EXPOSING BOB HOFFMAN, No. 2 of a series

Portrait Of A "Medicine Man" - Bob Hoffman

By Howard Blaise

When Bob Hoffman, the big muscle man from York, Pa., was a little boy, the country had numerous characters known as "medicine men." These were gentlemen with a smooth and sometimes wonderful line, who sold bottles of liquid guaranteed to cure anything from dandruff to an internal hemorrhage. When the medicine men sold was often introduced as a secret Indian remedy.

When I met Bob Hoffman he reminded me of one of those gas-light era spielers who sold Indian snake oil and similar concoctions at carnivals and street corners. Bob learned the art of the pitchman long before he ever heard of barbells, muscles, and Hi-Proteen tablets, cookies, fudge and like concoctions which have made him so rich that the Internal Revenue people are suing him for over a quarter of a million dollars for back taxes for a three year period. The tablets, cookies, fudge et cetera are offered customers with dreams of health in their eyes as a sure way to build muscles, steady their nerves and increase their sexual prowess. The ads assuring the customers of these advantages are written by Bob Hoffman himself and have the smoothness of the medicine man selling Indian snake oil and other wonder-working mixtures. The Hi-Protein concoctions are mixed by Bob himself or under his personal supervision. Judging from the ads one taking these concoctions will make the customer almost as pow'ful a man with girls as Georgia-born Bob Hoffman himself-and Bob makes no bones about how pow'ful a man he is with the ladies.

When Bob was a young man he and his brother Charles traveled about peddling oil burners, which were not as well known as they are today. It was difficult to get past the front door to make the sales pitch in the early 1920s and Bob hit on an idea. It was only a couple of years after the end of the first World War. People were still very patriotic and a soldier-hero meant a lot. No decent American would refuse a hearing to a hero so Bob waved the flag to get into a house before the owner slammed the door in his face. Bob still chuckles when he tells how he and brother worked the hero line.

The technique was simple. As they went from house to house Charles would stick his foot in the door to keep it from being slammed shut while he introduced the six foot three inch Bob as the heavy-weight sensation of World War I in the AEF. In nine cases out of ten the pitch worked. The boys were smart salesmen; they never talked about the oil burner directly. They talked about Bob's heroism, how he was the AEF's hero, how he was the boxing champion and, at his brother's suggestion, Bob went into some fancy shadow boxing. He tossed jabs and hooks around and kept up a running commentary on, how he fought the great British fighter Bombardier Wells, the Frenchman Georges Carpentier and, if the customer looked a little dubious that the spiel was making the flowers grow too fast, Bob admitted that he did have one tough bout with a guy named Gene Tunney. With this approach the boys sold oil burners.

This was the period when Bernard Macfadden was helping to make America physical culture conscious and be-coming a multi-millionaire in the process. America's yearning for health and a house organ to help sell his barbells and other equipment, established a magazine called Strength and Health. strength could be made into a profitable thing. By 1930 Bob Hoffman founded the York Barbell Co. and, as (That's all it says. An error in typesetting.)

This portrait of a modern medicine will not concern itself with his claims to athletic prowess and his alleged domination of AAU events. That has been adequately handled by columnist Dan Parker and other sportswriters. This is just the portrait of a man very influential in the world of sports who seems to use sports and athletics for his own financial aggrandisement.

I had heard that he was "a power-mad octopus," that "the AAU was unwilling or unable to dethrone, this self-styled dictator" of sports and that he had turned sports events into a carnival by peddling things he manufactured at the doors of the arenas where the events took place that he emceed. These were serious allegations made by Dan Parker and others and which had never been contradicted successfully by Hoffman.

I went to York, Pa., where Hoffman has his headquarters and which he advertises as "Muscletown" to see what manner of man he was. One prominent citizen, expressed a view which I heard from a number of people:

"Hoffman has brought a lot of publicity to York and helped put us on the map but the people here don't respect him. He seems to have a contempt for everybody and everything, and his affairs with women have become so notorious that they've turned a lot of the people here against him. For a man supposed to hold himself out as a model for the youth of America he has certainly smeared morality. Why, once he got "up at a meeting and detailed his sex life with girls until some members walked out in disgust. He's got sex on the brain and he doesn't care who knows it."

