by Graeme Kent
Fleming was under a cloud at the time, being suspected of fixing a fight between the British heavyweight champion Jem Smith and the visiting Australian Frank Slavin, so it is more likely that the man about town would have been lying low at this particular time. What is certain is that John Fleming’s son Albert became Sandow’s British agent. In conjunction with Louis Atilla, he masterminded Sandow’s challenges to Cyclops and Sampson and unwittingly laid the foundations for the rapidly approaching great strongman cult.
3
THE STRONGMEN ARRIVE
For years the embryonic halls of entertainment had been content to feature mainly singers and comics. Now, with audiences increasing, there was a demand for more varied forms of entertainment, and managers were doing their best to provide these. As early as the 1860s, showmen had experimented with presenting celebrities on their bills. The acrobat Leotard and the high-wire walker Blondin had made personal appearances at London halls, while the Native American professional runner Deerfoot had presented himself and his trophies at theatres all over the country. Deerfoot’s stage appearances had been limited to a few embarrassed words to the audience and, in order to boost his marquee value, he had even taken part in a shame-faced publicity stunt in Worcester, when he had pretended to scalp an associate.
By the 1890s, the halls were experimenting with all sorts of speciality acts, including acrobats, trick cyclists, animal shows, mind readers and escape artists. Now only the new fashion for strength athletes seemed to have potential for top-of-the-bill status and it was not long before word began to spread among the scattered international strength fraternity of the comparative riches to be secured in the English music halls for anyone who could replicate the successes of the pioneering Sandow and Sampson. Impresarios and agents began to hunt for suitable strongmen and soon muscle-bound titans were arriving in London from all over the world. There was an increasing probability that the existing champions sooner or later would be upstaged.
Sampson, with his rigged feats and penchant for concealed mechanical forms of assistance, was particularly vulnerable to challenges from his peers. He lived in a state of permanent suspicion and was constantly afraid of being shown up during his public displays. Once, when he was appearing in London, a far superior strongman, a Frenchman called Louis Uni, who performed under the name of Apollon, came up on to the stage, ostensibly to accept Sampson’s invitation to check the validity of the weights being lifted. Afraid that the rival strongman would challenge him to a contest, Sampson had blanched. Speaking rapidly in French in low tones he had begged Uni not to interfere in the livelihood of a fellow strongman.
By 1891, the New York Herald was able to give a list of the thirty most prominent strength athletes already criss-crossing the Atlantic to fulfil top prestigious theatrical engagements in Europe and the USA. They included the names of Sampson and Sandow, as well as Cyr, Cyclops, Kennedy, Ajax, Hermann, Sebastian Miller, Milo, Marks, Hercules, Dodnetti, Andrew Hall, Wilson, Ayres and Montgomery.
Newspapers were not slow to recognise that the major strongmen were already forming themselves into mutually supportive cabals. The Brooklyn Eagle, examining the burgeoning strongman craze, pointed out: ‘They have entered into a combination by which they play in different cities [and] give each other points on the best ways of increasing the financial profits of the union.’
Some of the newly emerging strongmen had in fact been around for some time but had been forced to find employment in the lowly regarded fairs and circuses. Typical of these veteran British strongmen now blinking in the glare of hype were the McCann brothers, Louis and Henry, from Birmingham, who performed professionally as the ‘Marvellous Muscular Men, Hercules and Samson’ (the latter being an unimaginative but common sobriquet for stage strongmen). As early as 1883, they were on record as writing to the proprietor of the Brighton Aquarium asking for work and outlining their act: ‘Our great and unrivalled feats of strength, with the heaviest weights and dumb-bells in the world, including lifting at every performance.’
Soon there were hundreds of strongmen touring the halls, many of them as headliners during the great initial popular fascination with strength athletes. They came from many different countries and backgrounds, although most of them were artisans impelled to take up their new careers by the prospect of making a steady and even glamorous living, and get away from dull or dangerous jobs or escape boring domestic routines. They were mostly naturally big and strong men who suddenly realised that their muscles could be used for something more lucrative than swinging hammers in forges or dragging loads across factory floors.
