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Good as Gold: touching base with bodybuilding legend Joe Gold

Flex, March, 2002 by Greg Merritt

"What are you, an imbecile?" Joe Gold's question came near the end. of our interview, just before the legendary gym magnate threatened to chop me into a hundred parts and feed me to the fishes. For the record, Joe was smiling. Such moments are merely part of the congenial interplay with a man who has spent the best of his 80 years on ships and in gyms -- literal and figurative war zones, where insults are the native tongue. To be gibed by Joe Gold is to be initiated into a nonexclusive club of his countless friends: sailors, soldiers and, most of all, bodybuilders.

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COMMISSION Joe Gold showed a proclivity for gym ownership at an early age. Born in Los Angeles in 1922, he began working Out at age 12 and built a home gym while still a teenager. "My brother and me had a little wrecking yard," Gold remembers, "and I used to take the old cast-iron flywheels out of cars and make weights out of them. Anything with a hole in it, we made a weight out of. We had a few boxes and benches, and we called it a gym, and you could get a pretty good workout." Joe also started spending time at Muscle Beach.

During World War II, Gold joined the Navy. He injured his hip when bombs rocked the ship he was on during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which took place in the Philippines in 1944. (This was a major engagement during which six United States ships and 26 Japanese ships were sunk; more than 10,000 lives were lost.) Proper treatment was delayed until his active duty ended, at which point he spent six months in hospitals. Joe was later called back into the Navy during the Korean conflict.

"Between the wars, I was basically a beach bum, and I wanted to find a way to work but not work, so I joined the merchant marines," Gold explains. "You can work a few months out of the year and make good money. Then you can loaf the rest of the year, play on the beach, work out and have fun." He sailed on commercial ships for 30 years, starting in 1948. On each journey, he took a set of weights with him. The intermittent gig also freed up plenty of time to pursue bodybuilding ventures.

SHORE LEAVE With a business partner, Gold opened Ajax's Gym in New Orleans in 1951, but he soon grew bored and returned to Southern California. As much as he found managing a gym stifling, he has always been invigorated by the challenge of building a better gym from scratch. Like any true sailor, upon reaching a destination, Gold was already planning the next journey.

In 1954, a casting call for a unique stage show reached the regulars at Muscle Beach. Gold was among a group of bodybuilders who visited the apartment of the legendary Mae West, who looked them over and purred, "I'll take all of you." They joined her Las Vegas revue, a song-and-skit show that featured some of the best male physiques of the era, including George Eiferman and Zabo Koszewski. The revue later toured the country, attracting major publicity and an A-list crowd. Gold praises West and says, "It was the highlight of my life being in the Mae West show, because I saw and did things I never had before."

LAUNCH In 1963, Gold proposed an indoor gym to the Muscle Beach Weightlifting Club in Santa Monica, which at that time had only an outside pit. When the proposed partnership didn't work out, Joe created Gold's Gym. It was completed in ate 1964 and opened in '65 on Pacific Avenue in Venice. "Gold's was the first bodybuilding gym made for bodybuilders," Joe avers. "A friend taught me how to weld, and from there I built everything myself, and when I built it, luckily, it all came out good. In fact, I'm not bragging, but I think for bodybuilders it was the best-built gym in the world at that time. They came from all over the world to work out at Gold's Gym."

One of those who came was young Arnold Schwarzenegger, introduced to the Venice gym in 1968 by Joe Weider. "Arnold was a great guy, always kidding around," Gold remembers. "I had my own nickname for him. I nicknamed everyone in the gym. It was easier than remembering their names. I couldn't pronounce Arnold Schwarzenegger, so I called him Balloon Belly. I used to have a lot of fun at Gold's. That's the object of going to a gym, having fun. That's the reason I ran my gyms like I did then and I do now, very lax and very easy."

The atmosphere at Gold's in the late '60s was idyllic in this golden age. Future Hall of Famers such as Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, Dave Draper and Larry Scott roamed the gym floor. For the owner, though, it was still hard work for scant rewards. Joe sold Gold's in 1970 and resumed his career as a merchant marine. Under its new owners, Gold's eventually became a franchise operation and is today the largest gym chain in the world.

Forever rebuilding, Gold has relocated the flagship World Gym twice, once to Venice in 1987 and again to its current location in Marina del Rey in 1999, never venturing far from the original Muscle Beach. Meanwhile, World Gym locations opened around the globe, and today it is the planet's second largest bodybuilding gym franchise, surpassed by only Gold's Gym.

Good as Gold: touching base with bodybuilding legend Joe Gold

Flex, March, 2002 by Greg Merritt

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