The people with whom I talked felt that he swashbuckled his way around, and once some good work by his attorneys saved him from a long prison term because of a brutal attack on a little guy wearing glasses and weighing 100 pounds less than the athletic coach. Apparently what this advocate of health and strength advises and what he practises are two separate things. In his book How To Be Strong, Healthy and Happy he sings the praises of what strength can do for people and adds:

"I do not mean that the strong man should go around bullying others by demonstrating their strength. As an actual fact, the stronger and more capable a man, the less likely he is to make a show of his strength or fighting others."

With this as his published philosophy the huge, 260-pound muscle-man, on Sept. 21, 1949, took on a little guy named James Anstine who had no muscles worth the name and wore glasses in addition. It was in front of the King George Hotel in York. Hoffman had the muscles, height, weight, size, reach and with these advantages had no trouble knocking the little guy down, breaking his glasses so that they cut his eyelids and gave him a hemorrhage of the right eye. The big sporting man knocked out several of Anstine's teeth and fractured the little fellow's skull.

After the doctors patched up the little man so he could walk again Anstine filed suit for $20,780.85 damages, and when Hoffman came to trial it took the jury less than 40 minutes to find the athletic coach guilty. Hoffman was so furious at the verdict that he threatened the foreman of the jury who complained to the judge who announced from the bench that the court intended to protect jurymen. Hoffman got the hint.

When "the coach of world championship United States weightlifters" came up for sentencing Hoffman's attorney read a letter from Anstine stating that he would agree to a suspended sentence for Hoffman, in an out of court settlement, had amply repaid him for the injuries inflicted. Just how much Hoffman paid Anstine was not made public.

The judge stated from the bench that if Anstine had not asked for leniency the court would have sent Hoffman to prison.

People in York are not only unenthusiastic about the muscleman but even the United States Government does not believe or trust him. The man who advocates a sporting approach and who, as he subsequently told me, spends huge sums "to show appreciation of what my country did for me" is accused by his country of trying to defraud it of money due in taxes. After a lengthy investigation into his complicated financial affairs the Internal Revenue Bureau filed suit to collect $274,568 in back taxes and penalties for the three year period ending Dec. 31, 1950. The bill is for $176,058 in taxes for the years 1948, 1949, 1950, and item of $88,029 for fraud penalties plus $10,481 penalty for underestating his tax payments. Hoffman's lawyers say the government's calculations are wrong.

The buildings in which Hoffman's athletic and health businesses are conducted seem to me a potential fire trap. It has rickety, tinder-dry floors, a wooden staircase which could flame instantly in case of a misfortune. Below these places where he sells his literary output is a machine shop which he owns. In 1955 a machine shop where he manufactured barbell equipment caught fire and burned with a $500,000 loss and two years later, almost to the day, his foundry in a 76-year old building where he turned out barbells in Marietta, a few miles from York, also caught fire and burned.

Sports writers have repeatedly contended that Hoffman runs AAU events to suit his own purposes, that he maneuvers to pick contestants and even who will win and while all this goes on he peddles health products not only for personal profit but uses the athletic events to get advertising for his products and magazine which he could not get for a fortune.

At Helsinki one incident of what sportswriters have called demagogic domination almost turned all Hawaii against the AAU. It happened in July 1952 and I simply quote the newspaper dispatches which tell the whole story:

"Bob Hoffman, coach of the United States weight lifting team, said he planned to concede the two lightest weight divisions and put double strength in the heavier classes.

"He said Bantamweight Richard Tom and featherweight Tomita, both of Hawaii, would sit out the tournament opening July 25.

"The two alternates on the 9-man American team will be used instead. Stanley Stanczyk of York, Pa. will perform in the 181-pound class along with the U.S. trial winner Clyde Emrich of Camp Roberts, Calif."

