvet, opened on the audience side with mini spotlights strategically placed to accent the
performers muscles.85 The curtain would rise with a single spotlight on the box, which
for Sandow was a large cabinet lined with a plum-colored velour whose dark color
contrasted sharply with Sandows own powdered body. Sandow, like other strongmen,
83 Kenneth R. Dutton and Ronald S. Laura, Towards a History of Bodybuilding, Sporting Traditions
6, no. 1 (November 1989): 35. The epithet of the strongest was a rather tired title by this point.
84 For more information on the doctors exams seeMartin Franklin, The Doctors Examine Sandow,
Muscle Power 1947, and Terry Todd, The Day Sargent Examined Sandow, Strength & Health, J une
1965. For more information on how Ziegfeld used these findings to his advantage see Josh Buck,
Sandow: No Folly with Ziegfelds First Glorification, Iron Game History 5 , no. 1 (May 1998).
85 David Chapman, Bobby Pandour: The Polish Apollo, Hard Gainer: For Physical Superiority, J uly
1991, 38. There is some argument as to who actually invented the posing box; however, it is certain that
Sandow perfected it. Alan Calvert, Eugen Sandow: An Appreciation, Kleins Bell, May 1932, 3.
99
used body powder to accent his musculature. Mer applying the powder to the body
while all the muscles were relaxed, strongmen then flexed their muscles and had an
assistant remove the powder fiom the high spots, thus accenting the muscles even more
than normal.86 Sandow may also have used powder for two additional reasons. First, he
was attempting to conceal a tattoo he had on his upper ann8 Second, he was trying to
disguise a rather nasty scar that he had on his forearm, a scar he claimed to have received
while in a particularly brutal wrestling match. As is true with most of Sandows life,
however, the truth of this story is unascertainable.
In addition to powdering himself, Sandow shaved his body in order to accent the
muscles further.89 Before Sandow, strongmen performed in leotards that covered their
bodies from neck to toe. Ziegfeld, however, seemed to know what the public wanted,
and he gave it to them. What they seemed to want in 1893, The Gilded Age of the
Victorian Era, was sex. Ziegfeld challenged the mores of-and so titillated-society by
revamping Sandows costumes. Before Ziegfeld, Sandow wore one costume throughout
his turn on stage: a blue top and discreet pink tights that covered himfrom neck to
toe. Ziegfeld removed Sandows top to expose the strongmans bare chestg0 Because
of this costume change, it was necessary for Sandow to shave the hair on his arms and
chest. The skintight leotard had accented Sandows muscles-with or without hair;
86 Calvert, Eugen Sandow: An Appreciation, June 1932, 4.
87 Chapman recently uncovered this fact through careful investigation. I am grateful that he has
allowed me to use this yet unpublished fact about Sandow.
88 Baltimore Sun, 26 October 1894. For more information on this wrestling match see Chapman,
Sandow the Magnificent, 17-18.
89 Harry Paschal, Behind the Scenes, Strength & Health, February 1946, 35.
90 Chapman, Sandow the MagnQcent, 62.
100
however, once he exposed his skin, his body hair blocked his fine muscular definition and
shaving became necessary. Thus was the precedent set for modern bodybuilders to
accentuate their physiques by shaving.
Sandow had to shave his body because of other changes to his costume.
Sandow, like Cyr and other sideshow performers, also had pictures taken of himself. In
these photographs, Sandow struck classic Greek and Roman postures. Sandow was
photographed in the nude except for a strategically placed fig leaf The leaf proved to
be yet another gimmick used to gain publicity-prompting discussions about how
Sandow attached the leaf. According to Chapman, there were several techniques
utilized. One method used a wire tied around Sandows waist, which was later etched
out of the photograph. The other common method was to either tie or glue the leaf
directly to Sandow. Although Anthony Comstock, the watchdog of America during
the Victorian Era, said that nude paintings . . . are the decoration of infamous resorts,
and the law-abiding American will never admit them to the sacred confines of the
home, thanks to Ziegfelds advertising, these pictures could be found in the bedrooms
of many of high-societys adolescent girls.93 These young women bought and displayed
Sandows pictures, paying homage to their latest idol. Many American aristocrats had
been exposed to Greek and Roman art while traveling abroad, and thus were more
accepting of these classically inspired photograph^.^^
David Chapman, interviewed by author, 16 November 1996.
92 James Laver, Manners andhforals in the Age of Optimism, 1848-1914 (New York: Harper and Row,
1966), 197; quoted in Chapman, Sandow the Magnijicent, 64.
93 Chapman, Sandow fhe Magngcent, 64-65.
94 Ibid., 65.
101
Yet another of Ziegfelds techniques for publicity caused Sandow to shave.
Each night after Sandows performance, Ziegfeld invited a select few to join the
strongman in his dressing room. During these privileged performances, Sandow wore
only briefs to afford the onlookers a better view of his muscles. Too risque for the
stage, Ziegfeld originally promoted these post-show soirees as an apparent incentive for
philanthropy (publicity for Sandow was no doubt the true impetus). After Sandows
premiere performance in Chicago, both Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. George Pullman
offered three hundred dollars to charity and, as a reward, found themselves in Sandows
dressing room, being offered the opportunity to feel the muscles of this modern day
The next day, as Marjorie Farnsworth put it, You were no one, really no
one, my dear, unless you felt Sandows muscles.%
Topless and wearing only tights, Sandows performance began. The orchestra,
led by Sandows long time friend, Martinus Sieveking, began playing a tune especially
written for Sandows posing.97 The curtain rose, and the spotlight was full on Sandow.
He then commenced his physique display. He began by striking classical poses that not
only represented the famous statues of Greek and Roman gods and heroes but also
allowed himto display every muscle of his body in turn. . . .98 Sandows goal was to
9s Ibid., 14.
96 Marjorie Farnsworth, The Ziegfeld Follies: A History in Text and Pictures (New York: G. P.
Putnams Sons, 1956), 16.
Unidentified playbill in the Billy Rose Collection, New York Public Library, New York. Chapman,
Sandow the Magnijcent, 60.
98 Calvert, Eugen Sandow: An Appreciation, May 1932, 3.
102
create living pictures in his posing so that even when emphasizing one set of muscles, he
would never make them look unnaturally
Once Sandow had completed his poses, he demonstrated his muscle control. As
Sieveking conducted a lively march, Sandow caused his muscles to dance to the beat of
the music.O0 He could start flexing and contracting his muscles, rippling them from the
waist to the ankles, displaying the most perfect control over his muscles ever exhibited
in muscle display.0 Mer the display of muscle control, Sandow exited the stage for a
quick costume change and reentered to continue with the second part of his act.
[Wlithout a doubt Sandow possessed one of the best physiques of all time, and
without a doubt, Sandow was quite a showman. One reporter, commenting on
Sandows act, said that
an onlooker always leaves Sandows performance with an
impression of having witnessed a show in which grace of
movement, harmony of colour and surroundings, and great
physical strength in its most refined and artistic aspect
contributed equally. lo2
It was his ability to leave the audience breathless during his posing routine that inspired
men and boys to pose before their mirrors, hoping one day to look like Eugen
Sandow. lo3 One of these boys was surely Bernarr Macfadden who saw in the calcium
spotlight of Florenz Ziegfeld Sr. s Trocadero Theatre in Chicago, a strongmans
99 bid., 7.
loo Baltimore Sun, 23 October 1894; Philadelphia Evening Item, 9 October 1894.
lo Greg Travis, Gafen Gough: The Worlds Miracle Strong Man (Benton: William Greg Travis, 1996),
282.
I O2 Unidentified clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin.
Item, 9 October 1894; Chapman, Sandow the MagniJicent, xi.
Bob Hoffman, How Good Was Sandow? Strength & Health, June 1960,28; Philadelphia Evening
103
performance that would forever change his life. Leaving the theatre, Macfadden is said
to have decided to dedicate his life to perfecting his own body, as well as to promoting
physical culture in America.
IO4 Hunt, Body Love, 10, 12; Ernst, Weakness is a Crime, 17.
104
CHAPTER 4
Like the early period of vaudevillian strongmen (1 88 1-1 893), the late period
(1903-1932) had two categories of strongmen. While the separation of earlier
strongmen was by technique-legitimate lifters and fakers-the division of later
strongmen was by performance style. As was true with the early period, the late period
had a representative for each category. Siegmund Breitbart was one of the most famous
performers of strength in the early twentieth century, and Otto Arc0 was one of the most
successful performers of hand balancing and muscle control. Like Louis Cyr, Charles
Sampson, and Eugen Sandow, the careers of Breitbart and Arc0 are emblematic of each
category.
The lifters and the fakers of the early period performed in the same style;
therefore, discussing them together helped demonstrate their different approaches to that
same basic performance. The strongmen of the late period of vaudeville, however, had
completely different performance styles; therefore, discussing first the strongmen who
performed feats of strength and then those who performed hand balancing and muscle
control will help clarifi the major differences between the two styles.'
