I was chatting with a friend the other day about my book reviews and they asked me what I was thinking of reviewing over the next couple of months. I mentioned that I was thinking of getting a biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger and they strongly recommended Arnold, by Wendy Leigh (affiliate links: UK
It is an unauthorised biography, which I guess means that unless there is something in there that is actionable, it hasn’t been approved by Arnold or a member of his staff. Having said that, there isn’t much in here that you can’t read on Wikipedia, although back in 1990, when it was published, I guess things would have been quite different.
And it’s not the easiest book to find. If you just type in “Arnold” into the Amazon search facility, it won’t come up (they say it’s a conspiracy). But if you type in the name of the author, it does.
Arnold, looking relaxed
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OK, why would I read this and not another biography of Arnold?
Well, that’s a tricky question for me to answer because this is the first biography of Arnold that I’ve read. However, there were definitely two things that I liked about the book.
#1: The geography of places
Firstly, I liked the division of Arnold’s early life into phases, being broadly broken up by his geographical locations:
- Thal – Arnold grows up in Thal and Graz, apparently not in a hugely happy family. He takes up bodybuilding and wins the Junior Mr Europe in 1965 at the age of 15. He wins Mr Germany in March 1966.
- Munich - After winning Mr Germany, Arnold moves to Munich to work in a gym. He spends a lot of time with other bodybuilders and becomes the de facto leader of their group.
- London – Arnold travels to London to compete in the 1966 National Amateur Body Builders Association (NABBA) and meets Wag Bennet, who would become an important confidant.
- America – Arnold wins Mr Universe and emigrates to America. The rest, as they say, is history.
I think this makes it a lot easier to visualise Arnold’s progression from unknown boy to world-reknowned bodybuilder. In today’s media age, where reality TV and YouTube can take a complete unknown and turn them into a media sensation overnight, it is fairly common for new celebrities to be discovered every day. Back in the mid-1960′s, however, things were very different.
Obviously, the America phase is broken up into segments, with bodybuilding being the first part, which segues into Pumping Iron and then the slow and bumpy ride into mainstream film-making.
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#2: The psychology of Arnold
Secondly, I liked the attempt of the writer to draw conclusions about the psychology of the man who was doing all of these remarkable things. I mean, for most people who aren’t 14 year-old boys, the most interesting thing about Arnold is his will to power.
This biography starts at the beginning with his childhood and tries, without being excessively Freudian, to draw conclusions about what made Arnold do the things he did.
By way of interviews with key people in his life, it attempts to get under the skin of some of Arnold’s key traits, including commonly known ones such as his drive and determination, his strong will and his huge ambition. It also looks at the less well-known traits, including his behaviour with women, his tendency to play practical jokes and his desire to be the centre of attention.
While the biographer clearly has a point of view on these matters, I didn’t feel that at any point there was an agenda being driven and that facts were being selected to support it. If anything, the stories were presented with a light touch and the conclusions were fairly clear.
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Drawbacks
The main drawback with the biography is that it ends 20 years ago, in 1990. Arnold has achieved a lot since then, perhaps even more than the biographer could have imagined. Perhaps also, a biography published now in 2010 will look similarly dated in 2030 when Arnold is a spritely 80 years old.
Ultimately, though, I look forward to reading more biographies of Arnold in the future. When I do, it will be interesting to look back and see how different they are from this one.
