Posted on 10/02/2003 8:01:30 PM PDT by Pokey78
A film producer who chronicled Arnold Schwarzenegger's rise to fame as a champion bodybuilder in the 1970's circulated a book proposal six years ago that quoted the young Mr. Schwarzenegger expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler.
The book proposal by the producer, George Butler, included what were presented as verbatim excerpts from interviews conducted with Mr. Schwarzenegger in the filming of the documentary "Pumping Iron." In a part of the interview not used in the film, Mr. Schwarzenegger was asked to name his heroes — "who do you admire most."
"It depends for what," Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to the transcript contained in the book proposal. "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."
In addition to the transcript, Mr. Butler wrote in his book proposal that in the 1970's, he considered Mr. Schwarzenegger a "flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler." In the proposal, Mr. Butler also said he had witnessed Mr. Schwarzenegger playing "Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home" and said that the actor "frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer."
Mr. Schwarzenegger, in a telephone interview on Thursday, said that he did not recall making any of the comments attributed to him, or engaging in any of the behavior described by Mr. Butler.
"Let you tell you something: it's one of those things that if you come from that background, you get accused a lot of times of being that, of being a Nazi," said Mr. Schwarzenegger, who grew up in Austria, and whose father was a Nazi.
"So you know, I despise anything that Hitler stands for, anything he has done, hated the Nazism, hated what was done during the second World War" he continued. Mr. Schwarzenegger said that he did consider Hitler to be "a great public speaker," but that he was someone who had used his talent "for something negative."
In an interview Wednesday at his Upper East Side home, Mr. Butler stood by his recollection of a young Mr. Schwarzenegger playing Nazi marches and mimicking an S.S. officer. But he described them as passing behavior of an immature young man who had quickly grown up. And he said the comments were the product of the body-building culture of the 1970's. "It is the wackiest, zaniest, silliest, strangest world on earth," he said.
The exchange from "Pumping Iron" that was contained in the book proposal was confirmed on Thursday by Peter Davis, a consultant to the documentary project who conducted the interviews of Mr. Schwarzenegger for the film, which chronicled and helped popularize the body-building culture. But Mr. Davis, who is also a documentary producer, suggested that the excerpt had been taken out of context in Mr. Butler's proposal, and that Mr. Schwarzenegger had gone on to say that he had changed his views on Hitler as he grew up in Austria.
"He went right on to say, basically, as soon as he woke up, his hero became John F. Kennedy and he was shaking his head at himself," Mr. Davis said.
A copy of the proposal for the book, which would have been entitled "The Master Plan," was provided to the New York Times on Tuesday by someone who has no obvious affiliation with any of the California campaigns. The person provided the copy on the condition that his identity be kept secret and would not explain the motivation for releasing it. But the person was aware that the disclosure, coming within days of the California recall election, could damage Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign.
Mr. Butler, widely viewed as an expert on Mr. Schwarzenegger's career, confirmed the authenticity of the document, which he described as very tightly held, in an hourlong interview at his home on Wednesday.
Mr. Butler sold his proposal to St. Martin's Press for $500,000, but he said he decided not to write it, saying his research did not bear out his initial views of Mr. Schwarzenegger. He said that St. Martin's paid him $200,000 of the advance and that he had returned $100,000.
Mr. Schwarzenegger said Thursday that he purchased the rights to "Pumping Iron" in the early 1990's, a deal that resulted in his taking possession of all the film and outtakes.
Mr. Schwarzenegger said Thursday he was prepared to release outtakes to the public, though he said he was not certain where they were.
"I don't know if I have them now," he said. "If I find them, I would."
Mr. Butler said that he no longer had copies of the film or the outtakes. Asked if he had still had copies of the transcripts, which are routinely prepared in the preparation of documentaries, he said he might have them at his home in New Hampshire. "I may have some things and we are doing a real search in New Hampshire," he said. "There's a big cellar and there's a lot of stuff and it's been flooded down there and I'm not sure whether I do or I don't."
Mr. Butler and Mr. Schwarzenegger described their relationship as cordial. Several of Mr. Butler's associates said his career had been launched by his affiliation with Mr. Schwarzenegger. From the early 1970's, Mr. Butler predicted to associates that Mr. Schwarzenegger would become famous.
In the transcript, according to the Butler book proposal, Mr. Schwarzenegger said he wished he could experience the adulation of being a speaker at a huge political rally.
