The Art of Manliness - Episode #39： Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman with David Waller

00:00:00.000 Welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:21.240 Before Arnold Schwarzenegger and even before Charles Atlas, there was Eugene Sandow.

00:00:26.640 Rising from obscurity in Prussia, Sandow became an international celebrity during the golden

00:00:33.160 age of the strongman in the late 19th century for his amazing feats of strength and his well-sculpted

00:00:39.060 physique. While Sandow wowed crowds in the United Kingdom and the United States, he also preached

00:00:46.000 a new gospel of physical fitness and well-being. Our guest today has recently published a biography

00:00:51.860 of Sandow and his times. His name is David Waller and his book is The Perfect Man, The

00:00:57.120 Muscular Life and Times of Eugene Sandow, Victorian Strongman. Mr. Waller has worked as a journalist

00:01:03.580 for the Financial Times and has written and published two books on business. He lives

00:01:08.660 in southwest London with his wife and three children.

00:01:11.440 Well, David, welcome to the show. It's great having you.

00:01:17.460 It's great to be here, Brett.

00:01:18.860 So you've written this book about the strongman Eugene Sandow. For those who out there who are

00:01:26.280 listening who've never heard of Sandow, can you kind of give a short biography? Who is

00:01:30.980 he and what did he do?

00:01:33.780 Of course. It'll be a great pleasure. A hundred years ago, Eugene Sandow would have been one

00:01:38.960 of the most famous people on the planet. He was famous in North America. He was famous

00:01:43.160 in Great Britain. He was famous in Europe. He was famous the length and breadth of the

00:01:48.100 British Empire. And he was famous for having the most extraordinary male body, obviously

00:01:53.200 male body. He was known in his day as the perfect man. And he celebrated for the perfection

00:02:01.380 of his body, but also for being one of the strongest people on the planet as well. He never

00:02:08.460 actually said that he was the strongest man in the world, but other people made that claim

00:02:12.820 for him. So that's really who he was in terms of celebrity in his heyday. He was born in

00:02:18.720 1867 in East Prussia, in a place that is now part of Russia, Königsberg, and no longer

00:02:25.720 exists actually. It's called Kaliningrad now. And that was in 1867. And he came to prominence

00:02:32.360 in 1889 when he jumped onto a music hall stage in London and entered into a challenge. And

00:02:40.080 he won this challenge and thereafter became almost overnight a celebrity on the music hall

00:02:46.620 stage. In 1893, he came to North America, spent a number of years over in your part of

00:02:52.720 the world and became very celebrated on the vaudeville circuit. Then he went back to London

00:02:57.940 in 1897. A very rich man, he had accumulated about $250,000 of earnings by that time. And

00:03:06.000 with that, he set up his own fitness establishment and a mail order business in which he sold the

00:03:14.220 secrets of bodily perfection by mail order. And he had tens, if not hundreds of thousands

00:03:19.200 of adherents all around the world. And then he went on to build up an even more ambitious

00:03:24.420 business empire, for example, manufacturing coffee and cocoa powder. And I'm afraid to

00:03:33.480 say that it all went badly wrong at the time of the First World War, and his business failed.

00:03:38.420 And after the First World War, he went into obscurity. And when he died in 1925, he was actually buried

00:03:47.380 in an unmarked grave in Putney Bale Cemetery in southwest London.

00:03:52.700 Wow. So he was really the proto Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Jack LaLanne. I mean, he was one of the

00:03:59.980 first people who kind of got involved in the physical fitness movement then.

00:04:03.380 Yeah, he invented, they didn't call it physical fitness in those days, they call it physical

00:04:08.540 culture. And he really was the pioneer of that. And Schwarzenegger explicitly credits some of his

00:04:15.320 own training and some of his own motivation to Sandow. Sandow invented a certain exercise

00:04:20.200 regime, and Schwarzenegger based his own regime in his early days as a strongman, as a bodybuilder,

00:04:26.560 on Sandow's recommendations. And as you'll know, if you win the Mr. Atlas bodybuilding competition,

00:04:33.160 you get a Sandow statuette, a little statue of Sandow, not wearing very many clothes, but

00:04:39.500 he had this kind of body that is still to this day celebrated in those circles. Charles Atlas

00:04:44.940 also owed debt to Sandow. So he really was the very first person to be anything more than,

00:04:51.700 if you like, a kind of circus strongman.

