DAILY MAIL (London)
October 4, 2003
DARK SIDE OF ARNIE
by WENDY LEIGH
HE WAS pumped-up, psyched-up and ready for action. It was the night before
the Mr Olympia bodybuilding contest, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was supremely
confident that he was destined to win the title for a third time.
At 260lb of solid muscle, the man they called 'The Austrian Oak' exuded
self-confidence, flashing the gap-toothed smile that was his trademark, and
flexing his muscles at all and sundry.
He was so certain of victory that, after a night of carousing with his
fellow bodybuilders and his father Gustav - who was on hand to witness his
triumph - Arnold decided that he didn't need sleep. He needed sex.
Within minutes, he had picked up a prostitute, taken her to his room, and
ravished her. When she demanded payment, he flatly refused. 'You should pay
me,' he smugly declared.
That episode in the German city of Essen more than 30 years ago - described
to me by bodybuilder Serge Nubret when I was researching my biography of
Arnold - typifies the arrogance, the bravado and the fundamental immorality
of the man who stands on the brink of becoming Governor of California.
If Schwarzenegger wins Tuesday's election, he will become leader of the
sixth richest economy in the world. It will be a triumph to eclipse all his
successes in Hollywood.
Now, however, he finds himself in a storm over his brutal treatment of women
that could derail his ambitions at the 11th hour. A flurry of allegations by
women he has sexually humiliated over the years has forced him on the
defensive.
To readers of the Mail, these accusations will have come as no surprise. Two
months ago, in these pages, I revealed some of the seedy reality about 'the
groping governor' and his habitual ill-treatment of the opposite sex. On the
eve of the election, it appears that my revelations are belatedly being
picked up by the American media, with the influential Los Angeles Times
publishing its own 'dossier' on his extraordinary behaviour.
But my research has revealed that the Terminator star has still more secrets
to hide.
I have spoken exclusively to a woman who was subjected to a terrifying
assault by Arnold when they were working together on one of his films.
I have also discovered how his love of humiliating women extends even to his
own wife, Maria Shriver, a member of America's powerful Kennedy clan. And
behind such tales of rampant misogyny are intriguing stories of Arnold's
former links to wealthy gay patrons.
Most explosively of all, I have unearthed remarkable claims that
Schwarzenegger sired a secret love child by an air hostess on his private
jet. The woman concerned dismisses the allegation as political dirty tricks
- but admits that many have pointed to the boy's resemblance to Arnold.
Schwarzenegger's crude sexual approaches to women have been an open secret
in Hollywood for the past 30 years.
Until now, women propositioned by him in primitive terms, and aggressively
manhandled by him, have been terrified to speak out about his shocking
behaviour.
Now, however, six women have finally come forward to tell the truth.
One of those involved is British TV presenter Anna Richardson, whose ordeal
I described to Mail readers in my previous article.
She claims Arnold fondled one of her breasts during an interview, and
squeezed her nipple, saying he wanted 'to check if they were real'.
There are now new accusers with even more shocking stories to tell, such as
a secretary at Columbia Pictures who was introduced to Arnold in a
production office by her boss.
The secretary, then in her 30s, sat on a couch opposite him while the star
and her boss talked.
At the end of the conversation, the secretary moved towards Arnold to say
goodbye. Instead of taking her hand, Arnold slipped his own hand under her
skirt, then grabbed her right buttock.
'You have a very nice a***. I'd love to work you out,' he said, his hands
still on the shocked secretary's buttocks.
They stayed there for a nerveshredding 20 seconds.
A few days later, Arnold called the secretary's office and said to her: 'Oh,
you still haven't come to work out with me.' In another incident, a waitress
at the Bicycle Shop Caf in Santa Monica was in the middle of pouring coffee
for Arnold - a regular customer - when he asked her to do him a favour.
THE unsuspecting waitress assumed he was about to ask her for more bread.
Instead, point blank, he asked her to go into the bathroom, 'stick your
finger into your **** and bring it out to me.' The horrified waitress almost
threw hot coffee all over him.
Another woman, a waitress at Fromin's Deli in Los Angeles, turned down one
of Arnold's habitually crude propositions. Afterwards, she saw him driving
along 19th Street in Santa Monica.
Calling out to her urgently, Arnold said: 'Come close, it's very important.'
She complied, whereupon he 'grabbed and squeezed' her left breast.
As one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, Arnold has indulged his taste for
grabbing women with reckless abandon - yet, because of his star status, he
has been neither criticised nor stopped by those who witnessed his aberrant
behaviour.
A group of men on the set of Terminator 2 did nothing when they witnessed
him walk over to a female crew member, now in her 30s, call out 'Come here,
you sexy devil', then pull her on to his lap and whisper a grossly obscene
suggestion into her ear.
The woman said of the men who stood by: 'It was like they were proud of him.
Nobody said: "What are you doing? Leave her alone.''' In yet another
incident, a film crew member who informed her boss that Arnold had three
times pinned her against the corner of a lift and tried to take her robe off
and pull down the straps of her swimming costume was merely told to stay
away from him.
PERHAPS the most frightening example of Arnold's aggression comes from a
slightly-built victim who has never spoken before today.
She refuses to be named, as she still works in Hollywood and is petrified of
repercussions from Arnold.
'I worked on a film with Arnold in the years after his marriage to Maria
Shriver,' she told me. 'We were in the studio and he followed me into the
women's toilets.
