Angelo Siciliano was born in Acri, Calabria, Italy, on October 30, 1892. Eleven years later, he and his family traveled through Ellis Island and settled in Brooklyn, New York. As a young boy, Angelo was often teased and bullied about his small stature. He was inspired by statues of Greek and Roman gods that were housed in his neighborhood museum and also by bodybuilders who performed on Coney Island. During one of his visits to the beach town a group of older boys began to pick on Angelo. They pushed him to the ground and kicked sand in his face. This moment of humiliation changed Angelo as he pledged to bulk up and get revenge.
He began to devise a workout and “on a visit to the Bronx Zoo one day he had an epiphany…watching a lion stretch, he thought to himself, ‘Does this old gentleman have any barbells, any exercisers? …And it came over me…He’s been pitting one muscle against another!’” (Smithsonian Magazine). He began to develop his dynamic tension workout program and within months his body had been transformed. In 1921, he won the World’s Most Beautiful Man Contest and in 1922 he legally changed his name to Charles Atlas. That same year he won The World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man Award in New York City. The competition was discontinued as the promoter felt that no one could ever beat Charles.
The famous Charles Atlas print advertisements became iconic mostly because they were printed in cartoon form from the 1930s on, and in many comic books from the 1940s onwards – in fact continuing long after Atlas’ death. The typical scenario, usually expressed in comic strip form, presented a skinny young man being threatened by a bully. The bully pushes down the “97-pound weakling”. The young man goes home, gets angry, and sends away for the free Atlas book. Shortly thereafter, the newly muscled hero returns to the place of his original victimization, seeks out the bully, and beats him up. He is rewarded by the swift return of his girlfriend and the admiration of onlookers.
By the 1950s Charles Atlas had built himself a fitness empire. He boasted over one million followers worldwide including Rocky Marciano, Joe DiMaggio, David Prowse, Max Baer, Joe Louis and Robert Ripley. On December 23, 1972, Charles passed away from a heart attack. Charles Atlas Ltd. was founded in 1929 and, as of 2020, continues to market a fitness program for the “97-pound weakling”.