Macfadden, Bernarr

orig. Bernard Adolphus McFadden

(born Aug. 16, 1868, near Mill Spring, Mo., U.S.—died Oct. 12, 1955, Jersey City, N.J.) U.S. publisher and champion of physical health. A sickly orphan by age 11, he began in his teens to increase his strength as an act of defiance. In 1899 he began publishing Physical Culture magazine, and in later decades he built up a publishing empire, bringing out the first confession magazine, True Story (1919), followed by True Romances (1923), True Detective Mystery Magazine (1924), and other periodicals. Macfadden also toured widely to promote his message of vigorous physical exercise and to preach about the dangers of alcohol, drugs, gluttony, corsets, prudishness, tea, coffee, and white bread. Shocking to Victorian sentiments were his advocacy of a diet consisting of carrots, beans, nuts, and raw eggs and his encouragement of sleeping on the floor, nudity, and “physical love.” To promote such “love,” he encouraged openness about sexual matters and invented a device to enlarge men's penises. To exemplify fitness, he walked five miles daily to his office in Manhattan in bare feet while carrying a 40-pound bag of sand. He also staged the first physique (bodybuilding) contest in America (1903) and fostered the rise of fitness icon Charles Atlas. Macfadden's bids for the presidency, U.S. Senate, and governorship of Florida all failed. Physically fit into old age, he parachuted into Paris on his 84th birthday.

MacFadden, Bernarr (b. Bernard Adolphus McFadden) (1868–1955) publisher; born in Mill Spring, Mo. In 1899 he founded Physical Culture magazine to promote his ideas on self-help, fitness, and healthy living; he built a publishing empire that included the first confessions magazines and the New York Evening Graphic, a sex- and scandal-filled tabloid of the 1920s.