'It was scary as he is such a big, tall man. He grabbed me from behind and
picked me up off the ground - I was airborne.
'He wanted to have sex with me. He said: "Come on, let's do it. You know how
much I want you. I want to feel your t**s and see if they are real."
'He clamped his hand on one and wouldn't let go. He had his arms around me.
I kept saying: "No, no, no." I was trying to get away from him, and he was
trying to hold me. It wasn't until I said "I don't want to p*** off Maria, I
don't want to p*** off a Kennedy", that he let me go.
'It took a lot of yelling and screaming. When he did all this, he certainly
wasn't laughing. He is always kidding or teasing. But there was a certain
point when I realised that he was serious about this and that he clearly
wanted to sleep with me.
'I realised that when he wouldn't let go. I thought, oh s***, I guess this
is a bigger deal than I thought it was.
'Afterwards I didn't say anything to him at all. There was nothing I could
do but avoid him. I've seen him since a few times - he treats me as if
nothing ever happened.
'I doubt seriously that he even remembers it. It is well known in his camp
that he did things such as this.
We used to say: "How does Maria not know?''' FACED with the new allegations
in America, Schwarzenegger has admitted to 'behaving badly sometimes' while
insisting he was simply being playful.
On the contrary, I believe his contemptuous attitude to the opposite sex is
deep-rooted and stems from the formative days of his childhood in Austria.
His mother, Aurelia, a toothy brunette to whom Arnold bears a startling
resemblance, was terrorised by his father, an alcoholic and a Nazi.
Aurelia was so maltreated by her possessive husband, who continually - and
falsely - accused her of infidelity, that he even forbade her to wear
sleeveless dresses in summer.
Arnold witnessed his father's abusive treatment of his mother, and suffered
dreadful nightmares as a small child because of it. Yet, instead of
renouncing such behaviour, he seems to have copied it.
As a boy, he took delight in whipping little girls with stinging nettles. As
a teenager, already a champion bodybuilder and the youngest Mr Europe in
history, he treated women as disposable objects - and, dangerously, found
his attitude brought results.
At a bodybuilding exhibition in Portsmouth, the young star made it clear to
his hosts that he expected to be supplied with a woman willing to comply
with his sexual demands.
According to Gordon Allen, a bodybuilding official, a girl was enlisted who
readily succumbed to Arnold's charms. After they had sex, Arnold invited her
to London to see him compete in the 1967 Mr Universe contest. The girl made
the mistake of thinking Schwarzenegger was genuinely interested in her - but
his eyes were already roving elsewhere.
'When she arrived in London, he totally ignored her. She returned to
Portsmouth in floods of tears,' remembers Allen.
Once he moved to America, becoming a champion bodybuilder there, Arnold's
crude approaches to women accelerated. According to one former associate,
Armand Tanny, he marched up to a beautiful bikini-clad woman on the beach
and simply announced: 'I want to f*** you.' One of his friends hastily
intervened, explaining: 'My friend doesn't understand our ways. He is
foreign.' Astonishingly, however, the girl was so beguiled by Arnold's bulk
that she insisted: 'No, no, let him talk,' and then went home with him.
Indeed, Arnold's crudity met with such success that he continued to
proposition women point-blank. 'I saw Arnold walk down a street, see a girl,
ask her if she would "like to f***" and he got results,' says fellow
bodybuilder Wil McArdle.
This raises many questions about his marriage to John F. Kennedy's niece,
Maria Shriver, in 1986. It is clear that Arnold can be a strict and
domineering husband - taking a leaf out of his father's book, for example,
he refuses to allow his wife to wear trousers.
HE HAS also shown no hesitation about subjecting her to his propensity for
humiliation. Once, during a supposedly romantic trip to New Orleans, Maria,
Arnold and his bodybuilder friend Boyer Coe went to dinner in the Caribbean
Room in the luxurious Pontchartrain Hotel.
The wine flowed, the conversation was lively and Boyer, a Lousiana native,
decided to impress Arnold and Maria by ordering them Mile High pie, a New
Orleans speciality.
The pie, which is a foot high, is a combination of meringue, chocolate sauce
and spumoni ice-cream.
Eager to taste it, Maria was about to put a large spoonful into her mouth
when Arnold grabbed her by the back of her neck and pushed her face right
into the pie.
The entire room watched in horror as Maria was left plastered with ice cream.
Maria, however, has always professed to love Arnold's sadistic sense of
humour. Another of his party tricks is to tell a waitress that a bowl of
cream is off, ask the girl to smell it, then push her face into it.
Asked once about these degrading stunts, Maria declared that she wasn't the
least bit appalled by them. So would she mind if Arnold did it to her? 'No,
of course not,' she said.
Yet, although Maria is intensely loyal to Arnold - she is credited with
masterminding his campaign for governor, and consistently turns a blind eye
to all reports of his rampant infidelity - on very rare occasions her mask
slips and she reveals the truth about their relationship.
As star reporter for the American television news programme, Dateline, she
once carried out an in-depth interview with a rape victim named Karen Pomer.
Over the three days they worked together, 40-year-old Karen gained a
dramatic insight into Maria's submissive personality.
'After hours of interviewing me, Maria suddenly turned around and said: "I
can't believe your boyfriend stayed with you after you were raped. If I'd
been raped, my husband wouldn't go near me again.