The following day newspapers ran a dispatch from Hawaii:

"Hawaii erupted in indignation yesterday over the scratching of two Hawaiian weightlifters from Olympic competition at Helsinki.

"Bob Hoffman, coach of the American weight lifters, explained in Helsinki that he planned to concentrate U.S. strength in the heavier classes. He ruled out bamtamweight Richard Tom and featherweight Richard Tomita of Hawaii.

"'Hoffman must be sore because our team beat his,' said Ivano Miyake, chairman of the Hawaii Olympic fund raising committee. "It's a downright shame.

"'Hawaii beat York for the team title in national competition in New York. Tom and Tomita placed first in their classes."

"'It's a raw deal,' said Emerick Ishikawa, 1948 Olympic weight lifter."

A man who is not popular in his own home town and yet apparently gets away with such maneuvers fascinated me as a character, and especially so when I found that one with whom I talked could speak about him for thirty minutes without bringing up his fondness for the ladies. Locally his fame is greater on the ladies-angle than on weightlifting. More, with no training in medicine or in psychology he set himself up as an authority on sex life as well as muscles; I had got two of his books Your Sex Life and Successful Happy Marriage, both of which intrigued me, especially the second opus. I was furious about the happy marriage volume for I knew that Hoffman's marriage had ended in an explosive divorce and he had not remarried since I wondered if a record of failure in marriage made a man an authority on how to achieve success in it.

Much like the medicine man who sold whatever is salable Bob Hoffman sells parts for airplanes, advice on how to develop muscles, how to have a successful marriage, how to keep from being sunburned, how to put on weight, how to take off weight and to cap this master salesman's sales offer show to increase the size of your penis! This last, if he could do it, would have solved a hunt for something the world has looked for centuries!

Bob writes the ads himself for the stuff he sells and some of these ads are worth recording as an example of how the modem medicine man operates. In this particular item he offers the customers something that grew (he assures them) in the Garden of Eden Says he:

"A taste thrill awaits you when you try this entirely different flavor, made with Carob powder, a food as old as history. Carob grew in the Garden of Eden, and was the main food of many ancient peoples. . . "

Hoffman's big seller is Hi-Proteen and it tastes better when thoroughly mixed with a mechanical mixer. Bob also sells mechanical mixers.

The one thing you want to watch out for is what is nationally known as "tired blood." Bob Hoffman, I must make it clear, has nothing to do with Geritol. However, the following spiel he wrote himself and published in his house organ:

"If you feel dragged out. . . tired . . . listless. . . if your gains are slow. . . perhaps the solution to your problem lies in 'sparking your glands' with the 25 concentrated food factors contained in each YORK VITAMIN/MINERAL capsule to help - digestion, to speed assimilation. . ."

And, natch, you can get the gland sparklers from Bob.

From other ads Bob wrote I concluded it's silly to drink milk, eat steak or anything like that, for in one ad he lists things his Hi-Protein can do which makes Geritol look picayunish. Besides all these marvels Hoffman assures the customer that if he takes this Hoffman product it will give the buyer "greater sex power."

Then, if you have your cellar and attic stacked with Hi-Proteen and are going nuts trying to figure out what to do with it, Bob has just the solution. He just published a new High Protein Recipe Book which offers more than a thousand delicious, readily usable recipes for all sort of dishes. . ."

In your spare time, don't forget Hoffman's Hi-Proteen Fudge. It's so delicious - Hoffman says so himself - that you wonder if it could possibly be good because it tastes so good,

And if your craw is filled up to there with Hi-Proteen Fudge, try Hoffman's Hi-Proteen Cookies. Says the modem medicine man:

"Now you can really ENJOY Hi-Proteen in its most delectable form. . . super-food that is super-good!"

If you get fed up with the Hi-Proteen concoctions and want to get away from it all to the country or to the beach, Bob will see to it that you enjoy yourself. He'll sell you a sun tan - the best doggone sun tan since 1942. I asked him why 1942.

