Muscle Beach

by Gordon L'Allemand

Due to the great popularity that the first Muscle Beach article was received by "Your Physique" readers and the many letters asking for more information on Muscle Beach, the editors have decided to release this article to satisfy our readers's requests

MUSCLE BEACH is a national shrine, known around the world, to the body beautiful -- men and gals. . . muscles, muscles, and more muscles and athletic agility and strength. Officially this amazing place is one of the Santa Monica municipal playgrounds basking in the sunshine of this Southern California coastal city.

On any sunny day around the calendar the goings on down Muscle Beach way are a composite color motion picture of a one-ring hurdy-gurdy circus, a vaudeville show, a track and field meet, a town-meeting, and a bathing beauty contest -- with laughter, incredible noise, acres of tanned and sunburned skin, swarms of hero-worshipping kids, squadrons of famed and not-so-famed-yet athletes, with ice cream cones and hamburgers thrown in for added color.

Fourteen years ago a couple of stout lads named Johnny Collins and Barney Frey decided they wanted a place to lift weights, pose with bulging muscles, build human pyramids, work out on the parallel bars, and toss their girl friends around. So they chose this spot on the beach beside Santa Monica pier and near the fishing fleet harbor. The city furnished the apparatus, and health devotees provided the labor to build a small open-air stage alongside the well-known boardwalk The adoring public, which loves to sit in the sun and watch someone else work, has well publicized the place by talking.

Today Muscle Beach has achieved a deserved world-wide reputation for its weight-lifting, tumbling, adagio teamwork, low and high parallel bars, swinging ring work, and just plain muscle posing. Like Hollywood's Brown Derby, the contestants come here to see and be seen.

Muscle Beach will have as many as 2000 contestants and spectators on Saturdays and Sundays. The 15 by 60 foot stage will be a squirming ant-hill of showoff participants from five years to 60: jumping and balancing, building human pyramids four high; tossing each other around the ozone, lifting all sorts of heavy weights -- all to the admiring gaze and occasional bursts of applause of the holidayers massed on the surrounding sands or seated on benches, or standing six deep on the adjacent cement "boardwalk".

In the little green playground office playground directors Charles McMillan and DeForrest Most (present Pacific Coast light-heavyweight lifting champion) hand out ping pong balls and paddles, iodine, advice, volley balls, and keep a watchful eye on the madcap muscular activities of their enthusiastic brethren and sisters of the padded mats.

A burst of applause from the nearby stage attracts you. "That little guy bouncing into the sky from the trampoline," explains Most, "is good. He ought to be. He was a clown with Cole Bros. circus. Name's Frankie Vincent. From Boston." The crowd likes Frankie's clowning. He hits the canvas bouncing table, then shoots high into the air, running, mugging, posing, or frantically waving.

A pretty coffee-brown gal in the office helping McMillan and Most, explains the repeated bursts of applause. "We always have special programs on holidays and weekends. This place is really a big laugh from beginning to end. But you can't laugh away the health, the muscles, and the weight-lifting champions." Professionals and amateurs mix here at Muscle Beach with the camaraderie of true devotees of good health. Among the pros on the stage are often famous Hollywood studio stunt men. There is Russ Saunders. These men work out here regularly to keep in shape for their profession as "fall" guys in films. Saunders is one of the world's great all-around acrobats and tumblers. "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" sweep the crowd as he goes through his routine.

A small, dark-headed man takes the center stage, slowly lifts and holds aloft a pair of heavy iron wheels, "That's Tony Terlazzo, two times Olympic champ ( 1932-36); world champ in 1946; and from 1936 to 1946 U. S. national champ at his weight, 148 pounds." Tony has a body-building studio in Hollywood.

Several pairs of men and girls take the stage. Tanned and in perfect health, they engage in adagio: a lifting, leaping, balancing and posing routine. Now and again some impressively handsome couple will be balancing, the girl seven feet up, standing in her partner's hands; then she will lose her balance, wave frantically, and both will tumble to the canvas amid roars of laughter. But it's all in good fun.

At times it seems that there are more people on the stage than in the audience, all posing, leaping, talking at the same time. Several small boys and girls are doing back bends, walking on their hands, being swung around by older acrobats. A slender little Miss of seven whirls over into a half dozen back flips and draws applause. Then a wee lad is lifted in his mother's arms. She points to a tall man lifting the iron wheels.

"Watch him, Jimmy. That's Phil Skarin. He's Pacific Coast heavyweight lifting champion."

Hollywood big names, famous athletes, and visiting celebrities come and go at Muscle Beach. It doesn't seem very long ago that Jane Russell, now playing with Bob Hope in "The Paleface," was a regular here, playing volley ball. The radio announcer points out celebrities on the stage.