00:04:54.060 So, I mean, that's one of the impressions I got when I was reading this book, was that

00:04:57.220 what Sandow was doing was something new. It was bizarre. I mean, the whole idea of

00:05:03.360 shaping your body and being obsessed about your, you know, your muscles and exercising and nutrition,

00:05:09.740 that it was sort of a novelty. And during the Victorian times, what was the state of

00:05:16.740 physical culture, as you said, around the turn of the century? And how did Sandow change the

00:05:23.900 conversation about it and, or get people excited about physical fitness?

00:05:28.540 He started off as, um, a, like a circus strongman. He wasn't actually on the circus stage, but he

00:05:35.140 had performed in musical, which is popular culture at its most lively. Um, in London, there were four

00:05:41.960 or 500 of these musicals and the American equivalent was of course Vodafil. And, and there were many

00:05:47.220 strongmen. And, and what you had to do was to keep your audience entertained by doing

00:05:50.900 feats of strength. Um, and just being ever more ingenious in lifting up people sitting on a piano,

00:05:57.520 for example, or elephants or, um, cannons. He found that one point balanced a cannon on his nose.

00:06:04.920 So in his early days, he was kind of like a showman, but what he did, um, quite remarkably was

00:06:10.640 take the celebrity that he won from the stage to, uh, to propagate this philosophy of physical culture.

00:06:17.960 And, and, and this was very scientific. He had, uh, what appears to be a very detailed knowledge

00:06:23.220 of anatomy. Uh, he claimed to have studied, uh, university in Germany. We don't know whether

00:06:27.880 that's actually true, but he knew the name of all the muscles in the body. And he had a philosophy

00:06:32.900 which was basically, if you exercise a little and a lot in a very controlled fashion, using a

00:06:39.800 dumbbell, we'll come back to that, but he recommended that you use his own patented dumbbell,

00:06:43.720 that with a relatively small investment of time and effort, you could actually change the way you

00:06:49.940 looked, change your shape, uh, in fact, transform your whole personality. And I mean, this is a very

00:06:55.080 modern concept by, by, by exercising in the privacy of your own room. This wasn't something you did in

00:07:01.300 the gym, particularly something you could do at home. You could actually look like him. So he,

00:07:06.200 what he did was he turned his own body, not just his name, but his own body into a kind of global

00:07:10.480 brand. And his message was, look, if you follow my regime, you too can look like me.

00:07:17.280 And one of the things I remember reading that I thought was really interesting was how, um,

00:07:22.940 the, the British military were, they were concerned about the, the fitness level of,

00:07:28.340 of British men. Um, and you know, at this point they were trying to manage a vast empire and they

00:07:34.140 were concerned that British men weren't up to the task of, of doing that because they're just 1.00

00:07:38.760 so out of shape. I mean, did the people just not exercise back then? I mean, was that, I mean,

00:07:43.260 did they not really think about that? They just, what was their idea of physical fitness before

00:07:47.460 Sandow came in and actually showed them his scientific approach to physical culture?

00:07:53.480 Well, people clearly played sports, uh, and the kind of sport that you pursued did depend on your

00:07:58.940 social class. So upper class men would go hunting, for example, or they would fence, uh, or working

00:08:05.300 club men would play football. And in parts of the colonies, like, uh, New Zealand in particular,

00:08:10.720 people would play rugby even in those days. But what people didn't do was train in a systematic

00:08:16.260 way to achieve physical fitness. And Sandow made this distinction between recreational exercise.

