Schwarzenegger,Arnold b.July 30, l947;Thal,Austria

Austrian American world-champion body­builder, actor, and governor of California. Arnold is the son of Gustav and Aurelia Schwarzenegger. Gustav was a local police officer, both before and after World War II, in which he participated on the German side.

both youths into sports and to become masters of their art. Not only did this psy­chological motivation indirectly pay off for Arnold, his brother also became a cham­pion boxer. Schwarzenegger began his sports career with soccer. Realizing that his fifteen-year-old body required twenty-inch biceps to be correctly proportioned, he picked up dumbbells and set to work. He worked out six times a week, whenever and wherever he could. Even at fifteen he trained so hard that once he fainted while biking twelve kilometers from the gym to his home. By eighteen, he was sneaking dumbbells into his Panzer during military obligation, going AWOL (absent without leave) within a month of arriving to attend the Mr. Junior Europe bodybuilding com­petition in Stuttgart, which he won with a perfect score. After leaving the army, he en­rolled at the University of Munich to study marketing, a talent that later proved its worth. In 1967 Schwarzenegger took first place in the Mr. Universe bodybuilding competition. Shortly afterward, fitness mogul Joe Weider invited Arnold to the United States to train in California. Within two years he starred in his first of many films, Hercules in New York, his accent so thick that his voice had to be dubbed. While this was the beginning of a long list of films, acting would not become a major source of income for Schwarzenegger until the Conan movies (Conan the Barbarian, 1982; Conan the Destroyer, 1984).

In the meantime Schwarzenegger con­centrated his efforts on generating enough income in America to finance bodybuild­ing book deals, which he and fellow body­builder Franco Columbu supported through a bricklaying partnership. The money was immediately put toward an apartment and real estate deal in the Santa Monica area. He also won his first (and to date only) acting award, a Golden Globe for his role in Stay Hungry (1976), in which he played an Austrian bodybuilder who comes to the United States for fame and fortune. In addition, he became five-time Mr. Olympia while taking enough corre­spondence courses through the University of Wisconsin at Superior to receive a bach­elor’s degree in international marketing.

The year 1977 proved decisive for Schwarzenegger when he was invited to play tennis at the Robert F. Kennedy Ten­nis Tournament. Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy, took notice. After dat­ing for eight years, they married in 1986, three years after he had become a U.S. cit­izen. They were (aptly) labeled the odd couple of the celebrity world. Eunice Shriver, Maria’s mother, involved herself heavily in supporting the Special Olympics, an organization that also prof­ited from Arnold’s interest. Branching from there, he founded the Inner City Games, an after-school program designed in 1991 by Schwarzenegger and the execu­tive director of East Los Angeles’s Hollen­beck Youth Center, Danny Hernandez, to keep kids off the streets. Then in 1990 George H. W. Bush asked Schwarzenegger to chair the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, promoting health for children (and adults) in fifty states.

Proving himself more than a bulky Hollywood action hero, Schwarzenegger’s public image took center stage during the 2003 governor recall election in California. Gray Davis had been receiving negative publicity as gubernatorial incumbent dur­ing the previous year, an image that con­tinued to decline (along with the state’s budget) until Californians exercised their state constitutional right to hold a recall election. Arnold stepped in on the Repub­lican ticket, announcing his candidacy on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, and never backed down until he became California’s thirty­eighth governor, beating his nearest elec­toral rival by over 500,000 votes.

LaVern J. Rippley

See also Hollywood

References and Further Reading

Andrews, Nigel. True Myths of Arnold Schwarzenegger: The Life and Times of Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Pumping Iron to Governor of California. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.

Blitz, Michael, and Louise Krasniewicz. Why Arnold Matters: The Rise of a Cultural Icon. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Leigh, Wendy. Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography. Chicago: Congdon & Weed, 1990.

Leamer, Laurence. Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005.

Schwarzenegger, Arnold. Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1977, 1993.