He would leave me. I would be damaged goods." She said that in such a
matter-of-fact way that I was horrified. It revolutionised my view of Maria.
'To me, she is the ultimate Stepford Wife, similar to the women in the movie
who were turned into robots so that they could serve their husbands as if
they were slaves.' Equally shocking to Karen was Maria's obsession with her
weight - as if she was convinced that Arnold would reject her if she didn't
meet his image of bodily perfection.
'She was continually saying: "I'm so fat!
I'm so fat! I'm so fat!," ' says Karen.
'Everyone spent a lot of time reassuring her that she wasn't fat. In fact, I
thought she was a little emaciated. But she was obsessed by her weight.'
Maria's submissive attitude to Arnold was formed in the early days of their
relationship, when she uncomplainingly shared him with two other women -
first with California hairdresser Sue Moray, then with towering Danish
actress Brigitte Nielsen.
Moray had preceded Maria in Arnold's life, overlapping with her for a year,
and then broke up with him. His affair with Brigitte Nielsen, however,
almost ended his relationship with his wife-to-be.
Arnold became involved with the Danish starlet on the set of his film Red
Sonja, during filming in Rome. Brigitte, however, wasn't content with being
a mere location lover.
She was determined to make Arnold her own, and knew she had every chance of
succeeding. 'There was a sensual, stylish magic about her. She was like a
volcano just waiting to explode,' said one friend, photographer Riccardo Gay.
The affair was a wild one. Arnold would confide to his ex-girlfriend Sue
Moray that Brigitte was prepared to have sex anytime, anywhere.
Another of the actress's friends, Monte Shadow, confirms: 'Brigitte was
crazy about Arnold. She is wild, loves sex, and adores someone who is
physically stronger than she is. So Arnold was ideal.' SCHWARZENEGGER was so
captivated by her unbridled sexuality that he found himself falling in love
with her. He invited her to join him on an Austrian skiing trip, and even
took her home to meet his mother.
The ever-compliant Maria had been kept informed of the affair by her onset
spies, but did nothing.
Only when Arnold became so smitten that he raved openly about Brigitte to
the media - enthusing: 'She is heavenly. If I could, I would have her in
Hollywood tomorrow' - was Maria finally goaded into fighting for her man.
She issued Arnold with an ultimatum: it was either Brigitte or her.
Schwarzenegger, weighing his sexual passion against his soaring ambitions
and the prestige of Maria's Kennedy bloodline, ended the relationship with
Brigitte - and palmed her off on to his number one rival, Sylvester Stallone.
Now, amid the frenzy of the approaching election, Schwarzenegger is facing
new and damaging claims that he also cheated on Maria with a voluptuous
California blonde named Tammy Baker Tousignant.
Tammy was in her late 20s when Schwarzenegger first strode on to the
chartered private plane on which she was flight attendant. He was instantly
beguiled by her, and soon, according to several sources, they became
romantically involved.
'Everyone knew that she was Arnold's lover - everyone,' said a source who is
employed in the tightly-knit circle of the California charter-jet business.
Tammy would fly all over America with Arnold - to Colorado, to Sun Valley -
and as soon as the plane landed anywhere, she would disembark with him,
climb into his limousine and drive off with him, leaving the crew watching.
Although she was married at the time of their first meeting - to pilot Tom
Tousignant - by 1996 she was separated from her husband and living with her
son, Tanner, then three years old.
Tanner was a handsome boy with a wide, toothy smile and a love of sports.
Today at 11, he bears a remarkable resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
According to one of Tammy's colleagues, Kristin Campbell, she routinely
boasted that 'her baby was Arnold's'. The same claim has been made by two
other women who knew Tammy well.
By the late Nineties, Maria Shriver allegedly got wind of Tammy's affair
with Arnold, and arranged for her to be sacked from her company, Elite.
Questioned about these suggestions yesterday, Tammy, now 38, angrily denied
any romance with Schwarzenegger and insisted she was the victim of 'dirty
politics'.
Speaking outside her family home in Brea, California, she admitted she
worked with the star for 11 years. But Tammy, who is now reunited with her
husband and has another son, Connor, six, emphatically denied any impropriety.
'There is a picture out there and they say that my son looks like Arnold.
But he looks like my husband,' she said. 'It is incredibly hurtful for
people to be saying these things about my family.
'I haven't eaten or slept for two days since a reporter from the Los Angeles
Times called at my door and asked me about it.
'Everything that is being said is being said with malicious intent.
Arnold was a wonderful person to work for and so was his family.' Tammy
believes the gossip may have started because Arnold was very understanding
when she gave birth to her first boy.
'He was very kind in the way he treated me,' she said. 'He let me have time
off to spend with my son. He was having his son Christopher at about the
same time with Maria, and his family was very supportive.
'In the industry that I used to work in, it is very cut-throat and people
will say anything because they get jealous. But I never told anyone Tanner
was Arnold's child, and it simply isn't true. People are slinging dirt
because they have nothing else. I have nothing against Arnold whatsoever. He
gets my vote in the election and he is going to win. I wish him all the best.
'I worked for him for a long, long time and I never saw him treating women
badly. He was very respectful towards me. I just love all these women saying
that he groped them. They wish!' AT THE very least, Tammy's story shows how
Arnold's predatory behaviour casts a pall of suspicion and innuendo over
women who come into contact with him - however unjustified it may be.