A number of similarities between strongmen performing feats of strength and
their predecessors remained. For example, they continued to enter the profession in
much the same way. The circuses were still a training ground of sorts for strongmen,
many of whom continued to develop their bodies as bareback horse riders and acrobats.
' The old style of liHing heavy objects did persist in circuses and in the music halls of Europe. Perhaps
the most famous of these performers were the Saxon Trio (Circus) and Apollon (Europe).
105
Others continued to enter the profession by accepting and winning challenges. Breitbart
seems to have become a professional strongman through a combination of the two: he
accepted the challenge of a circus strongman and, after winning, performed with the
circus for many years.2
Fictitious autobiographies also continued to be popular among the strongmen
whose acts concentrated on feats of strength. Like Sampson of the early period and
Sandow of the middle period, Breitbart fabricated a story describing himself as a
weakling, even a worry to his doctors. Typical of fictitious autobiographies, Breitbarts
explained that he studied physical culture and grew up to become a professional
~trongrnan.~ Gary Bart, Breitbarts great-nephew offers another version of his
ancestors childhood, although this version, too, contains an element of exaggeration:
Breitbart exhibited remarkable power even as a child; his only toys were the nails and
horseshoes he bent apart in his fathers [blacksmith] shop.4
Some of these newer strongmen performed in the same milieus as had the older
strongmen. Strongmen continued to perCormin dime museums until their demise and
performed in circuses through the twentieth cent~ry.~ Strongmen, however, had become
Gary Bart, Zisha Breitbart, Jewish Strongman Remembered, 26 April 1985, in the Billy Rose
The Man with the Iron Jaw: Siegmund Breitbart, the Marvel, Health and Lqe, September 1924.
Bart, Zisha Breitbart, Jewish Strongman Remembered.
Dime museums had reached their pinnacle by the 1890s and by the early part of the twentieth century
Collection, New York Public Library, New York City.
337; Cincinnati Tribune, 16 March 1924.
were all but gone. Likewise, the circuses heyday, which began in the 1880s . . . and ended shortly
after the first world war . . . had comeand gone. Andrea Stulman Dennett, Weird& Wonderful. The
Dime Museum in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 45, 136; J ohn Durant and
Alice Durant, Pictorial History of the American Circus, with an Introduction by Tom Parkinson (New
York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1957), 78.
106
a part of legitimate vaudeville by the 1 890s, and many of the most famous strongmen of
the late period performed on the big-time circuits of vaudeville where they were
headliners and box office draws.
Later strongmen, like earlier ones, performed feats that demonstrated their
strength, and were sure to use trademarks, finales, and a bit of trickery. There is little
else in common between the later strongmen and the earlier strongmen. The later
strongmen were using different stunts, and their costumes changed with the new century.
Feats of strength, clearly, were still popular with American audiences; however,
how the strongmen demonstrated their strength was different. In the early and middle
periods, strongmen lifted bar- and dumbbells, horses, and even platforms filled with
people to show their power. In the late period, however, vaudevillian strongmen like
Siegmund Breitbart were primarily demonstrating their dexterity. They attempted to
prove that not only could they lift heavy objects but also that they could apply their
muscles to smaller, sturdier objects as well. The idea was no longer to show the
audience how their muscles could de& gravity; rather, they now showed how their
muscles could tame tempered steel. The strongmen, in an attempt to remain popular
with the American public, continuously adapted to the changes that came with the turn
of the century.
As the new millennium unfolded, vaudeville was again redefining itself. For
example, stock characters such as the Irishman with the ear-to-ear chin beard drinking
whisky fkoma flask or the German with a blond wig, brown derby, and fancy vest who
107
murdered the English language were no longer acceptable.6 During the years between
the turn of the century and the First World War, many immigrant groups prospered, and
with their new economic and social status, they began protesting what they believed
were images perpetuating stereotypes. Their protests were successfbl, and the
burlesqued characters changed into the neat comic-one well-dressed and attractive,
who relied on his wit and talent for laughter and applause.
One of the major causes for change within vaudeville, and America, was
industrialism, and strongmen, too, were changing as attitudes and mores changed within
the American psyche. As the United States was reorganizing itself, many people were
moving off the farms and into the cities. Factory and clerical work were fast outpacing
farm labor. Such changes affected the strongmens performance because now audiences
lacked knowledge regarding the strength required to lift heavy weights. In the early
period, when strongmen lifted a ton of bricks, many people in the audience, having held
jobs that required physical labor recognized the weight in terms of the pounds and force
required to lift the weight. The audiences of the late period no longer held jobs requiring
such physical labor and so could not appreciate the strength involved. Strongmen
therefore shifted their performance to adapt to their new audience and began performing
stunts consonant with modem times: lifting cars instead of horses, having cars drive over
them, or even lifting and balancing other men (for everyone understands the weight of a
person).
Abel Green and Joe Laurie Jr., Show Biz, from Vuude to Mdeo (New York: Holt, 195 I) , 7.
Ibid.
Jan Todd, interview by author, 10 November 1998.
108
Industrialism also brought with it both love and animosity toward machines.
Filippo Tommasso Marinetti epitomized lovers of the industrial age with his hturist
movement that glorified the energy and speed of the machine age, while expressionism
and other anti-realism movements warned of the dangers of machines and technology.
The strongmen used this dichotomous view of machines to their advantage. Instead of
lifting weights, strongmen attempted to demonstrate that the human body was as good
as, if not better than, machines. For example, one of Breitbarts trademarks was to draw
a design on a chalkboard and then proceed to bend a piece of metal into the exact design.
While Breitbart busied himself with the task, his manager explained to the audience that
Breitbart had once entered a contest with a blacksmith. While it took the strongman
only a few minutes to complete the intricate design, it took the blacksmith-with the aid
of anvil and hammer-much longer. Some strongmen drove nails through wood with
their fists instead of hammers, destroyed chains with their bodies, and bent steel bars
with their bare hands.
Among the many successhl people performing these types of feats were
Alexander Zass, the Amazing Samson; strongwoman Katie Brumbach, Sandowina;
and J oe Greenstein, %he Mighty Atom. Perhaps the most famous, however, was
Siegmund Breitbart, der Eisenkonig (the Iron King).
Oscar G. Brockett, Histoly of the Theatre, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995), 483.
l o Health and Life, undated clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of
Texas, Austin. While this article stated that it took the blacksmith one and a half hours to complete the
task, others stated the time was only one half hour. Either way, Breitbart attempted to show that his
body was better and faster than the blacksmith working with tools.
109
These later strongmen were so popular that managers and booking agents hired
them to perform as the headliners for the vaudevillian theatres on their circuits.
Christmas week 1923 witnessed the reopening of the Hippodrome Theatre in New York
City, said to be the largest and finest vaudeville house in the world at that time. . . .
Edward Franklin Albee signed Breitbart to headline the grand reopening. By 1923,
strongman acts were extremely common on vaudevillian bills, and yet they were still
popular enough for Albee to headline Breitbart on a bill that would play to more than
85,000 people.
Not only were the strongmen popular enough to appear in vaudeville as
headliners-holding the coveted eighth slot on the program-their salaries matched their
status. Several historians assert that Albee offered Breitbart a $7,000 per week contract
for his appearance at the Hippodrome.12 If the figure is correct, it is not the fantastic
amount that David Webster contend^.'^ Assuming that the figures are accurate,
Sandow earned $3,000 per week while performing in Chicago in 1893; Oscar
Hammerstein signed a contract with Yvette Guillert in 1895 for $4,000 per week; and
Martin Beck gave Sarah Bernhardt $7,000 per week while she performed at the Palace
Theatre in New York in 1912.14
l 1 Miscellaneous newspaper clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of
Texas, Austin.
David Webster, Siegmund Breitbart: A Box Mi ce Record Breaker, Zronman Magazine, July 1985,
22; Gary Bart, interview by author, 05 December 1998.
l 3 Webster, Siegmund Breitbart: A Box Office Record Breaker, 22. Without real contracts it is
impossible to say with any certainty what performers earned. Cf. Louis Cyrs salary while performing
with the John Robinson Circus.
I 4 Joe Laurie J r., Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace, with a Foreword by Gene Fowler
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953), 251; Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and
Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1940), 6; Green and Laurie, Show Biz, 26. The inflation index can
110
Most likely Breitbart was not earning such a large sum of money. Indeed, a
contemporary newspaper offers the figure of $1,750 for Breitbarts salary.j His salary
for his engagement at the Hippodrome was probably comparable to what other
vaudevillians of that time earned. Although big-time stars did earn as much as $2,500
per week, their average salary in 1919 was $427 per week (or $22,202 annually). If it
were possible for performers to work for a full fifty two weeks, their salaries were much
higher than that of the average worker: . . . the average annual national manufacturing
wage [was] $1,293 and the average domestic workers [was] $538.16
Regardless of what they were earning or where they were performing, strongmen
of the late period offered stunts that would amaze their audiences. Because so many
strongmen copied Breitbart, describing his typical performance will elucidate what
constituted strongmens acts in the late period.
