Joe Weider dies: Joe Weider, titan of the bodybuilding and fitness world, friend and mentor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, died at the age of 93 on Saturday.
Joe Weider, titan of the bodybuilding and fitness world, friend and mentor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, died at the age of 93 on Saturday.
Schwarzenegger reflected on his long-time friendship with Weider in a lengthy statement on his website: “I knew about Joe Weider long before I met him—he was the godfather of fitness who told all of us to ‘Be Somebody with a Body.’ He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions.
“Joe Weider was a titan in the fitness industry and one of the kindest men I have ever met,” Schwarzenegger wrote. Weider brought a young Schwarzenegger to America from Austria and started his career.
Weider even went so far as to “bizarrely, [claim] I was a German Shakespearean actor to get me my first acting role in ‘Hercules in New York,’ even though I barely spoke English.”
Weider grew up in Montreal, Canada. He died in his Los Angeles home of heart failure, according to the L.A. Times.
He won his first bodybuilding contest at the age of 17, and began publishing a magazine titled “Your Physique,” while he was still a teenager, reports Canadian broadcaster CBC.
His fitness empire grew to include Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Shape, and Men’s Fitness magazines. He founded the Mr. Olympia competition and the International Federation of Bodybuilders.
In the 1999 CBC documentary, “Weider Brothers: Men of Iron,” Weider said: “I told my mother, ‘Joe Weider is going to be successful. He’s going to make the name Weider world famous.’”
He and his brother, Ben, were partners in building the fitness empire.
The CBC narrator describes them: “Once, they were two scrawny Jewish kids growing up on the wrong side of Montreal. Today, they are hailed as founding fathers, not only of bodybuilding, but also of today’s fitness craze.”