"The feeling like Kennedy had, you know, to speak to maybe 50,000 people at one time and having them cheer, or like Hitler in the Nuremberg Stadium," he said, the transcript shows. "And have all those people scream at you and just being in total agreement with whatever you say."
Mr. Schwarzenegger has gone to great lengths during this campaign to erase any suggestion that he has had ties to Nazi Germany, a charge he has encountered repeatedly in his public career. In 1993, in fact, Mr. Schwarzenegger was awarded damages in a libel suit in London against a British journalist who wrote several years earlier that the actor held Nazi views and admired Hitler.
Mr. Butler said that he distributed the proposal for the book, "The Master Plan," to six New York publishers in 1997, and that all rejected it. He said that his agent, Peter Matson, negotiated to sell it to St. Martin's.
In an interview, Mr. Matson confirmed that Mr. Butler, in pitching the proposal, had detailed Mr. Schwarzenegger's comments on Hitler.
Two editors who worked on the project in 1975, Geof Bartz and Larry Silk, said in interviews on Thursday that they did not recall the exchange that Mr. Butler included in his book proposal. But later in the day, after being told of Mr. Davis' recollection, Mr. Bartz said he had spoken to Mr. Silk about the remarks, and was no longer certain of his recollection.
"I thought the quote did sound like it came from a transcript, and we talked about whether we had forgotten it or cleaned it up somehow," he said. "And we realized we couldn't be completely sure."
A spokesman for St. Martin's said it canceled plans for the book because Mr. Butler failed to complete it. Mr. Butler said he backed out on his own.
"I just found that there was a lot of loose ends, and eventually — I'm a serious filmmaker, I care about my reputation," he said. "I want to always have it straight. I just felt uncomfortable writing this book and that's why I didn't do it."
As Mr. Curry jumps into the DumpSter with Bob Mulholland. You actually call him a Nazi? Shame.
Gerstl said he took it upon himself to teach the young men, Arnold among them, about a history his country was denying and about the dangers of anti-Semitism and fascism.
"I gathered the young people together for sports, but the condition was they had to listen," Gerstl, 80, said in an interview at his apartment in Graz. "Arnold was very inquisitive. He always wanted to know why we were against the Nazis. He always understood the need to protect the weak."
In after-school sessions at his home, Gerstl would play records of operatic music and tell Arnold that the beautiful voices he heard were those of persecuted Jews. Gerstl, his son Karl, Arnold and others would have long talks about sports and life and, occasionally, politics.
It is unclear how much of that early indoctrination stuck. Schwarzenegger, who left Austria for good in 1968, has said he "hated" the arts as a child and retained youthful prejudices until spending time in a more open, progressive United States.
Gerstl is fond of remembering a brave schoolmaster in Graz in the early 1960s who arranged a field trip to Mauthausen, the main Nazi-era concentration camp in Austria that was preserved as a museum.
Reactionary groups attacked the man for airing Austria's dirty laundry. Although Schwarzenegger did not go on the field trip, he was among the youths who staged a counter-demonstration in defense of the headmaster, according to Gerstl.
Now, Schwarzenegger's many admiring friends in Thal and Graz hold up these anecdotes as evidence that he could not possibly be anti-Semitic.
When you consider how anti-semitic Austria was for hundreds of years, it is extremely remarkable that Arnold took part in a demonstration in support of the headmaster who wanted to educate his students about Nazi atrocities. That says more about him than anything the New York or LA Times could ever say with their "Puke-litzer Prize" journalists.
The funny thing is that Europe has always been more sensitive to acclaimations about admiring Hitler for any reason-- and Schwarzenegger couldn't help but have grown up in the sort of PC -climate we have today.
As a guy in his twenties, he almost certainly could have picked anyone with a popular rags-to-riches tale. And with his desire to experience throngs of admirers in a stadium, he could have picked rock stars like The Who or Led Zeppilin.
If true, it sounds like Arnold wanted to convey the sort of hero-worship he craved and fellow Austrian Adolf was the closest comparison he could make.
Actually, Anyone (not necessarily you) who calls McClintock supporters "Tomikazes" has certainly woken up with Mr. Mulholland's fleas.
And Kevin Curry did not call Arnold a Nazi.
(In case you missed it, Richie Ross is the political guru of Cruz Bustamante and was Willie Brown's hatchet man when he was Assembly Speaker. He is the single sleaziest political operative I have ever encountered in 30 years of working on campaigns.)
The fact remains: he has a deep thirst to exercise personal power over people he does not consider his equals--which in his mind (by his own admission) is about 95 percent of the world's population.
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