Meet the wackiest millionaire ever to run for president, Rich, flamboyant, and mad for publicity, he put his name on aggregate from books to buildings. He affiliated and afar again and admired to blow about his animal prowess. When he absitively to go for the Republican choice for president, abounding Americans knew his name, but few had any abstraction of what he absolutely stood for. His political platform, such as it was, seemed to focus abundantly on deporting aliens.
He was aswell actual appreciative of his hair.
His name was Bernarr Macfadden, and the year was 1936.
Self-made muscleman
Unlike abounding millionaires again and now, Bernarr Macfadden was absolutely self-made. He grew up in poverty, went to plan at age 9, and congenital a affluence that, by the backward 1920s, accomplished an estimated $30 million, or about $420 actor today. He even fabricated up his own name, alteration it from Bernard McFadden because he capital something added distinctive.
A slight and ailing child, Macfadden became absorbed in bodybuilding at an aboriginal age and seems to accept spent abundant of his adolescence hoisting dumbbells. By his aboriginal twenties, he was angry professionally, commercial himself as a claimed trainer, and publishing pamphlets on exercise and fitness. That led to the barrage of a magazine, Physical Culture, in 1899, with Macfadden as its accustomed awning subject. According to Mark Adams, columnist of the 2009 adventures Mr. America, he was now administration himself as “Prof. B. Macfadden.”
Soon, the “professor,” whose academic apprenticeship was deficient at best, began dispensing admonition on all address of bloom topics, both in his annual and in books he cranked out at an alarming pace. Sample titles: Foot Troubles, Strengthening the Eyes, Natural Cure for Rupture, and The Virile Powers of Supreme Manhood.
Eventually the American Medical Association could yield no more. Focusing on Macfadden’s magazine, the AMA accused it of accomplishing “incalculable” abuse and appropriate that it was “edited for morons.”
Meanwhile, Macfadden’s publishing authority was accretion apace. In 1919 he launched Accurate Story, the aboriginal women’s acknowledgment annual and a avant-garde of what would after be alleged reader-generated content. It was followed in abbreviate adjustment by Accurate Romances, Accurate Love, Accurate Detective, and added accurate moneymakers. In 1924, he started his own circadian newspaper, the New York Evening Graphic, a amazing abridged accustomed for its ashen annual and busy affected photos (“widely advised to be the affliction bi-weekly in U.S. history,” biographer Adams notes). In 1931, he purchased Liberty magazine, a mass-market annual and battling to titles like The Saturday Evening Post.
Even Time magazine, which alleged Macfadden “a button Missouri hillbilly” and a “wiry-haired, wrinkle-faced little character,” a allotment of added snarky things, had to accept his “genius for the accustomed blow in the publishing business.”
Advice to bite on
But aboriginal and foremost, Macfadden remained bedeviled with health—both his own and the nation’s. He eschewed coffee, alcohol, tobacco, white bread, hats (bad for the hair), and generally shoes. He against vaccines, allegedly due to a bad acquaintance he’d had as a boy, and bidding annihilation but antipathy for the medical profession (which alternate the compliment). He was a big accepter in fasting, milk drinking, high-fiber food, lots of chewing, sleeping on harder floors, and, of course, Bernarr Macfadden. By afterward his own advice, he believed he could calmly reside to 125, possibly 150.
To added advance his philosophy, Macfadden put his name on camps, schools, hotels, and hospitals. He opened vegetarian restaurants in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. He launched a breakfast cereal, Strengtho. He even attempted to actualize his own Utopian community—Physical Culture City—in arctic New Jersey.
In fact, it seems to accept been his absorption in bloom that eventually led Macfadden into politics. He lobbied for the conception of a new chiffonier column alleged Secretary for Health, a job he allegedly saw himself as alluringly able for. When that didn’t happen, he absitively to aim higher.
“He developed audible longings for the choice for the Presidency and those abutting to him accustomed the consequence that he would accept accustomed the annual from either of the above parties,” his bi-weekly editor, Emile Gauvreau, after recalled. Macfadden himself was quoted as saying, “If the lightning strikes, it will acquisition me a accommodating victim.”
Although he’d been a above booster of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential bid—and even assassin Eleanor Roosevelt to adapt a brief annual alleged Babies, Just Babies—he anon grew antagonistic with Roosevelt’s New Deal behavior and switched his adherence to the Republican party.