"That's when I started making it," he told me modestly.

"Have there ever been any laboratory comparisons to make sure that your claim that it is the best is justified?"

He looked at me as if I were nuts.

Bob sells health, strength, muscles, concoctions - and much of them well mixed with sex. One sales pitch that he offered young America left me gasping -and I don't gasp easily.

Neither of his books on sex and marriage had been looked over by medical men, Hoffman subsequently told me as had none of the health-and-vigor stuff he was peddling though "the Pure Food and Drug people know about it" he told me.

One of the famous medical gags, which Bob repeats in his education tomes on sex and happiness is the one about the size of the male reproductive organ - that it isn't the size that counts but the art. Some of Hoffman's readers and followers look to him for guidance not only on muscles but on the size of their reproductive organs. Obviously, though some of his followers could win prizes for their muscles they never would with their reproductive organs; for they write to Popa Hoffman with what-can-we-do-about-please.

The world medical profession has consistently asserted that nothing can be done about a small male reproductive organ but Bob Hoffman thinks otherwise. He thinks the unlucky who has a small penis can put it in the heavy weight class by exercising it in ways which resemble masturbation-the way I read it. He tells about his technique in his book Happy Marriage:

"The sex organs ordinarily get no exercise. Certainly it can do no harm to try what I offer, which I admit is a little tried theory. But it sounds logical, doesn't it? If you start exercising your organs you should increase their size, power and virility. The method to use is massage, pulling, stretching, rubbing, kneading, rolling and vigorous tensing. The hearing, the sight, the strength of all the organs increases through exercise and there is no reason why regular, persistent, faithful, daily attention to exercising the sex organs should not have its beneficial effects. I wish you luck, anyway."

I called the York Barbell Co. for an appointment with this authority on muscles reproductive organs and after some hours in which his aids assured me that Hoffman was a very busy man, I finally got a phone call at my hotel.

"This is Bob Hoffman," said a business-like voice. "You can come up to see me at 2020 North George Street. It's the big house on top of the hill."

The address was that of a solidly built $100,000 stone house set in over two acres of shrubs, trees and poison ivy. There was so much poison ivy that he himself referred to it as "Poison Ivy Mansion." The big man who met me at the door did not seem either the muscle man or the formidable ladies man I had been hearing about. He seemed a little stooped and his belly rolled over his belt like a rubber tire. The house into which he led me was huge, gloomy and depressing arid we finally parked in a large and dusty living room. When my eyes finally became accustomed to the gloom I noticed that much of the floor space was taken over by athletic trophies.

I was with the trainer of weight lifters, coacher of Olympic athletes, a man who held himself out to hopeful Americans as an example to be followed and yet I found something sad about him and the room we were in. It was a huge room occupied by a flabby-looking man with a floor laden with athletic trophies won under gleaming sunshine or bright overhead lights to the thunderous applause of thousands while a waiting world awaited the news And here he was sitting on a frayed and dusty couch staring at dozens of trophies jumbled on the floor, the silver of them so tarnished that they looked blackened and the inscriptions on them almost indecipherable.

We were alone in this huge mansion and I wondered why I was asked to meet him here instead of in his office or at my hotel or at his country home. Hoffman tugged at the chain of the lamp on his side of the couch. There was no light.

"One of these lamps works," he said "Try yours."

I pulled the lamp chain and the light went on. For the first time I was able to study the man said to control AAU athletics. He is tall, narrow-shouldered, balding and has one of those bellies which make a heroic, but hopeless, effort to contain itself within a belt and failing, rolls out like a tire.

From the moment I entered he did not stop talking. It was the smooth, unbroken flow of the old-time medicine man. He talked about athletics, trips around the world he made with his teams, medals foreign governments had given him. He tossed off big names of Kings, Queens and Premiers like a good advertising man tosses off the names of movie stars and society ladies to show how high approval goes.

"My activity in weight lifting kept the Far East from going communist," he announced at one point.