"There's Harold Zinkin, Mr. California in 1941 and runner-up to Mr. America in 1945, working out with his adagio partner... . little Dolly Walker. He's one of the greatest tumblers and balancers." The high parallel bars are moved onto the stage and little Frankie Vincent in clown makeup is joined by a lithe blond giant in short pants and clown paint -- Johnny Robinson, a symphony in muscle. Johnny leaps up at the bars and swings up in a circle, whirls over in mid-air and lands on the balls of his feet on the adjoining bar, stares grinning at the roaring crowd.

"Johnny Robinson, folks. One of the greatest horizontal bar acrobats in the world. He won the National amateur high bar championship in 1947. Only missed the Olympics because he doesn't specialize in enough events."

Frankie is good on the bars, but he clowns at it while Johnny goes thru a breath-taking routine that would make a monkey nod with approval. The hero-worshipping kids lean on the stage and stare up. "Man, oh man, I wanna be like that Johnny," they say. Johnny Robinson swings around the bars like a greased pendulum, turns loose high in the air, lands neatly on hands or feet with such perfect timing that the crowd thrills.

Scores of camera fans with everything from a movie camera to that old family box Brownie or a Speed Graphic are snapping pictures all around the stage. Sea gulls and pelicans float overhead. The roar of nearby waves and the weaving color pattern of humanity makes an unforgettable picture.

Men outnumber the girls by two to one at Muscle Beach. The way this place grows is that people come to watch, stay to admire, then return to participate. Families bring their kids. Girls and boys from schools and universities come in swarms to see Big Shot athletes do their routines. They can always get the best advice from such stars of the mat as big Armand Tanny and Buford McFatridge (both former heavyweight lifting champs), from Edna Rivers, women's professional "clean and jerk" champ, a rare feat for a woman; from Billy Hamlet and Bob McClellan, two of the best men in the West on the flying rings; and from Jimmy Starkey, one of the few men in the world who can press himself up to a complete handstand with his hands crossed.

Muscle Beach grew in fame during the recent war. Many thousands of servicemen visited here during the war, then went abroad on many a lighting front and talked about Muscle Beach, the muscles, the beautiful gals and weightlifters. So hundreds of men have visited this Muscle Beach because of an oft-told tale in Germany or North Africa or Japan. Many hero-worshipping youngsters hitch-hike from across the U. S. to look on or take part in Muscle Beach activities. Some get jobs and stay, others are helped to go home.

On hot summer days hundreds of Southern California school students catch rides the 15 miles to the beach. You never know what names of fame may be working out next to you at Muscle Beach; scientists, engineers, artists, lesser folk among movie players; stunt men, and college athletes. Some of the nation's best volley ball players play here. Jane Russell stopped coming when she became a star.

Highlights of the years festive activities are the July Fourth "Mister Muscle Beach" contest for best male physique, and the "Miss Muscle Beach" for prettiest girl, on Labor Day. These events are strictly for amateurs. So Miss "Pudgie" Stockton, the Professional Miss America 1948 $1000 title prize winner in New York can't ever compete.

The audience got a bang out of the last July Fourth Mister Muscle Beach men's "beauty contest."' Sixteen men competed, and JIMMY LAWLOR, a Brooklyn boy now majoring in physical education at the University of California, Los Angeles, won the 1948 title. The contestants posed in all the best health and physical culture magazine styles on a small stage. The crowd roared.

People come to Muscle Beach to see an exciting free show on a hot day. The men come to build their muscles and show off. The gals are interested in balancing and posing and looking beautiful in the scantiest of suits -- and everybody is interested in seeing and being seen. The poor press photogs. have to scramble through a bunch of judges and contestants, admirers, friends of friends of the playground directors. Meanwhile a four-man-high human pyramid is likely to topple from the sky on your neck.

The music goes on and on; hamburger stands and soda pop, lost kids and ice cream cones and frantic mamas mill about. Rarely does a contestant or participant get hurt on the stage. They're most likely to fall on someone else or atop a sweating photographer before hitting the deck. But that's Muscle Beach out in Santa Monica, California -- and lots of men and gals hold records with those muscles as well as posing them before the admiring throng.

PHOTO CAPTIONS

- TONY TERLAZZO, twice Olympic weight lifting champion in the 148 pound class, is shown here lifting the "railroad wheels." Tony has a body-building studio in Hollywood, works out regularly at Muscle Beach. On right is recent heavyweight Pacific Coast lifting champ, Phil Skarin.

- One of the many teams of adagio contestants put on the finale of their act in the July 4th program at Muscle Beach - at Santa Monica Beach, California Municipal Playground.

- These five men were the finalists in the Muscle Beach annual July 4th MR. MUSCLE BEACH contest for best men's physique. The winner: Center man Jimmy Lawlor - an 18 year old physical education major from the University of California at Los Angeles.

- FRANKIE VINCENT, former clown and acrobat with Coles Bros. and other circuses, entertains the crowd with feats on the trampoline. In this act he eventually loses his pants - which are disintegrating at the moment.