00:08:22.360 So in other words, the exercise you get when running around a football pitch and this kind

00:08:26.360 of disciplined scientific exercise, which had a very clear objective of increasing, um, your physical

00:08:33.120 fitness. So that was, that was his philosophy. Now, how did that touch on, uh, the need of the

00:08:37.860 British nation at this time? Of course, in the late 1890s, Britain had the biggest empire that the

00:08:44.120 world had ever seen. But why were they worried? They were worried because firstly, there were

00:08:49.000 challenges to their power wherever they turned, but in particular in South Africa. Um, and this was

00:08:55.000 the time of the second borough war. And, um, this was a challenge to, uh, British power from, uh, a, a, a, a, a, a, a race of, uh, farmers, uh, outdoors, tough,

00:09:07.000 wiry, Boer farmers who were of Dutch, uh, origins. And they very, very, very close to defeating the British 1.00

00:09:16.580 empire and humiliating the British empire in a whole series of battles in, in, in, uh, 1900, early 1900.

00:09:23.740 And to your point, when Britain looked for volunteers among its own population, there were many, many tens of

00:09:30.800 thousands of men who wanted to sign up and go and fight, but their physical condition turned out to be

00:09:36.260 quite appalling. Uh, and it's especially true of kind of working class men, uh, from the cities like 1.00

00:09:43.540 Manchester in the north of England, for example, and also London, of course. These people had a very poor

00:09:49.060 diet. They didn't really do any sport or exercise at all. They were much shorter than people who were

00:09:55.140 of higher social economic status. So up to half the, um, volunteers, um, from Manchester, for example,

00:10:03.120 were turned down on the basis that they were not physically fit. So Sandow came along and said,

00:10:08.360 I can help this nation. If you follow my exercises, I can turn these weaklings into paragons of strength.

00:10:15.320 So something somewhat ironic, because of course, Sandow himself was not British. He wasn't even

00:10:20.980 a British citizen at this point. He came from Germany, but he was helping Britain to, uh, become,

00:10:25.540 uh, more effective as a, as a military machine.

00:10:28.180 Hmm. Um, so earlier you talked about how Sandow got his start as a stage show strongman. I, I, I find

00:10:34.920 this whole aspect of the time period just very fascinating, the whole, this whole aspect of

00:10:38.600 popular culture during Victorian times. There was this obsession with strongman. And I, and I,

00:10:42.600 it's one of those, I guess, iconic images of the, the man in the leotard with the handlebar mustache

00:10:47.500 lifting up, you know, a dumbbell that says a thousand pounds, how much of that, you know,

00:10:53.700 stayed to those feats of strength. How much of that was actually Sandow, a display of his strength

00:10:59.220 and how much of it was a little bit of, you know, wink, wink showmanship going on there?

00:11:05.280 Well, that's a very good question. There was a lot of showmanship, but, um, it's interesting

00:11:10.520 that, that Harry Houdini, um, who was no stranger to showmanship himself, actually investigated

00:11:15.840 the whole question of stage strongman. And he came to the conclusion, actually, that Sandow

00:11:19.780 was not a fraud. There were other people who were often caught out, uh, being fraudulent.

00:11:25.540 So they would have, uh, dumbbells, uh, that were, that were hollow and they would pretend

00:11:29.600 that they were very heavy. Or they would have machines, uh, that it would, it would look

00:11:33.360 as though they were lifting up a horse, but actually they were using mechanical aid, um,

00:11:37.620 to, to help them with that. But Sandow, Sandow, he was intelligent. He had served some time,

00:11:43.380 um, in a circus. He knew all about, um, putting together an act which looked exciting and looked

00:11:50.480 convincing and, um, uh, and deployed tricks as well as just outright strength. So for example,

00:11:57.340 one of his party pieces was to, uh, lift up a man who was sitting playing, uh, a piano. Uh,

00:12:04.080 and he lifted up the man and the piano and he carted them off stage, uh, uh, apparently,

00:12:08.900 um, with, uh, just using one arm, one hand and one arm. And there was a trick to this because

00:12:14.580 what he did was he put his hand behind the piano and there was a handle specially built

00:12:18.620 where he could kind of slip his, his forearm in there and, and lift it up. Now it was still

00:12:23.500 an incredible feat of strength, but it wasn't quite the naked, um, show of force that the audience

00:12:30.040 might've seen. And there were other examples. I mean, he was very good at supporting, uh,