I had been under the obviously erroneous impression that American diplomacy, our armed forces and billions of give-away dollars was really responsible, but I was learning better. "We were so effective that the State Department sent us on a round the world tour." he resumed. "I spent $46,000 of my own money on the trip to cement international good will."

"Why didn't the State Department meet the bill?"

"They paid the transportation and that's all. But I never billed the Government for the $46,000. I felt it was my duty as an American to pay the costs if it helped cement international good will for my country. It made me proud to feel that I was an American. I paid $6,000 for expenses from Copenhagen to Moscow. The Russians took care of our subsistence."

I waited until he paused to catch his breath and asked:

"How much do you spend a year cementing good relationship between this country and other lands, to back weight lifting teams and so on?"

"About $25,000 a year," he said.

"And what do you get out of it?"

"I'm building superb Americans," he said "I get nothing for myself out of these activities. Why, I never drew a salary from my magazine in my life or from the barbell business, either. I'm in that to help build a strong America - an America of champions."

"Hold it," I laughed. "You don't look like you're starving-even though you tell me you eat only once a day. What do you live on?"

"I have an insurance annuity of $500 a month," he began.

"You can't get $25,000 a year to give away out of that. What else do you have?"

"I own seven farms totalling about 700 acres."

"And what income do you get from these farms?"

(Before I met with Bob Hoffman one of his top men told me that he permits people who live on these farms to stay there rent free; that he sort of pastured them out for reasons best known to himself.)

For the first time since we met he floundered for words to answer my questions about what he got from the farm.

"Why, I - I - I sharecrop them," he said and promptly switched to other subjects "I own 24 houses and two apartment buildings. I own the Spring Garden Hotel at 701 East Market St. I rent the hotel to one person and the tap room to another. The income I get from these properties is more than sufficient to take care of me. I myself live out in the country. I own Brookside Park and that has 232 acres but the Park itself doesn't take up the entire acreage. I have my home there."

"If you get no money from the barbells and the magazine and live on what you get from the farms and houses why is the Internal Revenue Bureau suing you for over a quarter of a million dollars and claiming you defrauded the government! For a man whose sole objectives, as you told me, is to help build a strong and healthy America, the Government says you're cheating them?"

Hoffman was not offended by my question.

"That's the kind of questions the Government asks. 'How do you live?' the Internal Revenue men say. Why (here he became mildly indignant) do you know what the Government did? For years it had Revenue agents checking in York and asking pretty near every girl who ever worked for me if she was my girl and what kind of presents I gave her. Around here they talk a lot about my having mistresses. I have girls, sure I'm a divorced man and I'm a strong man and I believe sex was made to be enjoyed. People around town say that when I'm finished with a girl I buy her automobiles and mink coats and houses. I've even heard rumors that when I'm finished I go to extremes to set them up in some kind of business so they can take care of themselves."

His note of indignation ended and he chuckled.

"The one girl I've had for years," he laughed, his belly shaking like jello, "had brains enough to say I was the tightest guy in the world and never gave her a thing."

"Were you ever married?"

"From 1926 to 1942 when I was divorced. My marriage was such an unpleasant experience that I never tried it again. We had a settlement, of course and since then she married again.

He paused and looked around the gloomy house.

"I built this house for us when we were married," he said, and there was something sad in his voice. "When we split up she wanted the house, but that was one thing I would not give up. I built this house. I planted the trees out there (he motioned to the heavily wooded area outside the torn screen door). This is my house and I wasn't going to let her have it to sell a year later to some stranger."

There was a suppressed note of fierceness in his tone. For a flashing moment the medicine man's smooth talk was lost in a genuine tragedy which had marred his life, and the heart ache of a man clinging to his Poison Ivy Mansion as one clings to a dream long destroyed and vanished.

"I work hard," he resumed suddenly, "and that's what the Government can't figure out. The Government says to me, 'How can you work so hard and have no money'?"

"Is all the income you have from farms and houses?"

