Pumping Iron: 20 Rarely Seen Photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger



1 / 20 Chevron Chevron © George Butler/Contact Press Images. Arnold always worked on his poses and thought about competing. Here he is practicing on the roof of his condo. Santa Monica, California, 1973.

It’s been 40 years since the glistening, flexing biceps of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, and the rest of the giants of the professional bodybuilding scene burst into the pop culture conversation via director George Butler’s docudrama Pumping Iron. The film was the ultimate underdog story, not because of the way the competition plays out on-screen (spoiler alert, Schwarzenegger starts the film as a bodybuilding star and ends the film an even bigger bodybuilding star), but because of the great lengths Butler went to to get it made. In the burgeoning days of documentary filmmaking, nobody wanted to back Butler and his partner, Robert Fiore, to make a film about a niche sport starring a handsome Austrian whom no one outside the bodybuilding world had ever heard of.

But Butler and Fiore pressed, on and the rest is film history. Both Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno would go on to become household names, and for those curious to see how an Austrian bodybuilder could conquer not only Hollywood but the world of politics too, look no further than the naked ambition, clever calculation, and titanic work ethic Schwarzenegger puts on display in Pumping Iron. George Butler—who, alongside Charles Gaines, shot the 1974 book of the same name—has shared some candid, never-before-seen photos from Schwarzenegger’s Pumping Iron days collected in the gallery above. He’s also answered a few of our questions about some of the legacies and myths that have sprung up around the film in the past 40 years. Pumping Iron will play at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater on August 17 as part of a 40th anniversary series celebrating the cinema of 1977.

Vanity Fair: Before Pumping Iron, there was a stigma around bodybuilding that only gay men participated in the sport. Was that something the machismo of the documentary and Schwarzenegger’s behavior around women specifically tried to address?

George Butler: Yes, there was a stigma in those days. We wanted everyone to come across as themselves— and with Arnold front and center, the film took on a certain character. It was clear this was a tough sport.

You mention in the 2002 documentary Raw Iron that the 1975 I.F.B.B. Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia contests were the first interracial competitions to be held in South Africa. Pumping Iron doesn’t really touch on that even though Serge Nubret comes out of nowhere to grab second place behind Schwarzenegger. Was there ever an idea to explore that aspect of the bodybuilding scene?