Yet, surprisingly, the suspicions that surrounded him in the early days of
his career lay in a very different direction.
My research shows that during his rise to bodybuilding fame, Arnold
benefited from the financial largesse of homosexual admirers.
AGYM he ran in Munich was famous for being a homosexual haunt. Each night,
gays would gather to ogle bodybuilders while they were working out.
Arnold was ogled more than most.
At the time, he admitted: 'There is a big homosexual following around
bodybuilding. A lot of people think we are homosexuals because we attract
them. To them, you know, we are heaven.' Arnold's fame spread so rapidly in
the gay world that in the 1970s a gay porn filmmaker included footage of him
posing for a bodybuilding contest in one of his sleazy films.
He was a gay icon and admirers flocked to his side. 'I watched homosexuals
try to seduce him,' said Barbara Outland, his girlfriend in the late Sixties.
Whether or not they succeeded is not on record. However, it seems certain
that in his early career, when he was poor and unknown, Arnold did reap
financial benefits from his gay groupies.
'When a bodybuilder is very short of money, he will do anything to survive,'
bodybuilding champion Ronald Matz told me.
'Some very rich gay men invest in athletes and say, I'll give you a thousand
dollars just to pose.' In London in the Sixties, one of the wealthiest gay
patrons of bodybuilders was a Spanish millionaire named Paco Arce.
Bodybuilder Rick Wayne met Arce in Geneva and recalls: 'He pulled out a
stack of pictures of Arnold taken at his house in a certain way, pictures of
him in his underwear.' A second source confirms that Arce showed him the
same pictures, then told him he had paid Schwarzenegger $1,000 to spend the
weekend at his house in Spain and pose for them.
Another of Arnold's wealthy homosexual mentors was British businessman John
Dixey, a wellrespected engineer who was involved in the building of the Hyde
Park underpass in London.
Rick Wayne describes Dixey's seduction technique: 'He chased me for six
months. He offered me an apartment and a regular allowance if I would be his
guy.
Finally, he said: "Well, you can pass me on to a friend of yours."
'Dixey specialised in this. He would go to a bodybuilder and then he would
pay him to introduce him to another one. He threw money around.' A German
bodybuilder named Helmut Riedmeir has told me how Dixey asked him for an
introduction to Arnold. Riedmeir says that Arnold didn't know how to handle
the situation. 'I told him: "Just relax. You know, just use your imagination."
'With Dixey, it was purely financial. I don't know what he paid Arnold - but
he got paid quite well. Afterwards Arnold didn't go into details, he was
just pleased with the money. He stayed in touch with Dixey for two years.'
Asked about the relationship some years ago, Dixey confirmed that Arnold
visited him in his house in Kent, and that he took Arnold sightseeing to the
Tower of London, St Paul's Cathedral, and to the theatre. He also met
Arnold's father and his brother.
WHILE he denied that he had an affair with Arnold, or that he kept him
financially, he confided: 'Arnold was charming and lived in the gym.
'He also ate an enormous amount. He ate as if he were at a trough. It was
never one steak, always two. A good meal made him happy - Arnold would do
anything for a good meal. He did extremely well out of me. He was a good
tease.' Whether or not Schwarzenegger - in his ruthless pursuit of fame and
fortune - succumbed to the sexual advances of these wealthy patrons, one
thing is certain.
He traded on his spectacular physique, and the desires of the homosexuals
around him, working it for all it was worth.
It was the same iron determination to advance his own interests that has
taken him right into the heart of American politics.
I, for one, however, am convinced he is utterly unfit for high office. And
on Monday, in the second part of this series, I will reveal the truth about
his vicious contempt for the very fans who will be voting for him next week.
DAILY MAIL (London)
October 6, 2003
Hitler, a Nazi father, and why the past has returned to haunt Arnie
by WENDY LEIGH
TOMORROW, voters in California are expected to elect film star Arnold
Schwarzenegger as their governor.
But in recent days, the star has been engulfed by a wave of accusations
about his brutality to women and alleged sympathies for the Nazis. Here, in
the second of three articles, his biographer reveals the truth about his
murky past. . .
Striking a stance reminiscent of a Nazi salute, he turned to a fellow
contestant and joked: 'These people are nothing without an Austrian to lead
them.' Today, Schwarzenegger stands on the brink of being elected Governor
of California. But his Austrian past, and the spectre of Hitler, that
nation's most notorious son, are casting a dark shadow over his prospects.
The story begins nine years before his birth, when, on March 1, 1938, his
father, Gustav Schwarzenegger - a tall, strong, handsome police chief in the
Austrian village of Thal, on the outskirts of Graz - joined the Nazi Party.
At the time, membership of the party was illegal in the stillindependent
Austria, but that did not deter Gustav, a hot-tempered man who was gung-ho
for the party.
He also joined the SA - Hitler's Brownshirts, the most ardent of the Nazis,
who spearheaded Kristallnacht, the night on which Jewish shops were
destroyed and synagogues desecrated across Germany.
When I originally broke the story of Gustav Schwarzenegger's Nazi past,
Arnold categorically refused to comment on it. He then did his utmost to
muscle journalists into not reporting it.
In an attempt to suppress reporting of his father's murky past, he compelled
all journalists who wanted to interview him at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival
to sign an agreement promising not to ask him about my findings, or mention
them in their subsequent articles.