First, however, a would-be professional strongman had to attract the favourable attention of a manager or agent to guide him through the hazards and pitfalls of a show business livelihood. Some like Edward Aston and Donald Dinnie first attracted attention by winning strength events at such professional athletics tournaments as the Grasmere Games and the Highland Games. Staff Sergeant Moss developed his physique as a physical training instructor in the British army but resigned to tour the halls and sell his physical culture correspondence course. His military background, however, soon told against him when he was marked down for being too heavily tattooed when he entered an international physique contest. Monte Saldo entered the profession by being officially apprenticed to Eugen Sandow when he was eighteen years old. Albert Treloar, one of the first American strongmen, also gained his knowledge of the trade from Sandow by working on tour as one of the Prussian’s stage assistants. Gunner Moir won and held briefly the title of British heavyweight boxing champion, which secured him a week’s engagement at £40 at a London music hall, performing feats of strength.
William Bankier, Alexander Zass and Louis Uni were all well-built, restless lads who ran away from home and ended up as odd-job men in circuses, later graduating to helping the resident strongmen and learning the ropes. Don Athaldo was a blacksmith’s apprentice, living in a remote area of Australia. He was so determined to become a professional strongman that he enrolled on a correspondence course and developed his physique even further.
John Marx was noticed unloading a brewer’s dray with obvious ease. Joe Bonomo, as a boy was entranced by the strongmen’s sideshows on Coney Island and learned everything he could from them before turning professional when he grew older. Both Bobby Pandour and Otto Arco started as gymnasts. In the process they developed such magnificent muscles that later in their careers they could easily make the transformation to weightlifting. Several broke into the profession by emulating Sandow and leaping on to the stage and challenging touring strongmen and doing so well that the strength athletes they defeated either paid them to go away or recommended them to agents or managers.
Once they had made the initial breakthroughs, the young wannabes then had to find agents to guide them, for a percentage, through the complexities of their budding music hall careers. There was plenty of work available for suitable acts with syndicates increasingly putting together groups of theatres. Artistes could be booked to tour all the theatres in a single chain. Businessmen like Oswald Stoll, Edward Moss, William Broadhead, the Livermore Brothers and Walter de Freece exerted enormous influence over the halls and the performers who appeared on their stages. There were also hundreds of independent halls, all eager to book the best entertainers. In New York, in 1881, Tony Pastor had opened his family-orientated Fourteenth Street Theatre, the first of many that were to follow and provide employment for artistes.
By the closing decade of the nineteenth century, the billings of the major strongmen, usually based on heroes of mythology, screamed down from fly posters on the walls of theatres and city streets all over the UK and USA: the French Hercules, the Scarborough Hercules, Hercules and Samson, the Iron Samson, the Cowboy Samson, the Iron Master, the Muscular Marvel, the Man with the Grip of Steel, Champion Athlete of the World, Champion Club Swinger of the World, the Beast of the Jungle, the Tipperary Wonder – the bombastic and congratulatory list seemed to have no end.
The
managers and committees running the halls liked strongmen because their flamboyant acts lent themselves to publicity stunts outside the music halls, which the proprietors hoped would lead to an influx of spectators in the evenings. The strength athletes needed no second bidding to strut their stuff in public, hauling huge laden carts through city streets or defying the efforts of two horses to pull them apart. Most of these stunts had been performed since medieval times and were not as difficult as they looked. A favourite was towing a cart by a harness held between the strongman’s teeth and draped over his shoulders as he lumbered backwards. The attention of the gawping onlookers was directed to the strongman’s mouth, but throughout the journey most of the weight of the cart was being taken on the puller’s legs and body. It also helped if the route taken was down an almost imperceptible slope.
The problem, which persisted, was that most of these would-be music hall strongmen still had no acts to speak of. The veterans among them brought along their circus performances of lifting weights, breaking chains and dragging heavy loads. These were usually horrendously dull to watch. The complete novices among them, no matter how powerful their muscles, did not even have a shop window in which to display their basic strength skills. It became obvious to the strongmen and their employers that they would have to develop acts of their own, and this simply could not be accomplished overnight. It could take years for a variety performer, by a laborious process of continuous trial and error, to put together a polished routine. On the plus side, once assembled and slotted into place a single performance could be trotted around the country by its owner virtually unchanged for years.