00:12:35.980 very heavy weights. So what he'd do is he'd lie on his back and put his chest and torso

00:12:39.920 upwards and they would put a plank or a platform on, on top of him. And on top of this, they

00:12:46.720 would then load up, uh, people, all the equipment on the stage, sometimes actual wheel horses,

00:12:53.420 uh, cannons when he was pretending to be, uh, doing a military scene and they'd load up,

00:12:58.840 you know, more than a ton weight would go on his, uh, up to a stomach and he could hold

00:13:03.320 on to that. He couldn't lift it, but he could certainly support it. And, uh, that's another

00:13:08.220 example. Um, Edison, Thomas Edison filmed, uh, Sandow in an early visit to the U S I think

00:13:14.420 it was about 1896 and Sandow is doing, um, um, full, um, somersaults from a standing start

00:13:22.680 holding, um, to, I think that's 56 pound dumbbells. So one in each hand, he's doing, um, um, he's

00:13:30.840 doing somersaults, uh, with that. And there was nothing fake about that. He was, he was

00:13:34.960 very strong. He was very gifted and he was very elegant.

00:13:38.840 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:13:40.880 And now back to the show.

00:13:44.060 Why do you think in just your research in the book and the times, why were these strongman

00:13:49.100 shows so popular? I mean, why, why did someone like Sandow become an international celebrity?

00:13:55.460 Well, I think, I mean, there were a lot of stage strongmen. Um, most of, in fact, nearly all of

00:14:02.340 them never did anything more than, uh, this kind of, um, show on the musical or voodoo stage.

00:14:10.880 Sandow went a lot further than that. And I think he was one of the very first, um,

00:14:16.500 celebrities to, if you like, leverage the power of, uh, the new media, the new technology that

00:14:23.000 was available in, in, in those days. I mean, it's kind of quite a modern story. He, he became

00:14:28.460 famous in Britain and rather like a kind of pop group today, he, he realized that he has

00:14:33.780 to go to America to really achieve global play fame. He went there and because of the power

00:14:38.180 of photography and because of, um, the telegraph, um, and, uh, and, um, because of the increasing,

00:14:44.940 um, proliferation of, of new media, uh, there were thousands of new magazines and newspapers

00:14:52.920 in the 1890s catering to, um, the growing population, love of news and story. Sandow was able to use,

00:15:01.140 you know, what we'd call modern public relations techniques to make his own name, um, very popular,

00:15:07.080 very well known. And, uh, and that, that's how he built up a brand. So he saw the opportunity

00:15:13.280 where other people were content to earn a living on stage. He thought he, he decided to go a lot

00:15:18.060 further than that and build a business on the back of his stage name. And in the interviews that he did

00:15:23.740 towards the end of the 1890s and in the early years of the last century, he said, look, he said,

00:15:29.120 I don't, I don't really see myself as a showman anymore. I'm much more, I have a much more serious

00:15:34.820 mission. This is the education of the population in, in, into the philosophy and practice of physical

00:15:41.280 culture. But I do my shows in order to keep, uh, myself and my, we didn't use the word brand, but my name

00:15:49.560 and my methodology in the forefront of people's mind. So it was a bit like a kind of, you know,

00:15:55.720 a rap star today, perhaps, um, or, or a film star who saw opportunities to do more than just appear

00:16:03.080 on stage and make music or act. Throughout your book, you have pictures of Sandow just doing various

00:16:09.580 poses, displaying off his amazing physique. Um, but he's like pretty much naked. Like the only thing he

00:16:15.920 has on a lot of these pictures is like is a leaf that's covering up as bits and pieces. And a lot

00:16:21.280 of these, what I thought was fascinating, a lot of these images that there were photos that were

00:16:24.740 taken of them were published in magazines. But the irony is that this was done kind of at the height

00:16:30.160 of, you know, Victorian times with all, and all the modesty and decorum that came with that.