Siegmund Breitbart, like his vaudevillian compatriots, had a large repertoire of
stunts from which to choose for each performance. Whether to help lengthen or shorten
a show or perhaps to allow variety in his performance, Breitbart reportedly could choose
calculate the values of these salaries for 1997: $7,000 in 1923 equaled approximately $65,620; $3,000 in
1893 equaled approximately $52,250; $4,000 in 1895 equaled approximately $72,340; and $7,000 in
1912 equaled approximately $1 17,600. S. Morgan Friedman, The Inflation Calculator,
<http://westegg.com/inflation/>, 1 1 February, 1999.
I s Miscellaneous newspaper clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of
Texas, Austin.
l 6 Robert W. Snyder, The Voice ofthe City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 45,47. Again,
the inflation index can calculate the values of these salaries for 1997: $1,750 in 1923 equaled
approximately $16,410; $2,500 in 1919 equaled approximately $26,090; $427 in 1919 equaled
approximately $4,460; $22,202 in 1919 equaled approximately $231,710; $1,293 in 1919 equaled
approximately $13,500; and $538 in 1919 equaled approximately $5,620. Friedman, The Inflation
Calculator, 11 February, 1999.
111
I
. . ... . _ . . . - ,.. .. . ..... .. ,. . . I ^ -I-.-. ---.. . . . .-- ...... _- . I . . - .
from about six hundred different feats of strength. No matter which ones he chose, he
always performed his trademarks and finales, as did most popular vaudevillians.
Vaudevillians also had begun to perform their trademarks as publicity stunts. In
order to help bolster ticket sales, performers offered free exhibitions to entice the public
to come to the show. Such public performances included Harry Houdinis escape from
chains after jumping into the Charles River (as well as countless other bodies of water),
and a strongman who, in the middle of winter, swam around the Statue of Liberty.
There are earlier precedents of offering free demonstrations to titillate the audience.
The circuses of the nineteenth century offered parades to entice the
town~people.~ These parades were a come-on, a sampling of the goodies that were
awaiting under the big top.20 Sideshows also offered a free glimpse of what the tip (the
gathered crowd) would receive should they buy a ticket. J ust in front of the sideshow
tent stood the bally platform. From here, the talker described the acts offered inside and
introduced the ballyhoo-the free show to attract the tip.21
Breitbart, too, offered short performances, or teasers, for the throngs that
congregated in front of the theatre. In these performances, he usually imitated a
Cleveland News, 21 October 1923.
l 8 Albert F. McLean, American Vaudeville as Ritual (Lexington: University of Lexington Press, 1965),
6 1. Performing stunts was only one form of publicity: media manipulation was another. Performers and
their managers learned quickly that any news coverage was free advertising. Florenz Ziegfeld J r. spread
rumors that Anna Held bathed daily in milk to keep her youthful complexion, Eva Tanguay sold
newspapers on the corner with an elephant, and newspapers published interviews with chimpanzees that
Harvard psychologists conducted. Ernest Henry Short, Fifty Years of Vaudeville (Westport: Greenwood
Press, 1978), 130; McLean, American Vaudeville as Ritual, 61.
l 9 Felix Sutton, The Big Show: A History of the Circus, with an Introduction by Bill Doll (Garden City:
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971), 101.
O Ibid.
2 Lingo, James Taylors Shocked and Amazed: On & Offthe Midway 1996,97, 103.
112
doubletree, the pivoting crossbar that connects the harnessed horses to the cart or
carriage they are to pull. A team of black brewery horses were hitched up and the
traces attached to a piece of metal that Breitbart placed in his mouth. Assistants then
strapped Breitbart into the drivers seat of a wagon filled with some thirty odd
heavyweights, and in this fashion, Breitbart pulled the wagon and its cargo around the
block.22 He performed this stunt during the lunch hour and always drew a large crowd.
It is, of course, impossible to say if the stunt helped sell tickets; but he probably would
have stopped these publicity exhibitions if they did not help
Although many contemporary authors and journalists stated that Breitbart was
the strongest man in the world (an appellation few took seriously by 1923 when
Breitbart was performing in the United States), Robert L. Ripley-of Believe it or Not
fame-commented that Breitbart . . . was a far better actor than he was a strong man.
Ripley seems to have based this comment on his personal belief that Breitbart faked his
stunts; nevertheless, this cynical view highlights a fact that most overlooked: Breitbart
was a performer.23 Nowhere is this more apparent than in his entrance on stage.
Breitbarts entrance was dramatic. Indeed, Breitbarts entrance was one of the
most grandiose entrances in the history of show business. . . .24 As the orchestra
22 Miscellaneous newspaper clipping labeled Tele 11-8-23. The paper is most likely from Pittsburgh.
Pennsylvania: Breitbart was performing at the Davis Theatre in Pittsburgh on that date. In the Coulter
files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas, Austin. A Washington, D. C. newspaper
stated that he pulled a truck holchng fm men. Washington Stur, 28 November 1923. Accorchng to
David Webster, Breitbart performed this feat with seventy-five men. Webster, Siegmund Breitbart: A
Box office Record Breaker, 78.
23 Robert L. Ripley, Supermen! Clipping labeled Tele 10-29-25. In the Coulter files in the Todd-
McLean Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
24 Siegmund Klein, Strong Men I Remember Best: Siegmund Breitbart, Strength & Health, October
1958,42.
113
played, the curtains parted to display a Roman setting. Two men in period costumes and
on horseback blew trumpets heralding the coming of the Iron King. Out of the wings
rode Siegmund Breitbart in a Roman chariot drawn by four white horses. Breitbarts
costume completed the scene. He wore a metal helmet and breastplate under a flowing
Roman Tunic that hung down to his ankles.25 [Figure 141 As Breitbart stepped from
the chariot, supernumeraries were on hand to remove the helmet, breastplate, and cape.
Another assistant helped Breitbart don the blacksmiths apron that he wore at every
performance. 26
Now clad in his apron, Breitbart was ready to perform the rest of his show. He
began the performance by inviting a committee onto the stage to test each piece of metal
and chain as he used it.27 He preferred, and always asked for, blacksmiths and plumbers
first, for they worked with metal regularly and were familiar with the medium, no doubt
an attempt (and an apparently successfhl one) to help legitimize his performance.28 He
then proceeded to bend, break, and shape the metal.
There seems to be no surviving record of the order in which Breitbart presented
his stunts or how long his turn on stage lasted. Fortunately, Siegmund Klein recorded
his memories of Breitbarts performance; however, Klein wrote the article thirty-five
years after he witnessed the show and most of the feats described were Breitbarts
trademarks. Although possible, it is doubtful that Breitbart would have performed
l5 Rid.
26 Ibid., 43.
27 The Evening Star (Washington, D. C. ) , 27 November 1923.
28 Gary Bart, interview by author through electronic mail correspondence, 27 December 1998.
114
Figure 14: Breitbart entering the stage in Roman attire and
holding the reins of his chariot. From the collection of
Michael Murphy. Reproduced with permission.
115
trademark after trademark during a typical performance. Klein also mentions that
Breitbarts performance constituted the entire performance for the evening. . . . [and]
lasted about two If the performance that Klein witnessed in Cleveland really
lasted the entire evening, it was a unique occasion. Most vaudevillian acts (whether
comedy, drama, juggling, aerial artists, monologists, etc.) lasted between fourteen and
thirty minutes, and few lasted longer than fifteen minutes.30 The vaudevillian
strongmans act was usually about twenty
certainty how long his actual turn on stage lasted.
It is impossible to say with
Although it is not possible to detail the order of stunts in Breitbarts act, it is
possible to describe some of the six hundred stunts he performed. Sometimes he placed
an eight-foot long iron bar in his mouth that he then bent by applying pressure to the
edges in a downward motion. Once he had bent the bar enough, he continued to coil it
around his thigh or arm.32 He broke metal spikes in two with his hands; sometimes he bit
them in half.33 Breitbart took a three-quarter inch thick, foot-long piece of iron and bent
it into the shape of a horseshoe.34 Breitbart invited the committee he had called to the
stage at the beginning of the performance to have a . . . ride on a merry-go-round,
which hobby horses and all, rests on the chest of this modern Samson.35 For added
* Klein, Strong Men I Remember Best: Siegmund Breitbart, 42, 45.
30 J ohn E. DiMeglio, Vaudeville U. S.A. (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press,
1973), 16, 34.
31 Lewis Arnold Pike, Al Treloar-Iron Man of Strength & Health, Strength & Health, February
1949, 37.
