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MACFADDEN, BERNARR ADOLPHUS 1868-1955

ADVOCATE OF "PHYSICAL CULTURE" AND PUBLISHER

Early Life

Born 16 August 1868 in Mill Spring, Missouri, Bernarr Macfadden was the son of farmer William McFadden and his wife, Mary. Bernard (who later changed the spelling of his first and last names) received only a grade-school education. By the time he was eleven, his parents had divorced and then died—his father from alcoholism and his mother from tuberculosis. After a brief period spent with farmer relatives, Macfadden left home and worked a series of odd jobs that included farm laborer, delivery boy, printer's assistant, bookkeeper, and bill collector. Years later he would observe about this period that he "had no chance to indulge in those exercises so necessary to the health of boys ofthat age.… At the age of sixteen I was a complete wreck. I had the hacking cough of a consumptive; my muscular system had so wasted that I resembled a skeleton; my digestive organs were in a deplorable condition." He consulted various doctors but found little help and quickly developed a hatred of the medical profession and its reliance on prescription drugs.

Transformation

Macfadden bought a pair of dumbbells and began a daily schedule of exercise that he maintained for the rest of his life. By the age of eighteen he was calling himself a "professor of kinesitherapy" and teaching gymnastics at schools in Missouri and Illinois. His regimen soon expanded to include long walks, semi-vegetarian eating habits, fresh air, cold baths, and minimal clothing. Macfadden called his methods "physical culture" and put them on display, along with his exercise equipment, at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Building an Empire

In the late 1890s Macfadden left the Midwest and moved to New York City. In 1898 he began publication of Physical Culture, a monthly magazine that by 1900 sold thousands of copies at fifteen cents an issue. Macfadden used this success to establish the Physical Culture Publishing Company, which became in subsequent decades the nucleus of a publishing empire. Other magazines and books on such topics as marriage, muscle development, and male diseases poured from the presses. In Chicago; Battle Creek, Michigan; and other cities Macfadden established "healthatoriums," luxurious health spas where he trained new teachers of his methods. He also opened twenty restaurants that served vegetarian meals.

Macfadden and the Law

His magazine Physical Culture relentlessly promoted Macfadden's health and fitness ideas. Many issues featured scantily clad men and women photographed as they exercised. In the early twentieth century such pictures were considered scandalous and quickly caught the attention of postal authorities, who began to monitor the magazine. A 1907 issue containing an article on venereal disease transmission provided officials with the evidence they needed. Macfadden was arrested, tried for obscenity, convicted, and sentenced to two years in prison and a $2,000 fine. Subscribers and other supporters deluged President William H. Taft with letters, and Taft granted Macfadden clemency.

Macfadden after 1909

His brush with the legal system did not stop Macfadden. In 1911 he began publication of a massive five-volume Encyclopedia of Physical Culture, one of more than a hundred books he wrote during his lifetime. He traveled to England in 1913 to spread his ideas. A relentless self-promoter, he included in his trip the gimmick of a search for England's "perfect woman." By the 1920s Macfadden's ideas and publications were so popular that medical critics took note. In 1925 Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the official journal of the American Medical Association, included Macfadden's physical culture in his book The Medical Follies. Eleven years later one of the American Medical Association's foremost critics of medical quackery, Dr. Arthur J. Cramp, attacked Macfadden in Nostrums and Quackery and Pseudo-Medicine. Nothing slowed Macfadden down; by the 1930s his magazines—which then included such tabloid titles as True Story, True Romances, and Photoplay—and his sensationalistic newspapers reached some forty million readers. One of his protégés, Charles Atlas, was the hero of every male who perceived himself as a weakling. Another student, Jack La Lanne, built a physical fitness empire of his own.

The Bubble Bursts

By the eve of World War II several circumstances combined to weaken Macfadden's power. He had spent enormous sums on unsuccessful political campaigns. He was a vocal admirer of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy and ally of Hitler. In 1941 stockholders in his company accused him of personal use of corporate funds and forced Macfadden to relinquish control. By 1950 he had sold all his publications, but he continued his self-promotion. He earned a pilot's license at age sixty-three and celebrated several birthdays in his eighties with parachute jumps from air-planes. Macfadden died of a blood clot in the brain on 12 October 1955 in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Macfadden's Legacy

In 1989 Macfadden Holdings, the corporate child of his original company, bought the tabloid newspapers National Enquirer and The Star. Macfadden himself might have approved, for he had built his empire promoting both the healthy and the sensational.