00:16:35.660 How was it that Sandow was able to, you know, pose half naked or pretty much naked and not receive a lot

00:16:43.140 of scorn for that? Well, uh, it's an extremely good question. I think what this exposes, uh, more

00:16:50.140 than just his, uh, near naked, just as it were, is some of the, uh, double standards of the, the

00:16:55.460 Victorian area. I mean, you know, in the 1890s, for example, um, for the first time ever on the British

00:17:02.020 stage, uh, did the public get to see, uh, a naked, uh, ankle, a woman's ankle, and that caused a great

00:17:10.980 scandal. So how come when it was scandalous to see, uh, uh, a lady's ankle on stage, could he get

00:17:17.660 away with being near naked? I think there are a number of observations. Firstly, he always cloaked

00:17:22.780 himself in the language of, um, classical, uh, art and sculpture. And he said, look, look at me

00:17:30.280 because I turned my body into, uh, the literal embodiment of, of classical sculpture. And at the

00:17:36.480 time there was enormous reverence for everything to do with ancient Rome and Greece. And the fact

00:17:40.840 that he could pose as he did, uh, in, in the shape of the dying gladiator or discobulus, these,

00:17:46.580 these great classical statues gave the whole thing, a kind of aura of, uh, almost academic

00:17:52.020 respectability. I mean, that's, that's one observation. The other point was he always made

00:17:56.520 sure to associate himself with doctors and soldiers and other respectable people who gave the fact that

00:18:02.960 he was taking his clothes off this kind of, you know, veneer of respectability. Uh, it was part of,

00:18:07.940 if you like, almost like a public health project. Um, and then the other point was that, that things

00:18:14.280 were a little racier in your part of the world than they were in Great Britain. He only really

00:18:19.280 started taking all his clothes off more or less when he went to America and he met, and he met

00:18:23.580 Florence Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld of course is well known for Ziegfeld's follies, but at the time of the

00:18:28.640 Chicago World Exposition in, um, or the Columbia World Exposition rather in 1893, uh, Ziegfeld, um,

00:18:35.800 Ziegfeld's first triumph, um, in, in, in, in his career was with Fandau. And Fandau was encouraged to

00:18:43.240 take even more clothes off. And, uh, and he was quite clearly, um, sexy. It was designed to appeal, uh,

00:18:51.320 particularly to the female audience. And in Chicago and Washington and New York and other big American

00:18:57.460 cities, he would hold these kind of special sessions for society ladies who would come backstage 0.70

00:19:03.560 after the main show and would be allowed for the sake, they'd have to pay a little bit extra fee

00:19:08.400 for this. They would be allowed to kind of prod his muscles and kind of stroke the muscles and so

00:19:13.240 forth. And, and, and again, because these society ladies like, um, Mrs. Pullman, uh, from Chicago 0.99

00:19:19.540 and various senators wives from Washington, because they went along, the whole thing became acceptable. 0.56

00:19:25.080 But I think it was very clever, um, marketing in a way to make the whole thing risque without

00:19:31.080 attracting real condemnation. One other observation, one observation in 1901, um, the British museum,

00:19:40.600 the natural history museum in Britain decided, uh, to make a plaster cast of his body, uh, as the

00:19:46.520 perfect example of the Caucasian man, um, the, the Anglo-Saxon man. And, and this, uh, plaster cast,

00:19:54.280 um, which by the way, you can still see if you, uh, make a special application, it's hidden away

00:19:58.920 in the cellar of the museum, but this was designed to show off the kind of, uh, this perfect body.

00:20:05.400 And, uh, and this was for scientific purposes. It had the backing of very, very, very, very,

00:20:09.800 very distinguished scientists. But after about six weeks of this naked statue being on display

00:20:14.840 at the museum, um, the more conservative elements in British society, um, caused it to be removed.

00:20:21.960 There was a little bit of a scandal, um, and, uh, it was, it was taken down. So it wasn't quite,

00:20:27.720 he didn't always get away with it, but he nearly always got away with it.

00:20:31.080 Yeah. I thought that was some of the most interesting parts in the book where you describe

00:20:34.840 these private showings with these society women and just, you know, they're, they're,

00:20:39.720 they're, they're very timid to do it. And then, you know, they would start off with a,

00:20:43.480 a, their glove on their hand and, you know, touches muscles. And then they'd have the glove off

00:20:48.680 and they'd be swooning and fainting and there'd be smelling salt. I mean, it was just,

00:20:52.360 I thought it was really funny. Um, kind of, it's incredible that he could get away with it.

