Early Life
Sandow was born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) on April 2, 1867 to a German father and a Russian mother. He left Prussia in 1885 to avoid military service and traveled throughout Europe, becoming a circus athlete and adopting Eugen Sandow as his stage name. He made his first appearance on the London stage in 1889.
Florenz Ziegfeld wanted to display Sandow at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but Ziegfeld knew that Maurice Grau had Sandow under a contract. Grau wanted $1,000 a week. Ziegfeld could not guarantee that much but agreed to pay 10 per cent of the gross receipts.
Ziegfeld found that the audience was more fascinated by Sandow's bulging muscles than by the amount of weight he was lifting, so Ziegfeld had Sandow perform poses which he dubbed "muscle display performances"... and the legendary strongman added these displays in addition to performing his feats of strength with barbells. He added chain-around-the-chest breaking and other colorful displays to Sandow's routine. Sandow quickly became Ziegfeld's first star.
In 1894, Sandow featured in a short film by the Edison Studios. The film was of only part of the show and features him flexing his muscles rather than performing any feats of physical strength. While the content of the film reflects the audience attention being primarily focused on his appearance it made use of the unique capacities of the new medium. Film theorists have attributed the appeal being the striking image of a detailed image moving in synchrony, much like the example of the Lumière brothers' Repas de bébé where audiences were reportedly more impressed by the movement of trees swaying in the background than the events taking place in the foreground. In 1894, he appeared in a short Kinetoscope film that was part of the first commercial motion picture exhibition in history.
He created the Institute of Physical Culture, an early gymnasium for body builders in 1897.
In 1898 Sandow founded a monthly periodical, originally named Physical Culture and subsequently named Sandow's Magazine of Physical Culture.
He held the first major bodybuilding contest at the Royal Albert Hall on September 14, 1901. It was called the "Great Competition". It was judged by Sandow, athlete and sculptor Sir Charles Lawes, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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