As well as making large donations - rumoured to total $3 million - to the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, named after the famed Jewish hunter
of fugitive Nazis, Arnold also let it be publicised that he was asking the
Wiesenthal Centre to investigate his father's past.
That request was highly cynical, and a symptom of Arnold's flagrant
disregard for the truth, because - long before he asked the Wiesenthal
organisation to investigate his father - Arnold was fully aware of his Nazi
activities.
I know that because, in January 1988, Arnold's arch-rival Sylvester Stallone
invited me on to the set of Rambo III in Yuma, Arizona, and told me about
Gustav Schwarzenegger's Brownshirt career.
HOW DID Stallone know about it? The answer is simple. When Arnold was
embroiled in a steamy love affair with fellow film star Brigitte Nielsen in
1984, he took her home to Austria to meet his mother, Aurelia.
Brigitte later described her visit to Stallone after they married - itself a
result of Arnold's machinations, as we will see later.
According to Stallone, the actress was astonished by what she saw at the
Schwarzenegger home.
'Arnold's mother had pictures all over the house of his father dressed in
his Brownshirt uniform,' Stallone told me. 'Arnold made no bones about the
fact that his father had been a member of the Nazi Party.' Indeed, Arnold
himself has flirted with the glamour of fascism. In recent days, he has
bitterly denied claims that he once named Hitler as one of his heroes - but
I have RNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER was angry. He had just gone through his
punishing routine of poses at a bodybuilding contest in Munich, but the
German audience had failed to give him the standing ovation he desired.
taped testimony from the man to whom he made those comments, confirming
their authenticity.
The remarks were made to George Butler, producer of Pumping Iron, the
bodybuilding film that made Arnold a star.
Schwarzenegger allegedly praised Hitler because 'he came from being a little
man with no education, up to power'.
On my tape, Butler says that Arnold expressed his admiration of Hitler and
the late President John F. Kennedy 'in almost the same breath as being two
people who were leaders'. The remarks were cut from the final version of the
film.
Manfred Thellig, who worked with Arnold in Munich, recalled: 'Arnold
definitely admires the Teutonic period of the Third Reich. He would say: "If
I had lived at that time, I would have been one of those Teutonic
breeders.''' Of course, Arnold now says that he 'despises everything Hitler
stood for'. But his failure to face up to his father's own role in the Nazi
war machine raises questions about his sincerity.
Gustav Schwarzenegger's war record included serving in the so-called
Feldgendarmerie on the brutal Eastern Front, where he was part of a police
force in newlyoccupied areas.
In that capacity, the Feldgendarmarie liaised with the Einsatzgruppen, the
SS forces responsible for shooting partisans, Jews and Communists and
implementing Hitler's Final Solution through the use of mobile gas chambers
on specially adapted lorries.
Between June 1941 and January 31, 1942, Einsatzgruppe A, to which Arnold's
father's force was linked, reportedly killed 229,052 Jews.
Whether or not Gustav Schwarzenegger was involved in the killings is not
known. However, according to Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar who has
written 14 books on the subject: 'He was in the thick of battle during the
most difficult times.
'Clearly, he was in proximity to some of the most horrific military and
non-military killings. He was in the heart of hell.' All the evidence points
to the fact that during his service in the German army, Gustav
Schwarzenegger must have witnessed a large number of atrocities.
When he returned to Austria, what he saw seems to have driven him to drink.
Those who knew Schwarzenegger Snr say he routinely drank two litres of wine
in an evening. 'Very often he drank so much that he didn't know where he
was,' recalled a colleague.
Arnold, his mother, and elder brother, Meinhard, were the victims of
Gustav's drink-induced rage. As a small boy, Arnold was terrified of his
father.
'Arnold was such a poor child,' remembered one of Gustav's colleagues. 'One
day, when Gustav was on the first floor of the police station, Arnold
knocked on the door. He was ten years old. "Daddy, Daddy," he said.
'Gustav barked: "Arnold, what do you want?" Arnold trembled and then, simply
because he was so afraid of his father, he wet himself.' Gustav
Schwarzenegger's brutality to his sons was legendary in his home village.
Very early on, he schooled them in the discipline of hard work and in the
virtues of winning above all else.
He took joy in pitting them against one another in boxing matches and skiing
races, challenging them: 'Let's see who's best.' Both boys would then embark
on a bitter battle to prove to their father that each was the stronger, and
tougher, of his sons. When the contest was over, and the loser thoroughly
trounced, Gustav would compel the winner to gloat over the loser.
'Tell me,' he would taunt, 'which one of you is the best?' The loser would
then be further mocked and humiliated. Arnold watched, learned, and vowed
that when he grew up, he would always be the winner.
GUSTAV also put stress on academic as well as physical prowess. When the
boys were allowed the occasional treat of a weekend outing, their joy was
tarnished by Gustav's insistence that they write a ten-page essay afterwards
describing every detail of the trip.
If they made one mistake, they were forced to recopy it correctly 50 times.
Failure was not tolerated by Gustav, nor was weakness. All of which created
in Arnold a deep and abiding contempt for anyone powerless and vulnerable.
'I've always looked down on people who are waiting, who are helpless,' he
once proudly declared.
'Ever since I was a child, I would say to myself: "There must be more to
life than this," and I found I didn't want to be like everybody else. I
wanted to be different. 'I wanted to be part of the small percentage of
people who were leaders, not the large mass of followers. I was always
fascinated by people in control of others.' Arnold's brother, a year older
than him, was a willing accomplice in helping Arnold live out his contempt
for the rest of humanity.