00:20:58.280 I mean, I can read a little quote. This is from an American newspaper. Wherever he went,

00:21:02.280 mobs paid dollars to see. And after the mobs had looked their fill, there were private seances to 0.54

00:21:07.320 which nice people went first in secret, but then in brazen bravado. Always ladies were present and 1.00

00:21:13.880 always their private amazement was recorded in the dispatches. But though they are,

00:21:17.880 though they're amazed, they tarried and though coyly fearful for a time,

00:21:22.520 they managed to repress their terror for a time and test the great muscle with a delicately gloved

00:21:27.400 forefinger. It's amazing how, how times have changed. And I guess Sandow was part of,

00:21:34.120 I, in some sense, he kind of began the liberalization of sexuality in the West.

00:21:40.040 I think that's right. I mean, he himself, uh, steered clear of, um, you know, getting caught

00:21:47.720 out in, in sexual liaisons. Um, Lillian Russell seems to have made an advance, um, to him, which

00:21:55.960 he turned down. He was, he was, he was very controlled, um, very scrupulous. I think he knew

00:22:02.680 that if he got a reputation for being a philanderer, um, you know, that would do

00:22:07.320 him harm with the general public. So he, he, he worked very hard, uh, to, uh, preserve, uh,

00:22:12.920 his respectability. And of course, uh, he got married in the late 1890s, um, to Blanche. Um,

00:22:19.080 and, and after that really, uh, he, he led what appeared to be quite a respectable married life,

00:22:24.760 um, for a considerable period of time. What you've said so far, and especially in your

00:22:30.600 biography at the very beginning, you talk about how he was an international celebrity. He was

00:22:33.960 known across the world in the United Kingdom, in the United States. He was an international

00:22:38.840 celebrity, a brand in and of himself, but we, most people, uh, don't, haven't really heard about

00:22:44.680 Sandow. Uh, and in fact, he was buried in an unmarked grave. Why is it that we don't

00:22:50.520 hear that much about Sandow today? Well, and by the way, the unmarked grave is about a mile away

00:22:57.080 from where I'm sitting. I live in Wimbledon. I'm sitting, I'm talking to you from Wimbledon,

00:23:00.440 very close to the, uh, tennis. Um, and just across Wimbledon Common, uh, is the Putney Grave Cemetery.

00:23:06.600 And that's where he was buried. And a couple of years ago, actually, um, some, some, uh, supporters,

00:23:11.880 some, uh, fans of his did cause, uh, a monument to be erected, um, to, uh, remember his name.

00:23:18.200 But for, uh, all of the last century, he was, uh, unmemorialized. And I think, you know,

00:23:23.640 it don't, it clearly does raise a question. I think, you know, the short, one question is what,

00:23:27.880 what did he do to upset his wife, his widow, Blanche, and his two daughters? And we just don't

00:23:34.040 know. But clearly they wanted nothing to do with his reputation. And within, he was dead, uh, one day,

00:23:40.680 two days later, he was buried. And then within a month, they sold everything in that, in the family

00:23:45.480 house. And very soon afterwards, um, Mrs. Sandow, uh, moved out of London and, um, no one ever heard

00:23:51.960 from her again. So, I mean, there are all sorts of stories about what he might have done, um, to,

00:23:56.920 to upset her. I mean, other widows, of course, would go to enormous amount of trouble to celebrate 1.00

00:24:02.360 the memory of their loved ones, but she, she did exactly the opposite. So that was one fact.

00:24:07.160 I mean, she just wasn't around promoting Sandow's name. But I think, you know, the bigger question

00:24:11.080 is, you know, what happened to these icons of popular culture, um, over time? And I think the

00:24:16.760 fact is that no matter how celebrated you were, and perhaps no, no matter how celebrated you are,

00:24:22.440 in due course, you're going to be forgotten. It's rather sad, but it's something very human.

