Eugen Sandow: the original flex reel

Eugen Sandow 1889

Eugen Sandow was one of the originators of the idea of bodybuilding driven by aesthetics instead of the sheer desire for strength. He’s best known for being the very first bodybuilder to shoot a flex reel in 1894 for the Edison company.

Sandow’s reel was one of the most popular kinescopes Edison ever shot and created a surge in interest in both Eugen Sandow, who published a number of eriudite magazines on fitness and on bodybuilding and physical culture in general.

For his part, the ever-innovative Sandow also posed for Edison’s competitors, the Lumiere Brothers at ther instigation of the one and only Florence Zigfried of the Zigfried follies in 1896.

Let’s hear it for the inventor of aestetic bodybuilding and the bodybuilding contest, Eugen Sandow!

THE GREAT SANDOW Superman of The Gay Nineties--Beau Ideal of Athletic Elegance by ERNEST EDWIN COFFIN World's Greatest Sandow Authority and Biographer The author reveals many hitherto hidden niceties of Eugene Sandow from his act of "The Bill-Poster" onward to his numerous Italian wrestling victories. Continued from last issue ANDOW was no mere copyist-be was S a leader, a creative muscular-stylist, an innovator. Sandow was the gen- uine original! Many were (and are) his imitators, but none his equal. His many theatrical innovations have since been recognized as the master strokes of an Artist. For sheer beauty and perfection his muscle-posing, both exhibition and photo- graphie, was incomparable! Sandow's innovative stage feature en- titled L'AFFICHEUR (The Bill-Poster, or The Bill-sticker), being a combination of athlete and harlequin in a pantomimie novelty play, astonished and delighted thester-goers throughout France. Ap parently it was a production of quite some magnitude the attraction being stage labelled "les frères Rijos." (The Brothers Rijos.") The principal characters were Sandow, the powerful young athlete, and François, the harlequin, who was dressed as a huge doll which Sandow, nonchalantly and with an easy freedom of movement, juggled and tossed about the stage, threw over walls, and pitched in at windows. Both actors played their parts to perfeo tion the young strong man lifting and bouncing the clown about as though he were feather, while the latter cleverly as sumed the role of a limp rag doll, which, for a time, disguised from the audience the fact that it was a living man, and not a stage dummy. Later in their act the amusingly labellied harlequin was thrown against walls, "to which he clung, exhibiting, in ingeniously contrived changes of dress, the pictorial embellishments of the bill-sticker's art." This farcial comedy (originated by Sandow and François) furnished splendid opportunity for the display of the young athlete's strength and dexterity gained partly from his former circua training as a tumbler and acrobat. Al Treloar (Sandow's personal advier at the Trocadero Theater, Chicago, III- Inois, in 1893) told the writer that he heard from August DeWell (Sandow's personal representative in the U.S.A, in 1803), and from Sandow himself, about the novel tricks he originated and devel oped in lifting and throwing about the giant Sebastien Miller. Some of these in- volved mechanical illusion, such as San- dow's dive apparently through the chest of Miller-also his throw of Miller, dressed in furs like an Eskimo, high against the wall where he stuck or bung with no via ible support, It is quite likely that some such illusion was originally introduced in the istter pars of the performance of Sandow's "The Bill- Sticker." Completing the tour of France the road- show traveled on to Italy (the partners adapting their pantomime to the tastes and customs of the Italians), where the original athletic novelty continued as a successful box-office attraction. With the theatrical troupe wat an artist, one of Sandow's professional friends, whom the strong man had known in Holland at the time of his machine-break- ing triumph. Noting the effortless move ments of Sandow in lifting and tossing the big buffoon about, during the nightly per formancms the artist developed an impel- ling desire to see the young athlete exhibit his prowess in a variety of feats of strength. So arrangements were made for the entire Company to devote an evening to a benefit performance for this fellow member; Mr. Sandow to contribute his exhibition as the Star, and gloriously top the bill for hit ardent artist-admirer. During the earlier part of Sandow's Eugene Sandow At the age of 22 years and months. Photo: Van der Weyde, London, England. 1839. Page 16 YOUR PHYSIQUE April-May

Author: Robert Kurtz

I ran a 4:13 mile and defeated Lasilo Tabori in the summer of 1958

4 Thoughts to “Eugen Sandow: the original flex reel”

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