'Arnold and Meinhard were already in high school when the milkman drove his
cart along the street in Thal,' one local source told me. 'They stood in the
middle of the road and, for no reason, wouldn't let him pass. They hit him
and he bled.' The milkman grabbed Arnold's school satchel, with his name
plate on it, ran to the police station and confronted Gustav with the
evidence of his sons' assault.
The police chief, however, did nothing to punish the boys. While he was
willing to discipline his sons for his own satisfaction, when it came to the
outside world, neither Arnold nor Meinhard could do wrong in his eyes.
'The Schwarzeneggers were hated in Thal,' says a source who still lives in
the village. 'Today everyone loves them, but 50 years ago no one wanted to
have anything to do with them.' Meinhard and Arnold became so unruly that
when they left the Hans Gross School in Graz, their headmaster, Herr
Stanzer, said he had prayed to get rid of them.
MEINHARD was expelled from his next school and then was sent to reform
school. He was already a thug and was fast developing into a professional
conman.
In his teens, he conned an old couple into giving him money to buy a wreath
for his grandmother's funeral.
'The couple were living on a pension and Meinhard's grandmother hadn't died
at all,' says one local. 'But he was a good actor so he got the money.'
Meinhard's crooked ways were fuelled by a envy of his brother's growing
success as a bodybuilder.
'He showed me magazines with pictures of Arnold in them, but he never heard
from him or talked to him,' says Maria Hautz, who was Meinhard's landlady
for 18 months. 'He admired Arnold but was a little bit jealous of him.
Secretly he wanted to be like him.
He envied Arnold all his money. I think that was what made him desperate to
make a big score.' In quest of easy money, Meinhard assaulted an old lady in
Munich, spent a year in prison, then was arrested again for driving without
a licence.
His drinking accelerated and, in 1971, he died in a car accident while
driving under the influence of alcohol. Arnold did not attend his funeral.
Nor did he attend his father's when Gustav died in 1972.
ARNOLD has proved many times in his life that his own talents as a devious
schemer far outstrip those of his dead brother. One example is the way he
disposed of Brigitte Nielsen at the end of their affair. As I revealed in
Saturday's Mail, Arnold dumped the actress after an ultimatum from his
wife-to-be Maria Shriver.
Brigitte, however, was still obsessed by Arnold and refused to let go,
announcing: 'I am unbeatable.' It was then that Arnold hit on a plan so
Machiavellian as to defy belief.
Aware that Brigitte was wild, dangerous and capable of unravelling even the
most self-disciplined of men, he unleashed her on his rival Sylvester Stallone.
Knowing that Brigitte was attracted to the Rambo actor, he arranged through
an intermediary for her to be given details of a hotel where Stallone was
staying.
She took the bait, went to the hotel and dropped off photographs of herself
at reception. Stallone was instantly smitten, and invited her up to get
better acquainted.
Arnold's plan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Stallone proceeded to
fall passionately in love with Brigitte and showered her with gifts,
including a diamondstudded Cartier watch bearing the legend: 'I'll love you
till the end of time.' He ended up marrying her, but the union collapsed
after just 15 months amid a shower of scandalous rumours that Brigitte had
been unfaithful not only with men, but also with her female personal assistant.
Stallone emerged from the marriage emotionally drained and publicly
humiliated. So after the divorce was announced, a triumphant Arnold
approached Stallone's brother, Frank, at a restaurant in Santa Monica.
Feigning concern for his rival, he said: 'I feel so bad for your brother. I
always knew what she was. I only wish I had warned him.' By contrast to
these devious ways with rival film stars, his loyalty to his bodybuilding
cronies remained strong. After he became a success in America, he involved
them in his life to a surprisingly high degree.
In the Seventies, when he was appearing at a Canadian bodybuilding event, he
picked up a girl, an employee of bodybuilding magazine publisher Joe Weider,
took her to bed with him but failed to perform sexually.
His response, at two in the morning, was to pick up the phone and call Kurt
Marnul, his Austrian bodybuilding friend and later his trainer. He asked
Marnul to have sex with the girl in his place. 'You have to come down and
save the honour of Austria,' he said.
Marnul complied, but was also unable to perform. Finally, a third Austrian
friend of Arnold's was summoned and was able to complete the sex act in his
stead.
In Los Angeles, Arnold and another bodybuilder, Franco Columbu, started a
building business called Pumping Bricks. Years later, Franco would depict it
in terms which underscore Arnold's cynicism towards others.
ONE OF our workers ruined a woman's patio by laying the bricks crookedly,'
he remembered. 'Arnold said, "Don't worry, we will talk to the lady." ' 'I
said: "Talking to the lady won't move these bricks." But Arnold was
convinced he could talk her round. He said: "No matter what happens in a
construction site, you have to be able to sell what you have created." '
Sure enough, Arnold convinced the woman that the bricks, by being crooked,
were a trendy new European style. She was fascinated, and ended up thanking
him for doing such a fine job.
Arnold's contempt for others is also brought out in his propensity for cruel
practical jokes. While filming Total Recall in Mexico City, he managed to
convince a teetotal female friend to drink a succession of tequilas.
Unaccustomed to alcohol, she vomited all over herself. Arnold, according to
a source, 'recalled the story between spasms of laughter'.