00:24:27.000 Um, and, um, people, the specialists, so the bodybuilders, um, uh, you know, like Charles

00:24:34.040 Atlas and ultimately Schwarzenegger, they knew all about him. And so, and professional bodybuilders

00:24:38.360 to this day will know all about him, but his reputation with the general public, um, faded away.

00:24:43.880 But I have to say, you know, there are references to him a plenty in the literature of the time. So,

00:24:49.160 from James Joyce's, uh, Ulysses, there's a lot of mentions of him in there, um, to, uh, various novels

00:24:55.240 by, uh, Ian Forster, for example, um, you know, wherever you turn, he's written about, but, but,

00:25:01.400 which shows how popular he was at the time. But I think, you know, by, you know, by the time he

00:25:04.920 reached his own fifties, he died when he was 57, but quite young. Um, but by that time, his, his,

00:25:11.400 his tremendous physique was fading. He'd become mortal. Um, and I think people were less interested in

00:25:17.080 knowing about someone who, who really didn't have the secret of eternal life after all.

00:25:22.840 So, uh, this is a, a blog and a podcast about masculinity and manliness. Um, what legacy

00:25:30.440 did Sandow have on masculinity and manliness, particularly in the West? What, what is it,

00:25:36.920 how, how we've changed our idea of man, manliness because of him?

00:25:40.360 Well, I think one, one point, uh, he emerged at a crucial time in the history of, of masculinity.

00:25:47.960 It was almost exactly the point that the American West disappeared. Um, it was also the time when, 0.80

00:25:53.880 um, Western Europe was in the midst of a profound, um, uh, period of industrialization. And if you like,

00:26:03.160 the role of a man in those days had changed from being someone who had to, um, fight for a living,

00:26:10.120 on the frontier, defending his family, uh, from threats, uh, building a log cabin, uh, killing,

00:26:17.560 killing what you eat, as it were, uh, a man had had to become tamed and become, um, uh, civilized

00:26:24.360 and capable of living in society, often in cities with lots of other people around. And essentially,

00:26:30.040 if you like a less, uh, vigorous, perhaps a less violent sort of existence. And Sandow's proposition was,

00:26:36.680 look, um, you know, if you follow my exercise program, you, you too can be a real man. You can

00:26:42.200 be a real man within the constraints of society as it became more confining and more industrialized.

00:26:49.880 And, and he had a particular pitch for the working man, the man who had to go to the office,

00:26:55.000 who had to commute, um, who didn't have much time and lived in the suburbs and didn't have much space

00:27:00.280 for exercise. And the pitch was, look, if you do these exercises, just 19 of them every day for 20

00:27:06.280 to 25 minutes, you're going to transform your physique. You're going to become a little bit

00:27:12.680 more perfect, a little bit more like me. So it was empowering and it was empowering in a way that

00:27:17.880 appealed to, um, you know, evolving modern man. I think there's one other consideration. It was also

00:27:24.360 about posing. It was about showing off. Um, it was about looking in the mirror. One of the things he

00:27:29.640 encouraged people to do is to look in the mirror when they're exercising. It helped increase

00:27:33.640 concentration. He said, but it was also about taking pride in looking good and having the right

00:27:40.840 kind of shape. So I think that's quite modern. So I see him as if you like the patron saint, uh,

00:27:46.040 of modern exercise today, not just gym exercise, but you know, people who go for a jog,

00:27:50.920 they unconsciously owe an awful lot to Sandow's desire to, to put the whole business of exercise

00:27:57.640 onto a kind of scientific footing. Very good. Well, David, this has been a fascinating conversation.

00:28:03.880 Thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure. Well, it's been fantastic to talk to you too.

00:28:09.240 Our guest today was David Waller. David is the author of the book, The Perfect Man,

00:28:13.240 The Muscular Life and Times of Eugene Sandow, Victorian Strongman. You can find more information about

00:28:19.480 David's work at victorianstrongman.com and you can pick up a copy of his book, The Perfect Man at

00:28:25.640 amazon.com. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips

00:28:36.040 and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.

00:28:40.440 And until next time, stay matly.

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2014

Episode #39： Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman with David Waller

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript