Daily Mail (c) 2003
Tuesday, October 7, 2003
Sexually insecure. A bigot and drug abuser. Would YOU vote for this man? ; DARK SIDE OF THE TERMINATOR by Wendy Leigh Concluding our damning dossier . . . WENDY LEIGH
TODAY, Californian voters are expected to elect film star Arnold Schwarzenegger as their governor. Here, in the last of three articles, his biographer urges them to think again. . . AS ROBBY ROBINSON strode into Gold's Gym, Santa Monica, he felt on top of the world. At 20, he was already one of America's most famous bodybuilders - a Mr Universe, Mr America, and Mr World titleholder - whose nickname was The Black Prince.
He also had a beautiful 19-yearold girlfriend, Elaine Stockton, with whom he was deeply in love.
That morning, Elaine was in the gym ahead of him. Tall and voluptuous, she was chatting happily to another bodybuilder when Arnold Schwarzenegger strolled in.
Even today, nearly 30 years later, what happened next makes Robby Robinson's voice shake with anger.
'Arnold came round behind Elaine and grabbed her breast,' he says. 'She was wearing a loosefitting top and no bra and he reached under her top. He actually touched her breast.
'Elaine was livid and dug her elbow into him. Arnold yelped, then backed off. I was shocked and horrified by his lack of respect for my girlfriend. He knew we had been together for two years.
'I sent him a fierce message telling him exactly what I thought of him. From then on, I avoided him as much as possible.' But avoiding the biggest star of the bodybuilding world was not easy. Later, Robinson was invited to appear in Pumping Iron, the documentary that would make Arnold an international celebrity.
WHEN he discovered the project was a showcase for the man who humiliated his girlfriend, and there were no plans to pay other bodybuilders who appeared, he swung into action.
As Robinson recalls: 'We were at Arnold's house in Santa Monica when I spoke out. I faced Arnold and told him that neither I nor the other guys would participate further unless we got paid.
'Then I started to walk out of the house - and the other guys started to follow me. Arnold watched for a moment, then said: "That's the second time that n-word has defied me."
'We ended up being given $10,000 contracts for our parts in Pumping Iron, but I never got paid anything.
'After I stood up to Arnold, my bodybuilding career suffered. I believe that Arnold harmed me with Joe Weider, the magazine publisher who controlled the bodybuilding world in those days.
'Weider was the man who made Arnold's career and brought him over to America from Europe. After I stood up to Arnold, I could never get a contract from Weider.' The racist tendencies of the man who wants to be Governor of California - a state with a large black and Hispanic population - go right back to his early days as a bodybuilder.
Black contestants then ruled supreme, and it seemed highly unlikely that any white upstart - especially one with an unpronounceable name and an unintelligible accent - would ever vanquish them.
Arnold, though, had other plans.
Black bodybuilder Dave DuPre was working out with Arnold when the Austrian suddenly declared: 'Black people are inferior. You are not capable of achieving the success of white people. Black people are stupid.' DuPre believes Arnold's racism was motivated by a strong sense of sexual inferiority. 'He was always upset that all the black guys were able to go out with all the white girls. He couldn't stand that.' On one occasion, in New York, Arnold was having dinner with black bodybuilder Rick Wayne and Schwarzenegger's patron, Joe Weider, when he noticed a beautiful black cloakroom attendant. He began talking to her, then asked Weider to lend him his car and drove off with her.
Wayne recalls that the next day Arnold made a point of telling him: 'You know, the girl said I was better than any black guy she ever had.' In the late Sixties, Arnold accepted an invitation to stay in South Africa with Reg Park, who had been his bodybuilding hero when he was a teenager.
Later, in his autobiography, Arnold said he was overwhelmed by the older man's luxurious lifestyle - a magnificent house stuffed with antiques and a retinue of servants.
UPON his return to America, he announced to Rick Wayne that he thought South Africans were right to enforce apartheid, adding: 'If you gave these blacks a country to run, they would run it down the tubes.' At the time, Wayne considered him 'an out-and-out racist' but has revised his opinion, citing his long friendship with the star. 'I don't necessarily think he's racist,' he says. 'How can you be a racist and have a black guy as your friend?'
Nonetheless, Wayne can't help recalling moments such as the time in which he asked Arnold how, as an Austrian immigrant, he had conquered Hollywood.
Arnold replied: 'Because I've got the greatest physique in the world, I'm sharp, I'm super-talented.' Then he walked down the corridor, looked over his shoulder and added: 'And I'm white.' Arnold used any trick he could to vanquish the black performers who dominated his sport. Cuban Sergio Oliva, then considered the world's finest bodybuilder, was one such victim. 'Arnold admired Sergio for having the greatest body but discovered he felt vulnerable because of being black,' says Rick Wayne.
Schwarzenegger exploited that lack of confidence with astute psychological warfare. During preparations for the Mr Olympia bodybuilding contest in 1972, he managed to take charge of the decor in the room where the event was to be held, selecting a darkcoloured paint for the walls.
Later, Arnold confided to Rick Wayne: 'It hadn't occurred to Sergio that my white body would stand out against the dark wall, while his would blend right in. To this day I believe that was how I got the edge. The judges saw more than I actually had that day. Sergio suffered for his blindness.' The victory was a major breakthrough. After that, no other bodybuilder - black or white - would beat him again.
Arnold's racist comments extended to Jews as well.
According to Rick Wayne, he sometimes upset his mentor Joe Weider, a Jewish Canadian, by telling crass anti-Semitic jokes in his presence, bringing him to the brink of tears.
According to Dave DuPre: 'Arnold would make fun of Jews. If anybody looked Jewish, he would point it out and tell them they were inferior. I would remind him that it was a Jew who had brought him to America. Then he would shut up.' WITH his 58in chest, his 20in calves, 22in arms and 34in waist, Schwarzenegger the bodybuilder resembled an overblown superman. However, his grotesquely large muscles were not merely born of hard work, but also from his willingness to take steroids.
Though steroids were not yet illegal in those days, many bodybuilders eschewed them, leaving those who did with an extremely unfair advantage - which Arnold, determined to win at all costs, didn't hesitate to take.
In 1966, after offering Rick Wayne a month's supply of Dianabol steroid tablets, Arnold confided that he had been taking steroids since the age of 13.
HIS first trainer, Kurt Marnul, in Graz, had introduced him to them. Marnul also injected him with Primobolin, the champagne of steroids, two or three times a week.
'Arnold took steroids in doses that terrified the other bodybuilders,' recalled an Austrian competitor who trained with him.
'I saw him swallow eight or nine Dianabols at a time.
'Then he'd take a gulp of milk, a handful of protein tablets, and while he was still swallowing and could hardly talk, say, "Right, now I'm ready," and start training.' In the early Sixties, the dangers of steroids were not fully understood, and Arnold took them openly. Helmut Reidmeier, who trained with him, recalled: 'Arnold injected himself with steroids and took them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.' Steroids weren't the only drugs Arnold used. In the film Pumping Iron, he openly smoked marijuana-The late Mike Mentzer, another bodybuilding colleague, claimed that during the Mr Olympia contest in Australia in 1980, Arnold was taking cocaine.
According to Mentzer: 'Arnold was wild. Joe Weider told me later that he was on cocaine that day - and I believe it. His eyes were bulging out, the veins on his forehead were distended - both symptoms of being on cocaine.
'He seemed out of control. His upper lip was curled around like a snarling animal.' There is no evidence that Arnold has taken drugs in recent years.
But these anecdotes are just another symptom of the amoral nature and lack of judgment that make him such an unlikely candidate for political office.
Now, however, the people of California seem set to elect him as their governor. Despite all the recent controversy that has engulfed him, it is highly likely that - given a national culture that values celebrity above all else - he will win today's vote.
If he does, I only hope his supporters do not come to rue their mistake as bitterly as I fear they will.
---- INDEX REFERENCES ----
NEWS SUBJECT: (Crime/Courts (GCRIM); Political/General News (GCAT))
EDITION: 1ST
OTHER INDEXING: Schwarzenegger, Arnold; Robinson, Robby; Stockton, Elaine; Weider, Joe; Wayne, Rick
Word Count: 1545 10/7/03 BSX-DMAIL 57 END OF DOCUMENT
Copr. (C) West 2003 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works Copr. (c) 2003 Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC (trading as Factiva). All Rights Reserved.
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