32 Pittsburgh Post, 6 November 1923; Cleveland News, 24 October 1923.
33 Ibid.
34 Pittsburgh Post, 6 November 1923.
35 The Evening Tribune (Providance, RI), 24 September 1923.
116
theatricality, Breitbart played a hand organ while balancing the merry-go-r~und.~~ In a
later variation of this stunt, Breitbart balanced a track on which two motorcycles raced in
circles.37 Besides holding the weight, he must help balance the load under the shifting
position of the cyclists. . . .38 [Figure 151
Breitbart had several trademark feats. One was bending an iron bar to match the
drawing on a chalkboard [Figure 16].39 Another one was driving spikes or nails through
boards of pine.40 In order to make this stunt more exciting he sometimes used a blunt
nail or added a sheet of tin between the boards.41 Nail driving will be the stunt always
associated with the Iron King, for according to legend, Breitbart died from blood
poisoning that he contracted when a nail he used in a German music hall passed through
the boards and scratched his leg.42
Perhaps his most famous trademark, and the one that earned himthe title of Iron
King, was biting through iron chains. Newspapers afforded much space in their articles
to this particular stunt, and many articles mentioned dentists comments:
Breitbarts gums are in a perfect condition and his mouth is
very healthy, said the dentist. He is enabled to perform
his extraordinary feats because he has developed his
mastication muscles to a high state of perfection. The real
Pittsburgh Post, 15 April 1924.
Pittsburgh Post, 13 April 1924.
38 Man Holds Track and Riders in Strength Test, Popular Mechanics, May 1926.
39 Klein, Strong Men I Remember Best: Siegmund Breitbart, 43.
41 Webster, Siegmund Breitbart: A Box OiXce Record Breaker, 78; Klein, Strong Men I Remember
Best: Siegmund Breitbart, 45.
42 Miscellaneous clipping from the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin. Other sources state that he scratched his leg backstage before his performance.
The Evening Tribune (Providence, RI), 24 September 1923.
117
Figure 15: Breitbart performing one of his trademarks, balancing the motordome.
118
Figure 16: Breitbart bending an iron bar to match the
drawing on a chalkboard. Note the blacksmith's
apron.
119
strain lies not on the teeth, therefore, but on the muscles of
his jaw.43
Like all strongmen of every period, Siegmund Breitbart always ended his
performances with a spectacular finale. For this feat, assistants brought out a board
completely studded with metal spikes upon which Breitbart laid bareback [Figure 171.
His assistants then laid another board over his chest and led a horse across the bridge.
It was a big, white, sad looking horse and when it walked over Breitbart it stopped atop
of himfor a moment, deep in thought, and then descended to the ground.44 Breitbart
used several other variations of this stunt. Instead of having a horse walk over him, he
sometimes rested an anvil upon his chest and allowed several men to pound the anvil
with hammers.45 Other times he would act the part of the human quarry. For this
variation, assistants placed a large rock on his chest, then a smaller one on top of that
one. They then proceeded to smash the smaller rock to bits with their hammers.& The
nails on which Breitbart lay were deceptive; because they were so close together, they
formed a practically flat surface. It was, therefore, impossible for the nails to impale the
str~ngrnan.~~
Breitbart, like Sandow, had doctors assert the legitimacy of his allegations to
superhuman strength. Newspapers then published the doctors findings: Dentist Says
43 The Citizen (Brooklyn, NY), 13 September 1923.
44 Cleveland News, 21 October 1923; Brooklyn Chronicle, 13 November 1923.
45 Wilfrid Diamond The Mighty Men of Yore: The Fascinating Saga of the Old-Time Strong Men:
Siegmund Breitbart & Samson, in the Willoughby files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of
Texas, Austin.
46 Miscellaneous newspaper clipping in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of
Texas, Austin.
47 Edwin A. Goewey, How Feats of Strength are Faked, Muscle Builder, September 1925,46.
120
Figure 17: Breitbart prepares to lie
down on the bed of nails.
121
Strong Man Who Bites Iron Chains in Two is not Spoofing the Such
headlines of course mean very little: a publicist could have written the doctors words or
the doctor could have been a part of the fraud. Likewise, the committees Breitbart
invited to stage were useless in the prevention of trickery. Harry Houdini (among other
magicians) invited committees to the stage and then performed his escapes and
illusions.49 If a magician, who openly deceives an audience, can fool a committee, there
is little reason to assume that strongmen could not.
Finally, it is possible to argue that Breitbart faked his two most famous
trademarks. First, many books that explain how to perform stunts of the strongmen
describe punching a nail through boards. An article in Modern Mechanics and
Inventions reveals how the less-powefilly endowed Samson . . . make[s] this
performance possible. The strongman prepares the boards by hollowing them out
before the show and fills them with sawdust or beeswax so that they will have the same
weight and sound as an unprepared board. When the strongman punches the nail
through, he is only going through a fiaction of the real thickness.5o Second, biting chains
was a popular feat for many strongmen. Although many people assert that Breitbart
The Citizen (Brooklyn, NY) , 13 September 1923.
49 Kenneth Silverman, Houdini!!! The Career of Erich Weiss: American Self-Liberator, Europe s
Eclipsing Sensation, World S Handcuff King &- Prison Breaker-Nothing on Earth can Hold Houdini a
Prisoner!!! (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 24.
50 Sam Brown, Tricks of the Strongman, Modern Mechanics and Inventions, June [n.d.], 54.
Although many faked ths stunt, it is important to mention that it is a relatively easy stunt to perform
with even moderate strength. When performed legitimately, strongmen usually choose a soft white pine
with a wide grain. Similar to a karate specialist brealung wood or bricks, the strongman relies on speed.
Once the nail penetrates the wood (a job for which it is designed), provided there are no knots, the
momentum of the downward thrust should drive the nail completely through the wood. J an Todd,
interview by author, 25 February 1999.
122
could legitimately bite through chains, Edwin A. Goewey offers a more realistic
explanation:
. . . the links in the chains used in the spectacular feat of
biting are crooked. Marta [Farra, an exposed fake
strongwoman of the 1920~1 bit through links of soft lead,
nickel plated. In more distant days, fake strong men used
muriatic or prussic acid to erode a certain link. The
performer put this link in his mouth and gave the impression
that he was biting it in two, whereas, he really pulled it apart
by tugging at the ends of the chain with his hands.51
If Sandow was able to switch a genuine chain for a prepared one in front of an entire
audience and if Sampson could switch real coins for previously bent ones, so too could
Breitbart have used the power of sleight-of-hand rather than the power of his jaw to bite
through the chains.
Although strongmen who performed feats of strength could easily fake their
stunts, another style of performance was more difficult to fake. Otto Arc0 typified those
strongmen whose performances dealt with hand balancing and muscle control.
Although hand balancing and muscle control are associated with the later period
of strongmen, their origins are a mystery. Hand balancing was no doubt descended
from, and a combination of, acrobatics, gymnastics, and adagio. Muscle control, the
intentional flexing and relaxing of muscles to make them dance, was merely the next
step in the development of muscular posing.52
Although Sandow had popularized muscular posing as a vaudevillian art form as
early as 1893, he did not invent the concept. Although there is no record as to when
Goewey, How Feats of Strength are Faked, 46.
52 J ohn Grimek, Do Strong Men Die Young? Strength & Health, February 1945,34.
123
posing first originated, its origins may date from the first models who posed for sculptors
and artists. Indeed Sandows poses all imitated Greek and Roman statuary, and tableam
vivants and poses plastique-living pictures and human statues-were popular
throughout vaudevillian history as well.
The origin of muscle control is just as mysterious as that of posing. Again, many
historians point to Sandows early performances in Chicago where he would make his
muscles dance to the rhythm of the orchestra.53 Other historians offer the less likely
explanation that Max Sick, a Bavarian strongman who became famous for his muscle
control, developed the art But Sandow was clearly performing a rudimentary
form of muscle control in 1893, when Sick was only eleven years old. Otto Arc0
asserted that while Sandow perfected the form in the United States, [Bobby] Pandour [a
Polish strongman] started it at about the same time on the European ~onti nent.~~
Regardless of who was the first to use muscle control in his act, by the late
period it was a regular part of many strongmens performances. This shift in
performance style was a result of the changes occurring in vaudeville, America, and the
world.
American fashion was changing and the stage reflected this change. The period
between 1903 and 1913 saw an epidemic of epidermis acts.56 It was a time when
America was peeling off old restraints, right down to its woolen underwear. Skirts
53 Baltimore Sun, 23 October 1894; Philadelphia Evening Item, 9 October 1894.
54 Gordon Venables, Mighty Men of Old: Being a Gal l ey of Pictures and Biographies of Outstanding
Old Time Strong Men (York: Strength and Health, 1940), [19].
