Action Heroes of the Past and Present
Since the advent of motion pictures, films based around male action heroes have been consistently at the top in terms of box office results. The stars playing these roles have determined to a great extent the male ideal for adolescents and young men.
In the 1930's, Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe, with their athletic swimmer's bodies and clean all-American good looks set the standard and many young men went in for swimming and life guarding as well as athletic training - hoping to absorb some of the glamour these megastars possessed and enjoy the imagined popularity that would follow.
Young men and boys wanted to look better physically and business capitalized on this - for example Charles Atlas sold his famous dynamic tension program on the back of comic books and physical culture gurus like Vic Tanny opened training centers. When the 2 most popular modern action heroes, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone graced the cinema, weight training, and then anabolic steroids, became par for the course for those wanting to stand out because of their physiques.
The popularity of Arnold and Rocky on the screen were responsible for more boys and young men joining gyms or buying weight training equipment than had ever been the case before. Seeing the extreme muscular development displayed by Arnold right from the outset of his career, and then later by Stallone when he got his hands on steroids and HGH, led vast segments of the population to embrace serious bodybuilding in a dedicated manner.
Prior to Arnold's blockbuster success on the screen, serious bodybuilding had remained an esoteric pursuit, usually considered too extreme for the average fellow. So in regards to the acceptance of bodybuilding and the consequent use of steroids, we see that the movies have had a major influence and in fact have led the way.
Probably the two biggest action heroes prior to Arnold and Sly were Johnny Weissmuller and John Wayne.
Johnny Weissmuller
Weissmuller, the most famous of the Tarzans and the original Hollywood action hero - starred in a dozen movies as Tarzan and then another 13 as the safari hero battling evil in Africa, "Jungle Jim" - wildly popular in the 30's, 40's and 50's - this natural athlete captured the hearts of women and made men want to be just like him. He won 5 Olympic gold medals in swimming and was also a champion runner in sprint distances.
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