Newspaper reports of the displays of these enthusiastic novices popping up everywhere became almost blasé:
Another Strong Man
Yesterday afternoon at the Royal Music Hall, an exhibition was given by a ‘strongman’ calling himself Milo. Milo is a young Italian, of short stature, but of powerful and well-proportioned frame. His initial feats, like those of the former strong men, consisted in balancing a dumbbell of 150lb, tossing a[n] 80lb weight around in the manner of a juggler, holding 150lb in his teeth while he stood on his hands, and so forth. Then he played with a hollowed dumbbell containing a clown in each extremity, and next raised a 250lb bell above his head. Then came the final feat, in which two full-sized chargers and two men habited as Life Guards, standing on a platform, were raised simultaneously from above by Milo. This feat evoked much cheering. The weights were tested by a committee.
Still smarting after his summary dismissal by Eugen Sandow, Louis Atilla had spotted the Italian Milo, whose real name was Luigi Borra, wrestling at the Folies Bergère. The embittered trainer was determined to produce a young strongman capable of defeating the Prussian in a contest of strength in London. He persuaded Borra that it would be easier and much more lucrative to lift weights for a living than grapple against all comers in the ring.
As may be seen from the newspaper report of his debut, Milo’s stage performance was stilted and hackneyed, owing much to the existing acts of Sandow and Sampson. Atilla, who had a talent for such choreography, set to work to polish the Italian’s routine and make him stand out from the crowd. The Italian proved a ready pupil. Before long, Atilla had sent his latest protégé zooming up the billing order, performing stunts including balancing a pole on his chin on top of which would be a platform bearing a man and a field gun and carriage, which were discharged at the climax of his performance. Atilla also taught Milo how to hang by his teeth from a trapeze with both arms extended fully to the sides while holding a 50lb dumbbell in each hand, in what was known in the profession as a crucifix.
What with the firing of the cannon and the dropping of heavy weights, Milo’s act became known as one of the noisiest on the music hall circuit. This gave rise to the story that after one particularly poorly attended first house performance, Milo trudged off the stage in dispirited silence to be quizzed in the wings by a hopeful waiting chorus girl:
‘Did you manage to wake them up, Mr Milo?’
‘Two of them.’
‘What happened?’
‘They got up and walked out!’
Sandow and Sampson apart, the stage performances of the first wave of strongmen were nothing to get excited over. Managers and bookers began to wonder if the strength bubble might be about to burst. A typical stage performance of the time was that of Cyclops, the former pupil of Charles Sampson, and another strongman calling himself Vulcan, who had become the new partner of Cyclops. They managed to secure a booking at the Royal Aquarium but their performance did not come over well. The two young men, who were both under thirty, juggled with weights to open the show. Then they stood back to back. Cyclops lifted a 112lb barbell over his head and threw it backwards to Vulcan, who caught the weight and returned it in the same manner.
They played catch in this fashion for some time, before Cyclops lifted what he claimed to be a barbell weighing 350lbs from the floor to an overhead position. The performance ended with both men breaking chains by inflating their chests and tensing their biceps.
Other veteran strongmen were responding in droves to the call of the unprecedented salaries suddenly on offer in London and the provinces, like elderly warhorses hearing the first rumblings of gunfire for a long time. They brought with them years of experience of the circuses, fairs and dime museums of the world. Most of them were genuinely strong but had passed the stage where they could be persuaded to add an element of Sandow’s much-needed showmanship to their acts. One of the most powerful physically of the first arrivals was John Marx, a native of Luxembourg. His real name was Gruen or Gruenn – his billing varied considerably. Marx was so confident in his ability that he never bothered to learn more than a smattering of English nor furnish much of a spectacle in his performances. He lifted heavy weights but, according to George Alltree who booked him often, the strongman restricted his utterances to a terse, memorised ‘Me John Marx, the greatest strongman in the world. My weights so heavy, no man can move. I do move – so! Overhead – so!’