55 Otto Arco, My Tribute to Pandour, Strength & Health, Januaxy 1942, 9.
56 Green and Laurie, Show Biz, 5.
124
were climbing to an accompaniment of whistles.57 Two particular vaudevillian acts
typify these changes. First, the Salome craze lasted for something like five years, and
[audiences] loved it despite opposition from such organizations as the Womens
Christian Temperance Union. 58 Second, Annette Kellermans appearance on vaudevillian
stages offered the first glimpse of the one-piece bathing suit.59 The appearance of these
two acts on family-oriented vaudevillian stages demonstrates that America was slowly
releasing itself from the yoke of Victorian prudery
Two famous impresarios of strongmen had already anticipated the appearance
and acceptance of such images as the sexy Salome and Kellermans bathing suit. First, in
1893, Florenz Ziegfeld J r. changed Sandows costume from the more common leotard to
briefs. Second, during the week of 28 December 1903 and 2 J anuary 1904 (just ten
years after seeing Sandow perform in Chicago), Bernarr Macfadden offered an entire
show devoted to displaying the body, the first exhibition in America promoted as a
physical culture show. With this presentation Macfadden, by filling one of New Yorks
most famous spaces, demonstrated that the American public was interested in physical
culture: About 4,000 Persons Visit Madison Square Garden and See the Effects of
Exercise . -
57 Ibid., 6.
58 Ibid., 9. The popular dance was based on Richard Strauss opera, Salome, which had been inspired
by Oscar Wildes play by the same name. Salome, the daughter of Herodias, so entranced Herod
Antipas with her Dance of the Seven Veils, that he granted her request for the head of J ohn the Baptist.
The dance that was popular in vaudeville was a sexy version of the Dance of the Seven Veils; during the
course of the dance each veil is thrown off by the dancer who was usually wearing only a flesh-toned,
skin-tight leotard. Charles Samuels and Louise Samuels, Once Upon a Stage: The Merry World of
Vaudeville (New York: DodaMead & Company, 1974), 63-64.
59 Green and Laurie, Show Biz, 5.
New York Times. 29 December 1903.
125
Macfadden's timing helped sell his show. Like the feat-performing strongmen,
industrialism had also affected the strongmen who performed hand balancing and muscle
control. As white-collar jobs became more prominent, concern grew about how
sedentary work would affect the body; doctors prescribed exercise, and physical culture
was again a
Another major impetus for renewed interest in physical culture was the Great
War, When America entered World War I on 6 April 1917, the government decided to
test new recruits in order to determine the physical state of the nation. The results were
worse than expected; many potential recruits were turned away. Americans were
weaker and less physically fit than they had been at any other point in history. The cry
for physical fitness roared through the nation and physical culture again rose in
popularity.62 Noting that people were interested in seeing the effects of physical culture,
strongmen adapted their acts to demonstrate what exercise could accomplish.
This rising interest in physical culture affected more than the performances of
strongmen. Strongmen who performed hand balancing and muscle control no longer
entered the profession through the same venues. Although some continued to enter
through the circus, many more were now using sports and exercise programs in schools
to help them train for physical culture contests, which in turn led to vaudevillian
contracts. How Otto Arc0 entered the profession is typical. While a child in Poland, he
attended a school where gymnastics were mandatory. Excelling at sports, he joined
Fit: Episodes in the Histoly of the Body, prod. and dir. by Laurie Block, 115 min., Straight Ahead
Productions, 199 1, videocassette.
62 Bid.
126
amateur athletic clubs and began wrestling. Soon he began performing hand balancing
routines with a friend and became a vaudevillian performer.63 Others entered the
profession through contests like Macfaddens physical culture shows. Albert Treloar,
Sandows former assistant and the winner of Macfaddens first physical culture show,
entered vaudeville in this fashion, as did Charles Atlas, although his vaudevillian career
was short-lived.
Autobiographical material also changed. Although strongmen continued to
embellish their past, most were now describing themselves as champion athletes and
successfbl wrestlers instead of sickly and dying children. There were some who
continued in the old style. Max Sick, for example, described himself as a weakling
suffering from rickets, dropsy and lung trouble^.'^^Most, however, described their
childhood induction into physical culture through exercise and sports in school.
Beginning in the late period, a bihrcation occurred that had significent
ramifications to vaudeville and the future of the Iron Game. Strongmen performing feats
of strength continued to headline the vaudevillian bills, and they continued to receive
salaries to match. Vaudevillian audiences, however, seem to have quickly lost interest in
muscular posing. By the time such performers as Arc0 came to the stage, muscle control
and hand balancing had become so common that audiences had grown bored with them.
Indeed one commentator explained, The hand-to-hand work is of the usual sort, the
O3 John Grimek, Do Strong Men Die Young? Part Two, Strength & Health, March 1945,2 1.
64 David Webster, Bodybuilding: An Illustrated History (New York: Arc0 Publishing, Inc., 1982), 55.
For a more detailed description of his various ailments see Maxick, Muscle Control (London: Athletic
Publications, Ltd., [n.d.]).
127
. *..
regulation routine work being very well handled. . . . 55 Although they were never as
popular in the vaudevillian arena, they found an appreciative audience in the world of
sports and their style of performance is a direct antecedent of how bodybuilders display
their muscles during modern contests.
Inasmuch as vaudevillian audiences lacked appreciation for the hand balancers
and muscle controllers performances, managers relegated this type of strongman to the
opening and closing acts on the bill-the two most dreaded slots on a program. Opening
acts had to contend with late-comers struggling to their seats while closing acts had to
contend with early-goers struggling to exit the theatre before everyone else. Although
no evidence remains of A~COS salary, he probably received wages comparable to other
opening and closing dumb acts, which ranged from $1 50 to $200 a week.66
In opening or closing slots, the acts were short and silent. Arc0 advertised his
act to managers and booking agents as lasting ten minutes; however, on occasion he
completed his performance in as few as seven min~tes.~ Referred to as a dumb show, or
dumb act, Arcos act did not even have a manager talk to the audience as did strongmen
of earlier periods, or those performing feats of strength.
Os Miscellaneous clipping from the Coulter scrapbook in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean
Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
66 Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, with a Foreword by George Jesse1 (New York: The
Citadel Press, 1961), 59. Joe Laurie J r. explains that while America &d not take the dumb show
seriously, it was respected and was usually a featured act and many times a headliner in Europe. Joe
Laurie J r., Vaudeville: From the Nonhy-Tonks to the Palace, with a Foreword by Gene Fowler (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953), 21.
67 Advertisement in Pat Casey s Catalogue of High Grade Vaudeville Acts, in the Todd-McLean
Collection, University of Texas, Austin; miscellaneous clipping from the Coulter scrapbook in the
Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
128
Reviewers were divided in their assessments of the new performance style. Some
were unimpressed. On describing Arcos posing, one reporter quipped,
The brawnier of the [Arco] brothers gives a little side-show
entertainment in this act, stripping to a breechcloth and
flexing his well-developed muscles like a horse shaking off
the flies. Not satisfied with showing off his back muscles,
Mr. Arc0 faces front and shimmies his breast muscles. Now
we know why they call them dumb acts.68
Another said that Arcos posing fit in nicely and relieve[d] the monotony of a rather
lengthy series of string feats.69 Nevertheless, many articles praised the performances of
this clever pair of modern Samsons: Their work is of the finest . . .; Arc0 Brothers
presented an excellent acrobatic display, which won for them deserved applause . . .;
The act is worthy of any place on the bill.70
Whether praising or panning, these reviews reveal details about the performance
that have gone unnoticed for many years. Arc0 and his partner (first Emile Mogyorossy,
then Arcos brother, Peter) either began the vaudevillian program or ended it.
Whichever position they played, they offered a combination of hand balancing, posing,
and muscle control. Their act began with the curtain rising on an empty stage masked by
a $5,000 silk plush stage setting, that never fails to evoke an enthusiastic reception
68 Miscellaneous clipping from the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin.
69 Miscellaneous clipping from the Coulter scrapbook in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean
Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
70 Miscellaneous clipping from the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean Collection, University of Texas,
Austin.
129
when first di s~l osed.~~ After the orchestra played a few measures of a lively tune, the
pair would march onto stage on their hands to the beat of the music.
Their costumes were as unique as their entrance. There were at least two
different styles of costumes, one that was suggestive of Roman gladiators and another
evocative of a soldier. It is not clear whether Arcos costumes changed over time or if
he used both styles throughout his career. Pictures suggest that in the case of Arc0 there
was no flesh-toned leotard as had been the case with Cyr. Both styles of costume
consisted of a one-piece leather outfit of black and gold that resembled lederhosen,
except with short
pattern across the chest and picadils (a wide scallop pattern) on the shorts. A belt
around the waist finished the ensemble [Figure 181. The second costume had a full front
suggestive of a Roman soldiers breastplate. The shorts differed as well; there were no
picadils; rather it was finished with a series of cut tabs along the hem. The front of the
shorts had a floral pattern, perhaps reminiscent of Sandows famous fig leaf [Figure 191.