He was 43 years old at the time, but his sense of humour resembled that of a
sadistic teenager.
A classic illustration of Arnold's twisted sense of humour comes from the
early years - and is a story which Arnold himself, for many years, continued
to relate with great hilarity and pride.
When he first began his rise to bodybuilding fame, becoming the youngest Mr
Europe ever, a young bodybuilder in Graz, named Tieffenbacher, approached
him, his eyes filled with adoration, begging Arnold to tell him his training
secrets.
'Well,' said Arnold, feigning a friendly interest, 'If you want to build a
body like mine, you have to grind up nutshells and add them to a spoonful of
salt.
'Eat one spoonful of mixture on the first day. On the second day, increase
it to two. On the third, three. And so on, until the 30th day when you
should be eating 30 teaspoons. Then you will put on a lot of muscle and you
will begin to build a body like mine.' ECSTATIC, Tieffenbacher proceeded to
follow Arnold's advice - only to fall seriously ill. Some sources claim he
ended up in hospital. Whatever the truth, Arnold recounted his joke over and
over, chortling with glee at what he had done to his besotted fan.
It was one of many such stunts.
In Munich, he told a fellow bodybuilder that if he ate 2lb of ice cream, he
would develop more muscle. He told another that the trick was to eat 30
cubes of sugar a day.
Because of Arnold's status as king of the bodybuilding world, many a hapless
novice took his advice - with dire consequences.
One nearly choked to death after Arnold persuaded him that instead of
blending a favourite bodybuilder's concoction of egg whites and vitamins
into a smooth paste, he should knead the mixture together and eat it as if
it were an apple.
When his former trainer Kurt Marnul warned him that his advice could harm
someone, Arnold laughed and said his victims were just stupid. 'Arnold
always made a fool of people he didn't respect,' Marnul recalled.
When he was working in Munich, Arnold used his role as gym manager to
indulge his perverse sense of humour still further. When a potential new
member asked if he could join the gym, Arnold informed him that he first had
to pass a test.
'Your membership test,' said Arnold, 'will be to climb out of the gym window
and down to street level.' The gym was on the second floor. The aspiring
member did exactly what Arnold asked, much to his amusement.
Fellow bodybuilder Wil McArdel says he witnessed Arnold forcing another fan
to do what he terms 'a Heil Hitler march'.
'He hates fans that are weak, that give themselves up to him so completely,'
says McArdel. 'He almost punishes them for not being themselves.
'He respects himself because he did everything his way. And he is going to
make you into an a**hole if you give yourself up to him.' The voters of
California would do well to heed those words. In the final part of this
series, as they go to the polls tomorrow, I will reveal the truth about
Arnold's racist outbursts and drug abuse.
DAILY MAIL (London)
October 7, 2003
Sexually insecure. A bigot and drug abuser. Would YOU vote for this man?
by WENDY LEIGH
TODAY, Californian voters are expected to elect film star Arnold
Schwarzenegger as their governor. Here, in the last of three articles, his
biographer urges them to think again. . .
AS ROBBY ROBINSON strode into Gold's Gym, Santa Monica, he felt on top of
the world. At 20, he was already one of America's most famous bodybuilders -
a Mr Universe, Mr America, and Mr World titleholder - whose nickname was The
Black Prince.
He also had a beautiful 19-yearold girlfriend, Elaine Stockton, with whom he
was deeply in love.
That morning, Elaine was in the gym ahead of him. Tall and voluptuous, she
was chatting happily to another bodybuilder when Arnold Schwarzenegger
strolled in.
Even today, nearly 30 years later, what happened next makes Robby Robinson's
voice shake with anger.
'Arnold came round behind Elaine and grabbed her breast,' he says. 'She was
wearing a loosefitting top and no bra and he reached under her top. He
actually touched her breast.
'Elaine was livid and dug her elbow into him. Arnold yelped, then backed
off. I was shocked and horrified by his lack of respect for my girlfriend.
He knew we had been together for two years.
'I sent him a fierce message telling him exactly what I thought of him. From
then on, I avoided him as much as possible.' But avoiding the biggest star
of the bodybuilding world was not easy. Later, Robinson was invited to
appear in Pumping Iron, the documentary that would make Arnold an
international celebrity.
WHEN he discovered the project was a showcase for the man who humiliated his
girlfriend, and there were no plans to pay other bodybuilders who appeared,
he swung into action.
As Robinson recalls: 'We were at Arnold's house in Santa Monica when I spoke
out. I faced Arnold and told him that neither I nor the other guys would
participate further unless we got paid.
'Then I started to walk out of the house - and the other guys started to
follow me. Arnold watched for a moment, then said: "That's the second time
that nigger has defied me."
'We ended up being given $10,000 contracts for our parts in Pumping Iron,
but I never got paid anything.
'After I stood up to Arnold, my bodybuilding career suffered. I believe that
Arnold harmed me with Joe Weider, the magazine publisher who controlled the
bodybuilding world in those days.
'Weider was the man who made Arnold's career and brought him over to America
from Europe. After I stood up to Arnold, I could never get a contract from
Weider.' The racist tendencies of the man who wants to be Governor of
California - a state with a large black and Hispanic population - go right
back to his early days as a bodybuilder.
Black contestants then ruled supreme, and it seemed highly unlikely that any
white upstart - especially one with an unpronounceable name and an
unintelligible accent - would ever vanquish them.