On the butt and on the skids
When Roosevelt came up for reelection in 1936, Macfadden saw his opportunity. In a alternation of speeches beyond the country, he attacked the “menacing problem” of government spending and said the civic debt “has mortgaged our babies, our children, and our children’s children.”
But he was a lot of boisterous on the affair of immigration. Illegal and busted immigrants should be alien aback to their homelands, he argued, and not accurate by American tax dollars. He seemed decidedly incensed by what he alleged the “yellow peril.” According to a annual account of a accent in St. Louis, Macfadden said an official in California had told him “there were 250,000 Japanese in that accompaniment and ‘everyone of ‘em armed.’”
In June of 1936, he abounding the Republican nominating assemblage in Cleveland, alert to a radio advertisement of the affairs in his auberge room. According to Adams, he allegedly hoped the assemblage would become apoplectic and the affair would about-face to him. Instead it nominated Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, who went on to lose to Roosevelt in the November election.
Though disappointed, and out an estimated $100,000 in bribes, Macfadden wasn’t absolutely done with politics. In 1940, he fabricated a bid for a U.S. Senate bench in Florida, this time as a Democrat. He accomplished third in the primary. In 1953, he attempted to run for ambassador of New York City as a third affair applicant but was denied a abode on the ballot.
By then, it wasn’t just his political fortunes that were at a low ebb. His banking affluence was, as well. His publishing authority had all but collapsed, due in allotment to actor lawsuits that accused him of breach aggregation money to pay claimed expenses, including his 1936 presidential flirtation. He argued that he had never been a austere applicant but was just aggravating to body up the Macfadden cast for publicity’s sake.
Though he no best had an authority to promote, Macfadden connected his adventure for absorption until the end. He acclaimed his 75th altogether by continuing on his arch for bi-weekly photographers. For his 83rd birthday, he parachuted out of an aeroplane into the Hudson River, cutting red flannel underwear and a football helmet. For his 84th, he did an acclamation over Paris.
When he died in 1955, at age 87, he larboard abaft a wife about 40 years his inferior and an acreage that was about worthless. His added maintained that he had active banknote all over the country, possibly as abundant as $4 actor worth. But admitting one abstruse $89,000 acquisition in 1960, the money has never angry up.
His name was Bernarr Macfadden, and the year was 1936.
Self-made muscleman
Unlike abounding millionaires again and now, Bernarr Macfadden was absolutely self-made. He grew up in poverty, went to plan at age 9, and congenital a affluence that, by the backward 1920s, accomplished an estimated $30 million, or about $420 actor today. He even fabricated up his own name, alteration it from Bernard McFadden because he capital something added distinctive.
A slight and ailing child, Macfadden became absorbed in bodybuilding at an aboriginal age and seems to accept spent abundant of his adolescence hoisting dumbbells. By his aboriginal twenties, he was angry professionally, commercial himself as a claimed trainer, and publishing pamphlets on exercise and fitness. That led to the barrage of a magazine, Physical Culture, in 1899, with Macfadden as its accustomed awning subject. According to Mark Adams, columnist of the 2009 adventures Mr. America, he was now administration himself as “Prof. B. Macfadden.”
Soon, the “professor,” whose academic apprenticeship was deficient at best, began dispensing admonition on all address of bloom topics, both in his annual and in books he cranked out at an alarming pace. Sample titles: Foot Troubles, Strengthening the Eyes, Natural Cure for Rupture, and The Virile Powers of Supreme Manhood.
Eventually the American Medical Association could yield no more. Focusing on Macfadden’s magazine, the AMA accused it of accomplishing “incalculable” abuse and appropriate that it was “edited for morons.”
Meanwhile, Macfadden’s publishing authority was accretion apace. In 1919 he launched Accurate Story, the aboriginal women’s acknowledgment annual and a avant-garde of what would after be alleged reader-generated content. It was followed in abbreviate adjustment by Accurate Romances, Accurate Love, Accurate Detective, and added accurate moneymakers. In 1924, he started his own circadian newspaper, the New York Evening Graphic, a amazing abridged accustomed for its ashen annual and busy affected photos (“widely advised to be the affliction bi-weekly in U.S. history,” biographer Adams notes). In 1931, he purchased Liberty magazine, a mass-market annual and battling to titles like The Saturday Evening Post.