Otto Arc0 divided his act into three portions. The first portion consisted of hand
The gladiatorial costume consisted of a diamond-shaped
balancing and stunts of equilibrium. When Arc0 worked with Mogyorossy, he was the
top mounter; however, when he worked with his brother, he was the understander, the
person on the bottom who held the top mounter. In either case, the performance began
71 Advertisement in Pat Casey s Catalogue of High Grade Vaudeville Acts.
72 Ray Van Cleef, Otto Arco-Physical Marvel, Strength & Health, July 1941, 20.
73 Leo Gaudreau, Strong Men on Parade: No. 8 Otto Arco, Muscle Power [n.d.], in the Todd-McLean
Collection. University of Texas, Austin.
130
Figure 18: The Arc0 Brothers (Otto, left, and
Pete, right) posing in one of the two styles of
costume they wore.
131
Figure 19: Arc0 posing in the
second of his two styles of costume.
132
with hand balances like the position seen in Figure 20, as well as other balances that
displayed their physiques and demonstrated their balance and coordination. After the
hand balancing portion, the middle of the curtain rose to reveal a posing Stripped
to a breechcloth, Arc0 stepped into the box and commenced with the posing and muscle
control portion of the show. The last portion of the act was again hand balancing and, of
course, the trademark finale.
Unfortunately, history has not recorded most of their specific feats; however,
Arc0 and his brother did perform before a camera at some point in their career and part
of their act remains for posterity. This film shows two routines that they perhaps used
during their vaudevillian career. The first begins with Pete standing motionless on his
hands while Otto approaches from the rear. Stooping to grab Pete by the waist, Otto
threw his partner into the air where they locked hands and reestablished balance: Pete
was now in a handstand on Otto's hands. From this position Otto stooped down and
sprang up, again throwing Pete into the air. This time Pete performed a summersault
and landed in Otto's hands standing upright, with a foot in each hand. Next Otto let go
with one hand and Pete spread out his arms and legs [Figure 201.
The second routine in the film was a variation of their finale, a finale that modern
bodybuilders and weightlifters still discuss. The finale began with Pete in a handstand
atop Otto's outstretched arms. Otto slowly leaned backward, arching his back, ''until his
'4 Miscellaneous clipping from the Coulter scrapbook in the Coulter files in the Todd-McLean
Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
133
Figure 20: The Arc0
Brothers performing a hand
balancing stunt.
134
head touched the floor, in the wrestlers bridge position. . . . 75 Once Otto achieved this
position, he held it long enough to assure the audience that he still maintained balance.
He then shified the weight of Pete forward, and in doing so, rose upward from the
bridge position . . . until he was again in his original standing position; Pete maintained
the handstand throughout the stunt.76
The film shows a variation of this feat. In this version, Otto began by lying
supine, Pete in a handstand on Ottos outstretched hands. Slowly, Otto rolled to his side
and placed one elbow on the ground, and then he flipped his body over and placed the
other elbow on the ground. Now in a prone position, Otto continued the roll, this time
lifting one elbow, then the other until he was again supine (he continued turning the same
direction for this routine). Once he was again on his back, he slowly lowered his arms
and shifted his hand from Petes hand to Petes chest. Pete in turn grabbed Ottos arm
with both hands and, using his free hand for support, Otto stood up. After holding this
position for several seconds, Otto lowered his hand, Pete slid off, and the two took their
bows.
Arc0 also had trademarks that he always used during his posing and muscle
control segments. Perhaps his most famous trademark was his abdominal isolation
commonly referred to as the rope. This is one of the most difficult of all controls, and
although it is easiest to perform while the arms apply pressure to the thighs, Arc0
75 Siegmund Klein, Otto Arco: 1881-1960, Strength & Health, October 1960, 17. The wrestlers
bridge position is similar to the Tomb of Hercules.
76 Van Cleef, Otto Arco-Physical Marvel, 20.
135
performed it while doing a regular double biceps pose. . . .77 [Figure 211 Arc0 seems
to have been very proud of this stunt and most articles about himcontain a photograph
of him performing the feat.
Although strongmen like Arc0 differed greatly from other strongmen of the late
period, they still followed the same pattern of trademarks and finales. Strongmen of the
late period, regardless of performance style had one more thing in common: mail-order
companies. As the American public grew more interested in physical culture, they turned
to the strongmen for models. Capitalizing on this interest in physical culture, many
strongmen with entrepreneurial minds began publishing booklets and manuals describing
their system for muscular development. Soon the strongmen began selling apparatus
as well to assist the exerciser. Siegmund Breitbart and Otto Arc0 both had such
companies, and Arc0 developed two pieces of apparatus.
In sum, as the new century unfolded, strongmen performing feats of strength
were as popular as they had ever been. In response to the countrys interest in physical
culture a new style of strongman developed; however, this new style was never as
popular with vaudevillian audiences. Nevertheless, it brought with it a new art that
continued long after vaudeville ended and feats of strength were no longer exciting. The
1920s continued to praise the strongmen, and the American public hailed people like
Breitbart as heroes. Arco, and other strongmen of his style, never received as much
77 J ohn Grimek, Otto Arco: The Gentleman Athlete, Ironman Magazine, January 1988, 95; Klein,
Otto ~ C O : 1881-1960, 16.
136
Figure 21: Arc0 performing the "Rope," a rectus abdominal isolation and a regular
double biceps pose.
137
esteem from the masses; however, their art continues today in modern bodybuilding
contests.
138
CHAPTER 5
On 24 October 188 1 Tony Pastor opened his Fourteenth Street Theatre in New
York and began family-oriented, American vaudeville.' On 9 July 1932 the Palace
Theatre in New York City, the epitome of legitimate vaudeville, offered its last straight
vaudevillian biK2 Throughout those fifty-one years, audiences enjoyed watching
strongmen perform their superhuman stunts on the stages of vaudeville. Mer the fall of
vaudeville, some strongmen returned to the circuses, where they still perform today.
Others, like their vaudevillian counterparts, moved to Hollywood and performed as
actors and stuntmen in the film industry. Some found the growing interest in modem
weightlifting and bodybuilding enticing and established themselves in this new field of
athletics. Still others, unable to adapt to the new forms of entertainment, found more
traditional employment.
Between 1881 and 1932, strongmen typically entered the profession through
three major avenues. While young boys, many ran away to circuses where they trained
as acrobats, bareback horse riders, and gymnasts. Some of these performers, having
natural ability, apparently began training under the circus's strongman and learned his
act. As these young circus performers grew up, they moved out of the big top and began
' Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1940), 10;
Richard Kislan, The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theatre, revised and expanded edition
ed. (New York: Applause Books, 1995), 42.
Citadel Press, 196 l), 95.
Bernard Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, with a Foreword by George Jesse1 (New York: The
139
a career of their own. Sampson, Breitbart, and perhaps Sandow, all began their careers
in circuses and there developed the techniques that would make them famous.
The second major path was the open challenge, Throughout the early and middle
periods strongmen levied contests against their fellow strongmen and offered open
challenges to their audiences. While the contests between professionals were certainly
entertaining and helped sell tickets, it was the open challenges that helped unknowns
establish themselves. Cy s entrance into the profession, for example, was most likely
either through an open challenge from the then strongest man in Canada, David
Michaud, or through an open challenge that he accepted in Boston. Although Sandow
most likely entered the profession through the circus, it was Sampsons open challenge
that brought him national fame in England. Likewise, Breitbart beat a circus strongman
in an open challenge and began performing with that circus.
The third avenue, unique to the late period, was through physical culture itself.
As schools began incorporating physical education into their curriculum, some students
excelled at sports and, after completing school, joined athletic clubs and competed in
such contests as those promoted by Bernarr Macfadden. The winners then used their
fame to mount vaudevillian careers. Others, like Otto Arco, began by performing for
exercise and f un and, after perfecting their technique and style, turned it into a
vaudevillian act. Unfortunately for these types of strongmen, their acts were never as
popular in vaudeville as were those of the heavy lifters.
There are several explanations for these various avenues into the profession.
While strength was a very important quality to posses in rural America, city life no
140
longer seemed to place emphasis upon it. As industrialism took hold of metropolitan
cities across the country, it produced more white-collar jobs, and these new jobs placed
people behind desks. Consequently, fewer jobs required such physical prowess; people
no longer performed the intense labor that had developed their parents' bodies. The
attitude developed that a strong physique was the sign of a laborer-not a symbol
desirable to the middle and upper classes. Because this attitude toward well-built
physiques changed, city dwellers equated physical strength with freakdom; the natural
environments for such freaks were the sideshows of the circuses and the dime museums.
The circus was the ideal avenue to enter the profession during the early period. As the
twentieth century approached, attitudes again changed and an interest again arose in
physical culture. As such, strength again became popular and many local amateurs
tested their mettle against professionals; when they proved superior, managers
sometimes offered contracts. By the late 1910s, the world realized how unhealthy and
unfit its citizens were and began instituting exercise in schools. This shift brought more
people into contact with strength, and those who excelled at exercise and sports began
entering tournaments like Macfadden's.