Arnold, though, had other plans.
Black bodybuilder Dave DuPre was working out with Arnold when the Austrian
suddenly declared: 'Black people are inferior. You are not capable of
achieving the success of white people. Black people are stupid.' DuPre
believes Arnold's racism was motivated by a strong sense of sexual
inferiority. 'He was always upset that all the black guys were able to go
out with all the white girls. He couldn't stand that.' On one occasion, in
New York, Arnold was having dinner with black bodybuilder Rick Wayne and
Schwarzenegger's patron, Joe Weider, when he noticed a beautiful black
cloakroom attendant. He began talking to her, then asked Weider to lend him
his car and drove off with her.
Wayne recalls that the next day Arnold made a point of telling him: 'You
know, the girl said I was better than any black guy she ever had.' In the
late Sixties, Arnold accepted an invitation to stay in South Africa with Reg
Park, who had been his bodybuilding hero when he was a teenager.
Later, in his autobiography, Arnold said he was overwhelmed by the older
man's luxurious lifestyle - a magnificent house stuffed with antiques and a
retinue of servants.
UPON his return to America, he announced to Rick Wayne that he thought South
Africans were right to enforce apartheid, adding: 'If you gave these blacks
a country to run, they would run it down the tubes.' At the time, Wayne
considered him 'an out-and-out racist' but has revised his opinion, citing
his long friendship with the star. 'I don't necessarily think he's racist,'
he says. 'How can you be a racist and have a black guy as your friend?'
Nonetheless, Wayne can't help recalling moments such as the time in which he
asked Arnold how, as an Austrian immigrant, he had conquered Hollywood.
Arnold replied: 'Because I've got the greatest physique in the world, I'm
sharp, I'm super-talented.' Then he walked down the corridor, looked over
his shoulder and added: 'And I'm white.' Arnold used any trick he could to
vanquish the black performers who dominated his sport. Cuban Sergio Oliva,
then considered the world's finest bodybuilder, was one such victim. 'Arnold
admired Sergio for having the greatest body but discovered he felt
vulnerable because of being black,' says Rick Wayne.
Schwarzenegger exploited that lack of confidence with astute psychological
warfare. During preparations for the Mr Olympia bodybuilding contest in
1972, he managed to take charge of the decor in the room where the event was
to be held, selecting a darkcoloured paint for the walls.
Later, Arnold confided to Rick Wayne: 'It hadn't occurred to Sergio that my
white body would stand out against the dark wall, while his would blend
right in. To this day I believe that was how I got the edge. The judges saw
more than I actually had that day. Sergio suffered for his blindness.' The
victory was a major breakthrough. After that, no other bodybuilder - black
or white - would beat him again.
Arnold's racist comments extended to Jews as well.
According to Rick Wayne, he sometimes upset his mentor Joe Weider, a Jewish
Canadian, by telling crass anti-Semitic jokes in his presence, bringing him
to the brink of tears.
According to Dave DuPre: 'Arnold would make fun of Jews. If anybody looked
Jewish, he would point it out and tell them they were inferior. I would
remind him that it was a Jew who had brought him to America. Then he would
shut up.' WITH his 58in chest, his 20in calves, 22in arms and 34in waist,
Schwarzenegger the bodybuilder resembled an overblown superman. However, his
grotesquely large muscles were not merely born of hard work, but also from
his willingness to take steroids.
Though steroids were not yet illegal in those days, many bodybuilders
eschewed them, leaving those who did with an extremely unfair advantage -
which Arnold, determined to win at all costs, didn't hesitate to take.
In 1966, after offering Rick Wayne a month's supply of Dianabol steroid
tablets, Arnold confided that he had been taking steroids since the age of 13.
HIS first trainer, Kurt Marnul, in Graz, had introduced him to them. Marnul
also injected him with Primobolin, the champagne of steroids, two or three
times a week.
'Arnold took steroids in doses that terrified the other bodybuilders,'
recalled an Austrian competitor who trained with him.
'I saw him swallow eight or nine Dianabols at a time.
'Then he'd take a gulp of milk, a handful of protein tablets, and while he
was still swallowing and could hardly talk, say, "Right, now I'm ready," and
start training.' In the early Sixties, the dangers of steroids were not
fully understood, and Arnold took them openly. Helmut Reidmeier, who trained
with him, recalled: 'Arnold injected himself with steroids and took them for
breakfast, lunch and dinner.' Steroids weren't the only drugs Arnold used.
In the film Pumping Iron, he openly smoked marijuana-The late Mike Mentzer,
another bodybuilding colleague, claimed that during the Mr Olympia contest
in Australia in 1980, Arnold was taking cocaine.
According to Mentzer: 'Arnold was wild. Joe Weider told me later that he was
on cocaine that day - and I believe it. His eyes were bulging out, the veins
on his forehead were distended - both symptoms of being on cocaine.
'He seemed out of control. His upper lip was curled around like a snarling
animal.' There is no evidence that Arnold has taken drugs in recent years.
But these anecdotes are just another symptom of the amoral nature and lack
of judgment that make him such an unlikely candidate for political office.
Now, however, the people of California seem set to elect him as their
governor. Despite all the recent controversy that has engulfed him, it is
highly likely that - given a national culture that values celebrity above
all else - he will win today's vote.
If he does, I only hope his supporters do not come to rue their mistake as
bitterly as I fear they will.