The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Stongman by David Waller

Eugen Sandow is called the father of modern bodybuilding. The Mr. Olympia statuette is a likeness of Sandow, making Eugen the “Oscar” of bodybuilding. He posed on the Music Hall and Vaudeville stages of England and the United States throughout the Victorian era. His typical show featured Sandow nearly naked, showing his physique, followed by exhibitions of strength such as lifting weights or other feats, or acted-out scenes designed as recreations of classical myths. He modeled for paintings and sculpture. He was photographed numerous times (which is how I first came to know about him), naked but for a fig leaf. He even showed off his poses in a short film for Edison.

The common Victorian man was thin and weak, or at least was bemoaned as so. The culture decried the city-dweller breathing bad air, hunched over an office desk. The circus “strong-man” was beefy and round, not sculpted as today. The classical ideal as represented in Greek and Roman statues seemed out of reach for the modern man, some wondering whether the ancient statues were fantasies of ideal types rather than realistic renderings possible for real men. Sandow proved them wrong, and moreover preached a method that he offered to other men.

His photos are easily available on the internet, so I’ll let you judge for yourself whether he’s “the perfect man.” He is rather short, about 5’9″, a pretty face, curly hair, a little mustache. His body is well-built, his muscles defined, a smooth chest. He looks like many faithful gym goers of today, gym-goers who have adopted both his model and his method. I find him very attractive.

He was born April 2, 1867, in Konigsberg, Prussia as Friedrich Wilhelm Muller. He was most likely born to unmarried parents and given up for adoption. As a young man, he traveled in Western Europe and Italy seeking to join a circus. He was discovered by an artist named E. Aubrey Hunt as he was walking along the beach in Venice. Hunt hired him as a model for a gladiator painting (I can imagine that scene!). Hunt also informed Sandow of a strongman competition in England. Sandow made his way to London, entered the contest and won, and then immediately set out on a Music Hall career.

A huge popular success, Sandow became enormously well-known and wealthy. He built on his stage shows to develop a physical culture empire including books, a magazine, and a network of clinics or clubs where he and his staff would help others achieve their physical health and wellness goals, a mail order business, branded exercise equipment.

Sandow toured the United States. In 1893, he met Florenz Zeigfield in New York, who then produced a stage show around Sandow running in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair. He returned to England, married a woman named Blanche Brookes, and then continued touring in the US, returning to the UK in 1896. Later, he did a world tour of Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa. He became a British citizen in 1906.

Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, set in 1904, is one of Sandow’s customers. Thinking with dread about his mortality, Bloom thinks to himself, “Must begin again those Sandow’s exercises.” (p. 50) And again, later that day, this time embarrassed by how quickly he gets a “stitch” in his side when running, Bloom says, “Must take up Sandow’s exercises again.” (p. 356). Anyone who’s tried to stick to an exercise program can sympathize.

Sandow’s later life is less happy. He attempted to expand his business further into corsets for women and food products. He developed a line of cocoa powder that wasn’t successful. His exaggerated claims of cures of physical ailments ran afoul of the licensed medical establishment. And his German connection became problematic when England entered World War I. Many of his businesses closed, often with legal and financial complications. He lost much of his fortune. He died in 1925, age 58.

Waller’s book is highly entertaining. He is aware of Sandow’s camp appeal and treats his subject with an appropriate lightness, as well as doing justice to Sandow’s considerable popular success, seriousness of purpose, and lasting influence. Waller doesn’t shy away from the sex-appeal. He mentions, frankly, Sandow’s effect on both women and gay men, while also fairly considering and mostly debunking the more salacious claims and fantasies. Nearly every chapter is accompanied by a full-page reproduction of a photograph of Sandow, which is, of course, what we’ve come to see.

As a biographer, Waller is hampered by the fact that there are no surviving personal letters or diaries. It would not have been common for a man of Sandow’s class and education to keep those kinds of personal affects. Thus, very little of Sandow’s interior life, or personal stories can be told. It would be nice to know if he had affairs with men or women, but we don’t know. But he was a famous public figure so Waller researches numerous newspaper articles and advertisements, as well as Sandow’s own articles for his magazines and advertisements for his products.

Beside Sandow’s own story, Waller also gives an excellent view into the broader culture of the time: the fretting about masculinity in the Victorian era, the Music Hall stage, the conflicted and changing views of sexuality. Sandow could appear on stage nearly naked and be treated as respectable, while a woman showing an ankle would cause a scandal. Sandow also represents the pioneering of marketing branded products.

Though at his death, in 1925, he was buried quickly by his wife in an unmarked grave, who then just as quickly moved out of town and seemed to forget about him, Sandow has not been forgotten. He has been resurrected, even, in every gym in America, or, as Waller says in his closing words, “All of us who are dissatisfied with the body that we are born with, or seek through exercise to mould a more perfect form or to fend off middle age, are taking our inspiration from Sandow.”