Throughout the period, these strongmen were performers and actors. Although
there is no doubt that they were athletes, their primary purpose while on vaudevillian
stages was to perform before, and entertain, an audience. Strongmen were the
precursors to modern athletic stars, weightlifters, and bodybuilders; however, they were
vaudevillian performers first and athletes second. A minor variation on the famous
maxim of J ean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, the arguable father of modern magic, is apropos:
141
A strongman is merely an actor playing the part of a strongman3 Bearing this adage in
mind, Friedrich Wilhelm Muller is merely an actor portraying the character of strongman
Eugen Sandow; Louis Durlacher created and then performed the role of Professor Louis
Attila; and Otto Nowosielski performed the part of Otto A ~co. ~
The very appearance of strongmen on vaudevillian bills supports the fact that
they were performers and entertainers. Where their act appeared on the bill
corresponded to the rise and fall of popular interest in strongmen. In the early period,
strongmen appeared toward the beginning of the circus programs. When they moved
into the dime museums, although they received high billing in advertisements, they
performed in the curio halls with the rest of the curiosities. It was not until the middle
period of strongmen, when Florenz Ziegfeld J r. placed Sandow at the end of the bill, that
strongmen began to receive the coveted spots on the program. As the publics interest in
strongmen grew, managers placed their strongmen later on the bill until the strongmen
performed in the slots usually reserved for stars-for strongmen now were the stars.
During these years, the strongmen held the coveted star slots and performed to sold out
houses. After about 1908, the public seems to have lost interest in hand balancing,
posing, and muscle control, or perhaps this style was not as exciting without the heavy
This version is adapted from Kenneth Silvermans adaptation. Kenneth Silverman, Houdini!!! The
Career of Erich Weiss: American Self-Liberator, Europe s Eclipsing Sensation, Worlds HandcKff King
& Prison Breaker-Nothing on Earth can Hold Houdini a Prisoner!!! (New York: Harper Perennial,
1996), 11 1. The original maxim was, A conjuror is not a juggler; he is an actor playing the part of a
magclan. Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, Robert-Houdin s The Secrets of Conjuring andkfagic, trans.
Hoffman, Fifth ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons, [n.d.]; reprint, New York: Magico Magazine,
1984), 43 (page citations are to the reprint edition).
Many strongmen took on stage names with connotation of strength: Attila, Apollo, Hercules, Samson,
etc.
142
lifting to supplement it. In either case, the strongmen performing hand balancing,
posing, and muscle control found themselves once again relegated to the opening and
closing positions on the bill; in these positions many in the audience ignored the
performance, arriving to their seats late or leaving the theatre early.
Salaries, too, reflected the popularity of the strongmens performances.
Although there are no surviving records to reveal how much an early circus manager like
Astley offered his strongmen, it is unlikely that they received large sums for their work;
by the 1880s, however, strongmen were earning impressive salaries. As their popularity
grew and they appeared in better positions on the bill, their salaries matched their
ranking. As their popularity diminished, their salaries again reflected their status and
were lower.
Strongmen were very conscious of the theatricality of their performances. The
strongmens costumes, for example, reflected the attitudes and mores of the era. The
early period of strongmen fell during the heyday of Queen Victorias reign. The moral
code of Victorianism dictated that it was inappropriate to display the nude body, and
theatre managers, afraid of offending their patrons, insisted that strongmen dress
properly. Consequently, costumes of the early period usually consisted of a leotard and
tights that covered most of their body, thus making them acceptable for American
families to view without embarrassment.
By the middle period, American attitudes were slowly changing, moving away
from the prudery of Victorianism. Ziegfeld removed Sandows top during his short
posing segment; immediately after Sandow finished posing, however, he exited the now
143
darkened stage and returned in the more traditional, and acceptable, leotard. Ziegfeld
and Sandow seemed able to evade the issue of indecency because Sandow assumed
poses reminiscent of Greek and Roman statuary, thus making that portion of his
performance seemingly educational. This guise of education also helped Ziegfeld and
Sandow sell the nude photographs of Sandow. Although Sandow was completely nude,
save for his fig leaf, his poses were reminiscent of famous statuary and therefore, like the
posing segment of his act, were acceptable because of the supposed educational benefits.
The late period, beginning two years after Queen Victorias death, brought forth
the most flesh yet. The changing attitude that Ziegfeld had sensed in 1893 had become
more pronounced by the 1910s and 1920s, and the costumes of the strongmen (and
indeed Ziegfelds chorus girls) became skimpier, revealing more flesh. Siegmund
Breitbart, for example, performed with only a blacksmith apron covering his bare chest.
Otto Arc0 performed wearing a very revealing outfit and no tights to cover his exposed
legs, arms, or chest.
The style of the costumes also reflected the goals of the strongmen. During the
earliest part of the early period of strongmen, the costumes were flamboyant and highly
theatrical; however, during the middle period the costumes became plain and sedate. By
the end of the late period, strongmen were again using highly theatrical costumes. There
is no definitive answer to explain this shift in costumes; however, several possibilities
exist. In the early 1 88Os, strongmen were novelties; they incorporated many theatrical
stunts into their act to arouse interest in their performance. As their performance was
theatrical, they wore costumes to accentuate the theatricality. By the end of the early
144
I.
period and throughout the middle period, interest in physical culture was on the rise, as
was interest in sports. The strongmen, while still performing their theatrical stunts,
began emphasizing their bar- and dumbbell lifts-they were now allying themselves with
the growing interest in physical culture and sports. Their costumes again reflected this
shift in attitude; throughout the middle period strongmen predominantly wore leotards
that resembled modern wrestling and weightlifting outfits.
Finally, the costumes of the late period again reflected the theatricality of the
times. This theatricality was probably a result of two major factors. First, the
1920s-the Roaring Twenties-were a festive time in America and much of the
entertainment reflected this attitude. Second, the late period coincided with the demise
of vaudeville; strongmen again needed to resort to theatricality, not to raise peoples
interest in their act, but rather to keep people interested in their act.
The strongmens acts demonstrate that strongmen were not unique among
vaudevillian performers. Like all performers of vaudeville, strongmen had certain bits
that they continuously used. These bits were the strongmens trademarks, and it was
through these trademarks that audiences remembered the individual strongmen. All
vaudevillian performers also had finales. Vaudevillians finished their turns on stage with
a spectacular song, dance, magic trick, or feat of strength in order to end their acts with
a bang that, like the trademark, would make it impossible for audiences to forget their
performance. In an era before film, radio, or television, it was much harder for
vaudevillians to ensure that audiences would remember them from tour to tour;
trademarks and finales helped reinforce their image on the minds of their audiences.
145
In an attempt to sell tickets and boost their fame, strongmen, like other
vaudevillians, paid attention to publicity. The contests among professionals in the early
and middle periods were a major technique used by strongmen of that time not unlike the
talent contests of other vaudevillians. In an attempt to validate their superhuman
powers, doctors examined the strongmen and, after declaring them physical marvels,
managers published these accounts in newspapers. Escape artists like Harry Houdini, for
example, also used this strategy of publishing supposed impartial examiners findings.
They printed articles explaining how they had been inspected fkomhead to toe to ensure
that no fakery could transpire. Strongmen posed (beginning with Sandow, many posed
nude) for photographers and, like their sideshow counterparts, sold the pictures for
money and continued exposure. From about 1903 to 1932, there was an explosion of
publicity stunts performed outside the theatre to attract an audience. For example,
Houdini threw himsell; chained, into bodies of water, and Breitbart performed his
doubletree stunt. Although these fiee demonstrations seem to be a carryover fiom
earlier precedents, it is also possible that they were a reflection of the fun seeking antics
of the Roaring Twenties: i.e., pole sitting and dance contests, so that Breitbarts wagon
pulling stunt then is not only an instance of vaudevillian practice but also another
sensational exploit of the Roaring Twenties.
It is significant to note, in sum, that what affected vaudeville also affected
strongmen. Events occurring in vaudeville coincided with the three periods of
strongmen. The early period of strongmen spanned from 188 1 to 1893, beginning with
Pastors Fourteenth Street Theatre and ending with the Worlds Columbian Exposition
146
in Chicago. The middle period began with the Exposition and continued briefly until
1903 when Bernarr Macfadden successhlly promoted the first physical culture show in
America. The late period began with Macfaddens show and continued until 1932 when
the Palace Theatre closed as a straight vaudeville house. These periods also correspond
to different stages of vaudeville. In the early period of strongmen, variety was still
young and primarily located in showboats, dime museums, town halls, and Chautauqua
tents. The middle period of strongmen saw Pastors ideas take hold and the beginnings
of family-oriented vaudeville. By the late period, the Keith-Albee conglomerate was well
established, and they were moving to become the monopoly that they would be by the
end of the period, and the end of vaudeville.
The strongmen adapted to the development of vaudeville. When variety was still
young, appearing in dime museums, strongmen performed feats of raw power. Variety
was unrefined and so were the strongmens demonstrations of brute force. Performers
like Cyr and Sampson offered shows that consisted of heavy lifting and demonstrations
of vigor and endurance. As the middle period began and vaudeville became more family-
oriented, there was a refinement and sophistication, and the strongmen adapted by
incorporating muscular posing. Now, their performances had an artistic, educational
aspect making their acts acceptable for women and children to view. These
performances were better suited to the new, plush theatres built to house vaudeville.
