Joe Roark's IronHistoryArchives.com
The HUGE library of Iron History compiled by Joe Roark.
Welcome to Iron History with Joe Roark!
Joe Roark has been studying the iron game since 1957, and by 1970 began a systematic gathering of information on index cards. By the time his first computer was acquired, there were several hundred thousand references to be typed into it.
For a few years he published his own newsletter called MuscleSearch: The Roark Report. By 1992 he was appointed as the IFBB Men's Bodybuilding Historian, and began writing about history for FLEX in his column Factoids. For ten years he contributed to Iron Game History from the U of Texas at Austin. Recently he also began writing All Our Yesterdays for FLEX.
His passion has always been the period between 1880 and 1920, with particular emphasis on the oldtime strongmen of that era. Joe will be offering bits of history for Cyberpump once per week, and the text will be relevant to the dates of the calendar for those events of yesteryear relevant to the coming week.
In this column, readers will also be able to ask Joe questions or comment on his posts. Note: The comments are solely for interaction between Joe and the readers only -- not reader to reader.
2/25/2005: Showmanship
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Posted by TheEditor @ 09:04 PM CST
2/18/2005: Bill Klein
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Posted by TheEditor @ 09:23 PM CST
2/11/05: Letter From Charles A. Smith to Joe Roark, dated April 28, 1987
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Here is a letter from Charles A. Smith to Joe Roark, dated April 28, 1987. At about that time, my letter writing to Charles had become less frequent because of the chores of my life at that time. Charles found this very hard to understand and once commented that at one time he was running several magazines for Weider- or at least helping on several of them and he ALWAYS kept up his personal communication. I thought to myself that perhaps he kept up during office hours, but I did not know that and did not write that. I have regrets that I lessened my writing to him, but that is what happened.
CAS Apr 28, 1987[Roark note: About 1987, my life became much busier than it had been, and my letter writing to Charles became less frequent. I now regret that this happened, but it was how my life was in those days, and in retrospect, I wish it could have been different]
Letter from Charles A. Smith to Joe Roark Apr 28, 1987My Dear Joe,
Thanks for your letter post dated April 22nd and received by me on the 24th.
Yes, it has been a long time since you have written- since January 17th to be exact- the date of the last letter I received from you. I had begun to wonder if I had said or written something to upset you- or that you had in some way been disappointed in me. Living as I do, entirely on my own and only getting out of the house twice a week, when I go to work- hardly ever seeing anything of my family- apart from once a month when one of them comes over to do my shopping, getting a letter is like a visit from a friend, and responding is as if I am paying him or her a visit. I trust by now you have received my check for another year's sub to RR. May it continue for many more years. [RR was the Roark Report aka MuscleSearch]
Would it be possible for you to let me have the address of David Chapman. Perhaps he and I might swap tales of Sandow. I have gleaned several from the past, and from my own experiences. I doubt very much if he will ever find a market for his Sandow book. Not too many people know who Sandow is these days. I may have told you the tale of the time when there were some young students doing some work in the Collection. One of them held up a picture of Grimek and asked the other 'Who's this guy?' The other girl replied, 'Oh, some bodybuilder I guess.' How have the mighty fallen.
Yes, XXX was a heavy drinker. Jowett insists in many of his letters that XXX was also using drugs. This however I find hard to believe since Jowett said many things like this without anyone being able to ascertain if there was any truth in what he said. Frinstance he claimed that during one of his jaunts to England in the sixties, to have been introduced to the Queen and several 'Lords' who all congratulated him on his religious writings. Knowing the 'Upper classes' of England as I do, he would not have been allowed to get within smelling distance of them, let alone become on hobknobbing terms with them.
XXX as well as many others of the York bunch, was racist. He didn't like Jews or blacks or anyone who wasn't American, or who didn't come over with the Pilgrims and land at Plymouth Rock. But the worst thing he did was to write about Weider in one of his articles, making the following remark after some derogatory terms about the Wunderkind. "You can take the KIKE out of the gutter but you can't take the gutter out of the kike." If I had owned S&H and my managing editor�made that remark I would have fired him on the spot. There were other such racist remarks from time to time. Indeed, John Davis told me that at one time, after he had asked Hoffman, what he, Hoffman, could do for him, Davis after his lifting career was over, Hoffman replied, "Well, perhaps we'll BUY YOU A SHOESHINE STAND." To a man of Davis' education and sensibilities, this was an out and out insult. All Davis was trying to find out was if Hoffman would provide a job in the organization - that's all, Davis felt very bitter over this.
I had a fit the other day. I opened a copy of a British magazine- their December-January issue STRENGTH ATHLETE and found an article on the shoulder belt, an idea I had come up with and wrote about in the October 1952 edition of Muscle Power. Word for word, title, sub head and body copy the 'author' had copied my article. He had even traced out the drawings that went with it- drawings by Peter Poulton. The author's line said 'Text and drawings by Graham Brown, Scotland's International Strong Man. He hadn't altered a single word. What he had done was take paragraphs and left others out without altering the sense of the article and published it as his own. I have never heard of this guy before. Anyway I wrote the publisher right away, enclosing xeroxs of my article and the one he had published. And asking what he intended to do. This was two weeks ago this coming Friday. No answer yet. I intend to sue if he doesn't offer redress. I have already got in touch with some solicitors in London.
[in Weider mags}: All the articles appearing under Doug Hepburn's name I wrote. Doug got 175 bucks a piece. I got NOTHING.
I started WRESTLING MAG for Weider, his first independent mag outside weight training. I also was his 'Food and Wine' editor for JEM mag.
Well, TTFN, best to you and yours,
ChasPosted by TheEditor @ 06:09 PM CST
2/4/2005: Syd Harrington
Thursday, February 3, 2005
Here is a letter dated December 6, 1950 from Syd Harrington to 'Ray'. I do not have the envelope in which this letter was sent, but I would suppose Ray to be Ray Van Cleef.
Syd was a good British weightlifter, whose file I have misplaced!
Posted by TheEditor @ 10:04 PM CST