"No I own the York Precision Co. and another machine company. Sometimes, if a business is in a slump I'll put $50,000 into it-"

"But if you have no money where do you get $50,000 to put into it?"

He grinned, "Oh, there have been times when I had $300,000 in a safety deposit box"

I figured that finding out why he kept so much cash in a safe deposit box instead of a bank was the government's problem and not mine.

"Out of all the business you run, which is the most profitable?"'

"Hi-Proteen," he said simply. "That's my big money-maker. I lose $150,000 a year on my magazine and the loss is met from Hi-Proteen profits."

Later we went to his plant where Hi-Proteen was mixed and packed. It in no way resembled the rickety building in which his machine shop, magazine and barbells activities were run. The Hi-Proteen plant was clean. I asked Hoffman who concocted the combination he sells as Hi-Proteen which brings him such huge profits.

"I did," he said simply.

"Has it ever been analyzed by a reputable laboratory and its health claims - verified by reputable physicians?"

"Nah," he said. "It's good stuff. It makes people healthy. I take some of the tablets myself. So what do I have to analyze it for?"

"There's been a lot of published criticism about the way you emcee AAU sessions, that you dominate them, choose contestants and practically pick the winners and that you utilize these athletic events to sell products you manufacture such as Hi-Proteen Fudge, Hi-Proteen Cookies and things like that."

"Sure I do," he said easily. "When I emcee an affair I sell my products, but every cent of the profits goes to cover the bills run up by the athletic teams. You got that from Dan Parker's column. But, if I don't sell that stuff, where will I get the money to cover the weight lifters' expenses?"

"Okay; let's get away from money and tackle something, something really important. I hear you have quite a reputation as a lady's man."

"Not bad," he grinned. "I got lots of energy. I like to dance. I'm a fiend for dancing. I could dance all night."

"I hear your energies are not limited to dancing."

He laughed heartily. "I'm not bad that way either," he said "In fact, I'm good -- if I have to say it myself, and I'm pretty near sixty. No woman can keep up with a weight lifter. Weightlifters wear out their women but I've got only one girl and I've had her for twenty years. I'm faithful to her. I have only a few other girls on the side - young ones. That's because I'm the faithful type, I guess. And I guess, too, it's because weight lifters have five times as much virility as any average man. Take me, for instance I'm geared to 15 times a week."

"And on only one meal a day?" I kidded. "What would happen if you ate three times a day?"

He laughed appreciatively but had no answer.

"You're a muscle-man." I said, "yet your belly sticks out like a tire. How come?"

"I'm experimenting," he confided. "I put out a reducing compound, too, so I put on some weight to try the reduc-compound on myself to see how quickly I can take it off."

"Just a scientist, eh?"

I was quite impressed by the multitudinous activities in which the old medicine man was engaged. When we talked about land, he had farms. When we talked about manufacturing, he had machine shops. When we talked about women - he wasn't in business - but he sure talked like a big corporation.

"Sex," I said, "is always a fascinating subject. I thought athletes go easy on girls. I read your books on sex and happy marriage and your advice is to go easy. How come you don't?"

"I'm just unusual," he said.

"Your fame rests more on athletics than on girls. What about those charges Dan Parker made that you are an autocrat, a demagogue, that you run things to suit yourself and that you do it for personal gain?"

"Oh, Dan's a good guy," he said tolerantly. "One of these days I'm going to write him a nice letter-just as soon as I get the time. A nice letter; that's what I'm going to write him."

Before we left he took me on a tour of Poison Ivy Mansion grounds. There was something sad about the place. The hole in the screen door leading from the living room onto the flag stone terrace seemed symbolic. But really touching were the dozens and dozens of trophies - memories of great athletic events now tarnished and blackened, the inscriptions scarcely legible, piled on the dust covered floor of the gloomy house.

And sitting over this empty mansion, clinging to it desperately as one clings to a lost dream was this strapping, tall man with the smooth talk of the old medicine man. When I left York I couldn't help thinking of him alone in this vast house with his tarnished trophies and the poison ivy peeking in through the windows.