Even Time magazine, which alleged Macfadden “a button Missouri hillbilly” and a “wiry-haired, wrinkle-faced little character,” a allotment of added snarky things, had to accept his “genius for the accustomed blow in the publishing business.”
Advice to bite on
But aboriginal and foremost, Macfadden remained bedeviled with health—both his own and the nation’s. He eschewed coffee, alcohol, tobacco, white bread, hats (bad for the hair), and generally shoes. He against vaccines, allegedly due to a bad acquaintance he’d had as a boy, and bidding annihilation but antipathy for the medical profession (which alternate the compliment). He was a big accepter in fasting, milk drinking, high-fiber food, lots of chewing, sleeping on harder floors, and, of course, Bernarr Macfadden. By afterward his own advice, he believed he could calmly reside to 125, possibly 150.
To added advance his philosophy, Macfadden put his name on camps, schools, hotels, and hospitals. He opened vegetarian restaurants in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. He launched a breakfast cereal, Strengtho. He even attempted to actualize his own Utopian community—Physical Culture City—in arctic New Jersey.
In fact, it seems to accept been his absorption in bloom that eventually led Macfadden into politics. He lobbied for the conception of a new chiffonier column alleged Secretary for Health, a job he allegedly saw himself as alluringly able for. When that didn’t happen, he absitively to aim higher.
“He developed audible longings for the choice for the Presidency and those abutting to him accustomed the consequence that he would accept accustomed the annual from either of the above parties,” his bi-weekly editor, Emile Gauvreau, after recalled. Macfadden himself was quoted as saying, “If the lightning strikes, it will acquisition me a accommodating victim.”
Although he’d been a above booster of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential bid—and even assassin Eleanor Roosevelt to adapt a brief annual alleged Babies, Just Babies—he anon grew antagonistic with Roosevelt’s New Deal behavior and switched his adherence to the Republican party.
On the butt and on the skids
When Roosevelt came up for reelection in 1936, Macfadden saw his opportunity. In a alternation of speeches beyond the country, he attacked the “menacing problem” of government spending and said the civic debt “has mortgaged our babies, our children, and our children’s children.”
But he was a lot of boisterous on the affair of immigration. Illegal and busted immigrants should be alien aback to their homelands, he argued, and not accurate by American tax dollars. He seemed decidedly incensed by what he alleged the “yellow peril.” According to a annual account of a accent in St. Louis, Macfadden said an official in California had told him “there were 250,000 Japanese in that accompaniment and ‘everyone of ‘em armed.’”
In June of 1936, he abounding the Republican nominating assemblage in Cleveland, alert to a radio advertisement of the affairs in his auberge room. According to Adams, he allegedly hoped the assemblage would become apoplectic and the affair would about-face to him. Instead it nominated Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, who went on to lose to Roosevelt in the November election.
Though disappointed, and out an estimated $100,000 in bribes, Macfadden wasn’t absolutely done with politics. In 1940, he fabricated a bid for a U.S. Senate bench in Florida, this time as a Democrat. He accomplished third in the primary. In 1953, he attempted to run for ambassador of New York City as a third affair applicant but was denied a abode on the ballot.
By then, it wasn’t just his political fortunes that were at a low ebb. His banking affluence was, as well. His publishing authority had all but collapsed, due in allotment to actor lawsuits that accused him of breach aggregation money to pay claimed expenses, including his 1936 presidential flirtation. He argued that he had never been a austere applicant but was just aggravating to body up the Macfadden cast for publicity’s sake.
Though he no best had an authority to promote, Macfadden connected his adventure for absorption until the end. He acclaimed his 75th altogether by continuing on his arch for bi-weekly photographers. For his 83rd birthday, he parachuted out of an aeroplane into the Hudson River, cutting red flannel underwear and a football helmet. For his 84th, he did an acclamation over Paris.
When he died in 1955, at age 87, he larboard abaft a wife about 40 years his inferior and an acreage that was about worthless. His added maintained that he had active banknote all over the country, possibly as abundant as $4 actor worth. But admitting one abstruse $89,000 acquisition in 1960, the money has never angry up.
Blogger Comment
Facebook Comment