Remembering Muscle Beach

The Birthplace of Bodybuilding

In this holiday season, with 2016 poised ready to hand the time baton to 2017, it’s traditional to look back and review the year and give thanks to those who brought us positive joy and benefits. That broad sentiment prompts this little essay, which reaches further back than this year. In fact it goes back to a time before I was born. (Get your ageism jokes out the way now; like, McGough is so old his first bodybuilding article was in Latin.) The focus of this piece is revisiting the 1930s and the origins of Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, that hallowed ground, which is considered the birthplace of bodybuilding.

In those halcyon pre WWII days, when a Mac was something you wore when it was raining, Bluetooth was the result of bad oral hygiene, clearing cookies meant bingeing on Oreos, and a cell phone was something used by a prison warden, the in place for Los Angelinos to be on a lazy hazy California Sunday afternoon was Muscle Beach, in the shadow of Santa Monica Pier. Place had more pull than a herd of Clydesdales going downhill.

THE BEGINNING

It is generally acknowledged that the genesis of Muscle Beach took place in 1934, when 16 years old Paul Brewer moved some basic weight equipment onto the beach to workout. From that point on athletically minded individuals started to spontaneously gather at the beach to perform gymnastic feats and workout. This group now reads like a Who’s Who of the fitness/bodybuilding movement as it included: Harold Zinkin, who went on to win the 1941 Mr. California, the 1945 national AAU weightlifting championship in the light heavy division, and invent the Universal Gym Machine; Joe Gold, who would eventually found both Gold’s and World’s Gym; Russ Saunders destined to be a renowned Hollywood stuntman; future health club mogul Vic Tanny; and the legendary Jack Lalanne, the only guy in the muscle sculpting business who could go on TV espousing the joys of juicing without the feds dropping by.

By the late ‘30s the Sunday gymnastics were a standard fixture for a growing group and thousands would watch their beach exertions. In 1941 came the war, and most of the Muscle Beach habitués went off to fight for their country. Four years later they came back and in the next decade other luminaries joined in the muscle flexing fun. This post war list included: 1950 Mr. Universe, and celluloid Hercules Steve Reeves; 1945 Mr. America Clancy Ross; 1948 Mr. America, George Eiferman; expert tumblers Pudgy and Les Stockton; 1950 Mr. USA, Armand Tanny; 1954 Mr. California, Zabo (Abo) Koszewski; 1954 Mr. America Dick Dubois and future screen Tarzan, Gordon Mitchell. Blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield met her future husband 1955 Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay at Muscle Beach and Mae West dropped by to select some of the buffed guys to adorn her risqué revue that ran in Vegas for several years.

In his 1999 book Remembering Muscle Beach, Zinkin (who died in 2004 aged 82) wrote, “It began as a place where a few friends could work out in the sand and grew to include a mismatched but amiable group of athletes, circus performers, wrestlers, college gymnasts, movie stunt people.... On weekends the crowd of spectators could easily top ten thousand, all lining the sidewalk to watch amazing stunts.”

Muscle Beach closed in 1959 due to maintenance and administration difficulties, which was hastened, allegedly, by some underage girls found partying with Muscle Beach denizens at a house adjacent to the beach. It remained closed until 1989 when the area was refurbished with balance bars, rings and the like, and ten years later it was fully restored with equipment on a par with its illustrious past.

In 1951 a beachfront weight pen had been established in Venice, two miles south of the original Muscle Beach. Eventually the Venice location became known as Muscle Beach and many assume that is the site of the seminal exercise area. However the original spirit of Muscle Beach is kept alive by Joe Wheatley at Muscle Beach, Venice, a few miles south of its Santa Monica predecessor. (For details check out http://www.musclebeach.net/)

LEST WE FORGET

While Joe Weider’s publishing empire was gaining strength on the East Coast, Muscle Beach on the west coast sprouted and now stands as an iconic beacon that symbolizes the California beach fitness lifestyle. Muscle Beach personifies a place and a time of innocence whose like we shall not witness again. It represents bodybuilding in its purest form, when monetary reward was not the carrot, and advancement was achieved by exercising the muscles not a syringe; a time when its practitioners followed it for the pure zest of life it gave them. All the names mentioned above have passed on but Oh, what a time they had, and oh, what a history and lesson they leave us as their legacy. This Christmas why not raise a glass in thanks to those early bodybuilding pioneers who paved the way for future generations.

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