The late periods major change related to the business structure of vaudeville. The
United Booking Office, headed by E. F. Albee, controlled the hiring and firing of
performers throughout the Keith-Albee circuit. As the Keith-Albee conglomerate grew
147
in power, both vaudeville and the strongmen's acts within it weakened. The strongmen
in the late period began performing more stunts that were theatrical in an attempt to
retain the audience's interest. This theatricality occurred in their costumes, in their acts,
and even intheir offering publicity performances outside the theatres.
Larger cultural changes also had a major impact on vaudeville and on strongmen.
For example, with industrialization came more time for leisure, and as Americans
migrated into the cities, they began attending the theatre. As the growing middle class
became wealthy and powerful, they prompted changes in the stereotypes earlier
perpetuated on vaudevillian stages; thus, comedians offered witty humor rather than
relying on caricatures like the drunk Irishman. Too, as people moved into the cities, they
began working in sedentary desk-jobs. Consequently, health concerns rose and with
those concerns rose an interest in physical culture. The strongmen were the champions
of physical culture and promoted themselves as the strongest and healthiest specimens
alive. Thus, strongmen played on the public's obsession with physical culture. With the
advent of World War I, physical culture became a rallying call, and many people turned
to the strongmen for guidance and looked at them as heroes.
Because strongmen straddled the entertainment world and the sport world,
events occurring in the sport world affected them as well. The rise of interest in the
Scottish Highland Games in America-and its stars-helped demonstrate that Americans
were interested in watching strong men perform seemingly superhuman feats. As big
business grew, so too did sports. It was believed that competitive sports helped foster
militaristic tendencies that were supposedly requisite qualifications to succeed in
148
business. Muscular Christianity in America, too, endorsed team sports. Perhaps the
most significant event, however, was the coming of the modern Olympics in 1896.
People saw at the Olympics what could be achieved through physical culture. Here they
watched among others, swimmers, runners, and indeed strongmen competing not as
entertainers, but rather as athletes. Clearly people were interested in strength, for both
its entertainment and athletic qualities. The managers of vaudeville offered their
constituents a glimpse of what the Olympics offered when they placed strongmen on the
bills of their theatres.
Another point drawn fiom the research concerns Eugen Sandows importance in
the history of vaudevillian strongmen. Although many historians discuss Sandows
importance in the history of bodybuilding and weightlifiing, none discusses his
importance in the development of the performance styles of vaudevillian strongmen.
That omission is important, for Sandow was at the hlcrum of changes in the
performance styles for strongmen. Although Sandow did not create a new style, he,
along with Ziegfeld, successhlly promoted posing and muscle control, skills that came to
dominate certain performances after 1893.
Before Sandow, during the early period, strongmen lifted heavy objects.
Strongmen like Cyr and Sampson demonstrated their strength to audiences by lifting
weights, people, and animals. Sometimes they performed theatrical stunts that
demonstrated their prowess: Cyr balancing his wife on his chin or strongmen lifting
horses. No matter what feats they performed, the intention was to lift a heavy object and
149
assert that no one else could match the lift. In an attempt to prove this assertion,
strongmen offered challenges to anyone willing to try.
The middle period was a time of transition, and Sandow is the name forever
associated with that change. Stunts that involved heavy lifting were still popular with
vaudevillian audiences and strongmen. Consequently, challenges and contests also
continued to be popular. Sandow performed in this fashion; however, he also
incorporated something new into his act-posing and muscle control. Many soon-to-be
influential people saw Sandow perform: among them Bernarr Macfadden and Albert
Treloar, the winner of Macfadden's first contest and the director of the Amateur Athletic
Club of Los Angles for forty-two years. These people, along with the thousands that
saw Sandow while he was touring, began emulating him. Certainly managers of other
strongmen saw the public's interest in Sandow and reworked their strongmen's acts,
incorporating posing and muscle control. Thus, Sandow's charisma and Ziegfeld's
promotional acumen made posing and muscle control a standard in later strongmen's
acts.
By the late period, posing and muscle control had become so standard to the
strongmen's acts that performers such as Arc0 built acts that consisted entirely of posing
and muscle control. Although vaudevillian audiences seem not to have appreciated the
new style, the fact that Arc0 offered an entire act devoted to the style shows that, at least
for some strongmen, muscle control and posing replaced strength as the core of their
performance. Others, however, continued with feats of strength.
150
Although vaudeville is gone, remnants of strongmen remain. After the demise of
vaudeville, each style of strongmen built a separate world within the community of
sports. On the one hand the muscle controllers and posers gave rise to what is now
bodybuilding, and on the other hand the heavy lifters gave rise to what is now
weightlifting. Both styles are still active; however, the entertainment aspect (in the
vaudevillian sense) is nearly gone, and most weightliflers and bodybuilders consider
themselves athletes rather than performers. Nevertheless, with the advent of
competitions such as The World's Strongest Man Contest and The Strongest Man Alive
Contest and modern performers such as Paul Anderson (who performed ffom the 1950s
through the 1970s) and Dennis Rogers (who is a current popular strongman), there has
been a renewed interest in the entertainment aspect of strongmen. Interest in strongmen
is again on the rise and this thesis, the first effort to position strongmen in the world of
vaudeville, has opened many new possibilities for research.
151
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156
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Todd, Jan lnterview by author, 3 1 J anuary 1999
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. Interview by author, 25 February 1999.
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Buck, J osh. Sandow: No Folly with Ziegfelds First Glorification. Iron Game History
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. The Mystery of Minerva. Iron Game History 1, no. 2 (1990).
. Strength is Health: George Barker Windship and the First American
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Webster, David. A Chronology of Significant Events in the Life of Eugen Sandow.
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Willoughby, David P. L,ouis Cyr: The Daddy of em All. Ironman Magazine,
January 1961.
MISCELLANEOUS
Strength through the Ages: Cyclops Bienkowski Breaking a Cc..i. March 196 !.
Diamond, Wilfrid. The Mighty Men of Yore: The Fascinating Saga of the Old-Time
Strong Men: Siegmund Breitbart & Samson.
Pullum, W. A. Louis Cyr, The Strength Colossus: From Siegmund Kleins Scrapbook.
Willoughby, David. Sampson & Cyclops-The Coin Breakers.
Walter J . Kingsley, A Vaudeville Dictionary.
NEWSPAPERS
Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser 21 October 1894.
Baltimore Sun 23 October 1894, 8.
Boston Globe 19, 28 May 1895; 27,29 September 1896.
Boston Post 19 May 1895.
Brookly Chronicle 13 November 1923.
Chicago Times 20 January 1895.
Chicago Tribune 30 October 1889.
161
Cincinnati Tribune 16 March 1924.
Citizen (Brooklyn, NY) , 13 September 1923.
Cleveland News 2 1,24 October 1923.
Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), 27 November 1923.
Evening Tribune (Providance, RI), 24 September 1923.
Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, Maine), 23 February 189 1 ; 2, 3 March 189 1.
Los Angeles Times 4 June 1894, 8.
Montreal Daily Star 24 November 189 1.
Montreal Gazette 24 June 1885.
Montreal Star 27 February 1906.
National Police Gazette, 27 January 1894.
New York Times 29 December 1903.
Philadelphia Evening Item 9 October 1894.
Philadelphia Press 17 February 1895; 7 October 1894.
Philadelphia Record 17 February 1895, 8, 9.
Philadelphia Sunday Item 17 February 1895.
Pittsburgh Dispatch 1 7 March 1895.
Pittsburgh Post 6 November 1923; 13, 15 April 1924.
Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 6 October 1894; 16 February 1895.
Sporting Llfe 13 November 189 1.
Times (London), 4 November 1889.
162
Washington Star 28 November 1923.
NON-PRINT MEDIA
Fit: Episodes in the History of the Bo@. 115 min. Straight Ahead Productions, 1991
Videocassette.
Side Show: Alive on the Inside. 90 min. The Learning Channel, 1997. Videocassette.
THESES AND DISSERTATIONS
Nonvood, David. The Sport Hero Concept and Louis Cyr. MA, University of
Windsor, Ontario, 1984.
Todd, Terence C. fhe History of Resistance Exercise and Its Role in United States
Education. Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 1966.
UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL
Bart, Gary. Zisha Breitbart, Jewish Strongman Remembered. 26 April 1985.
Chapman, David, Sandow Chronoiogv, Unpublished.
Desbonnet, Edmond. The Kings of Strength. Translated by David Chapman.
Unpublished.
WORLD WIDE WEB PAGES
Friedman, S. Morgan. The Inflation Calculator. <http://westegg.com/inflation/>
Young Mens Christian Association of the United States of America. A Brief History
of the YMCA Movement. <http://www. ymca.net/a/history.htm>.
163