Atlas, Charles

orig. Angelo Siciliano

(born Oct. 30, 1892, Acri, Italy—died Dec. 24, 1972, Long Beach, N.Y., U.S.) Italian-born U.S. bodybuilder. Atlas immigrated to the U.S. in 1904. Skinny and weak as a child, he devised a system (later called Dynamic-Tension) that used isotonic exercise to build muscle. Assisted by the English naturopath Frederick Tinley, he later employed these principles to develop a mail-order course that became the basis for a multimillion-dollar bodybuilding business. In 1928 he and the advertiser Charles P. Roman launched one of the most celebrated advertising campaigns in American history. Their standard ad, a common feature in comic books and men's magazines, depicted scenes in which a skinny boy loses his girlfriend to a well-built lifeguard (who kicks sand in his face) and regains her after taking the Atlas course.

Atlas, Charles (b. Angelo Siciliano) (1894–1972) body-builder, trainer; born in Acri, Italy. Coming to the U.S.A. in 1904, he was anemic and weak as a youth and began to work out at a Brooklyn Young Men's Christian Association gym; there he developed his own system of pitting muscle against muscle—what he later (1921) called "dynamic tension"—and built up his body so that he soon was attracting attention as a strong man at Coney Island; he had meanwhile adopted the name of a statue of the ancient Atlas. Invited to model by sculptors, he posed for several public sculptures (including, it is alleged, George Washington in Washington Square, New York City). In 1922 he won a contest for "the World's Most Perfectly Developed Man," and to capitalize on his reputation, he opened a gymnasium to teach his system. He also launched a mail-order course in body-building, advertising it with his eventually legendary image of the "97-pound weakling" who loses his girl to a bully at the beach. (It is probably apocryphal that Atlas himself experienced this exact event.) This mail-order course became so popular, even throughout the world—it was translated into at least seven languages—that he soon gave up his gymnasium to concentrate on it. A precursor of the modern body-building movement, he maintained his own body so well that in 1938, weighing only 178 pounds, he pulled a 145,000-pound train 122 feet.

Atlas, Charles

(1893–1972) American muscleman; successful selling body-building by mail order. [Am. Culture: Misc.]

See : Brawniness

Atlas, Charles

(1892–1972) 20th-century strongman; went from “98-pound weakling” to “world’s strongest man.” [Am. Sports: Amory, 38–39]

See : Strength