|
Charles Atlas (Angelo Siciliano) (1893 - 1972)
Born in Southern Italy in 1893, he and his mother travelled to the U.S.A. in 1904. He grew up in Brooklyn as a skinny and sickly child. He lost interest in school and found himself unable to climb the steps to the family flat. A Halloween night was to change his life and physique.
He was badly beaten by another boy. Impressed by a statute of a muscle bound Hercules in the Brooklyn Museum he joined the YMCA and started to 'work out'. In his home he built a barbell out of a broomstick and two rocks. He wrote away for the Swoboda Course and explored Strongfortism. He was fixated with strength. Upon studying a tiger in the zoo he concluded that pitting muscles against muscles would build his physique. He forsook his barbells and took to staging tugs of war between his fingers, hands, legs and thighs. By this means he doubled his weight and returned the beating of his Halloween tormentor. His chest was an impressive 54¾ inches and his biceps were 17 inches. His friends remarked that he resembled the statue of Atlas on the corner of a nearby bank building. The name stuck and he legally changed his name to Charles Atlas.
He went to work as a strongman in a circus on Coney Island where he tore telephone books in half and smashed nails through blocks of wood with his bare hands. However it was an unplanned event that brought Atlas fame. Rowers at Brooklyn's Dike Beach lost their oars thus leaving them stranded. Atlas swam out and saved them by tying the boat's bow rope around his waist and towing it to shore. He was noticed by an artist and asked to pose. He quickly became a sculptors' model. In 1922 "Physical Culture" selected Atlas as the world's most perfectly developed man. The title and prize money helped him set up a mail order muscle building business. Advertisements appeared in comics and magazines talking of 'Tiger Men' who grabbed what ever they wanted. He was trying to cash in on the idea physical beauty leads to financial and life success.
Charles Roman took over the marketing end in 1928 and rewrote the ads. He coined the term 'dynamic tension' to describe Atlas's isometric exercises. These ads were supplemented by personal appearances by Atlas himself. He bent over 1500 railroad spikes a year and gave them away as souvenirs. For $30 subscribers got twelve lessons in areas such as push-ups, deep breathing, arm wrestling oneself, relaxation and diet. Character building was also an essential part of the programme.
By the late 1930s Atlas had offices in London and Buenos Aires and students all over the world including Max Baer and Rocky Marciano. In due course over 6 million men aspired to the Atlas body beautiful making Charles Atlas a very wealthy man.
Late Life and Death
Atlas bought a seaside home at Point Lookout, Long Island and lived there and Palm Beach, Florida. In his semiretirement he build furniture out of drift wood, worked out at New York City Athletic Club and posed for publicity photographs as a amazingly energetic septuagenarian. The isometric exercises became part of the training used by the armed force and professional athletes. He died of a heart attack in 1972.
| 