Actually, Marx’s specially constructed barbells and dumbbells were not only genuinely heavy but their bars were also enormously thick. The 6ft 4in. tall giant had very large hands, over 8in. long and 4in. wide. He utilised this asset in the design of his weights, so that challengers from the audience could seldom even grasp the bars properly, let alone lift them overhead.
As a young man he had visited the USA, where he had worked as a labourer in a brewery or a saloon, sources differ. A travelling professional strongman who performed under the name of Aloysius saw the young man loading beer barrels with ease on to a delivery cart and persuaded him to turn professional and tour with him under the heading of the Brothers Marx. Their theatrical bills announced: ‘We Challenge the Universe: Feats of Herculean Strength!’ Later Marx toured with circuses on the Continent before visiting Great Britain when he heard of the wealth and fame suddenly on offer there.
Houdini, the great escapologist, sometimes appeared on the same bills as Marx and had a soft spot for the big man, saying that he reminded him of a two-footed baby elephant. The escapologist admitted in his published study of contemporary strongmen, Miracle Mongers and their Methods, that the weightlifter had one major weakness. ‘In spite of his sovereign strength, Marx was no match for a pair of bright eyes. All a pretty woman had to do was smile and John would wilt.’
Marx also had a quick temper. While Charles A. Sampson was appearing at the Royal Aquarium, he and John Marx had an altercation. One of Sampson’s assistants, a man called Dewell, came to the assistance of his boss, only to be struck by the man from Luxembourg. Subsequently Marx was charged with assault and fined at Westminster police court.
On another occasion the lumbering strongman met his match at the hands of a famous performer – this time offstage. Marx was sharing a dressing room at the St James’s Hall in Plymouth with the comedians George Mozart and Alec Pleon. Pleon was a highly strung, reckless man and only 5ft tall.
The
two comics arrived at the dressing room, which had an extremely low ceiling, some time before the strongman from Luxembourg. Carelessly they took up more than their fair share of space. When Marx arrived, stooping and complaining because of the low ceiling, he was enraged to discover that his fellow artistes had left no room for his make-up on the dressing table. With an angry grunt he swept Pleon’s make-up box off the table with his ham-like fist. When the comic protested, Marx threatened him physically. Pleon seized an empty water jug and jabbed it forcefully into the pit of Marx’s stomach. Marx straightened up in agony and struck his head against the ceiling, stunning himself. There was no John Gruen Marx at the first house performance that night.
It could not be said that Marx learned from experience. On several other occasions he put himself out of action by persisting with a trick that simply did not want to be performed. A chain was stretched tautly between two uprights. Marx then hovered over it and brought his fist down hard, with a tremendous yell, breaking the chain in half. It was a spectacular effect but had its repercussions for its protagonist. On at least two occasions Marx broke the little finger of his right hand in the execution of the blow. Very reluctantly he discarded chain breaking from his repertoire; however, he persevered with his trick of straightening horseshoes. This aroused the suspicion of his peers: it was commonly held among the strongman fraternity that these implements could not be manipulated unless they had been specially treated in advance. But, as Marx always carried a substantial wad of banknotes in his pocket to bet on himself against other strength athletes, he was seldom challenged.
Another early strongman on the halls, who was to become a major force in the physical culture cult, was William Bankier who billed himself as Apollo, the Scottish Hercules. Although he was to have a long and distinguished career in different aspects of show business, Bankier was unlucky. He had everything that Sampson and Sandow had, and was probably brighter and more enterprising than either of his rivals. One of the few strongmen to have lived a genuinely interesting and adventurous life, he could have been a major player in the strongman game. But he was not the first on the scene, and that always told against him. A sense of wanderlust and an impulse to try his hand at every opportunity that presented itself had taken the Scot halfway round the world at a very young age. By the time that he returned to Great Britain, Sandow had already established himself. For years Bankier did his best to compete on equal terms with the Prussian but never quite accomplished this, and it rankled.
