Did Macfadden ever win the Mr. America title?
No, the Mr. America contest was started long after his prime as a muscleman. But he did hold America’s first bodybuilding competition, at Madison Square Garden in 1903. And a couple decades later his “Perfect Man” contest discovered another great strongman, Charles Atlas. After Atlas won for two consecutive years Macfadden retired the title, on the assumption that Atlas could never lose. • Q: What was Macfadden’s newspaper, the New York Evening Graphic, like? A: Sort of like the National Enquirer crossed with Muscle and Fitness, with a little True Detective thrown in. Plus comics. It was printed on shocking pink paper, and for a little while it was one of the best-selling dailies in the country. Then again, any paper that carried the bylines of Ed Sullivan, Walter Winchell, Fiorello LaGuardia and Aimee Semple Macpherson was bound to find a niche. • Q: If Macfadden was so influential how come almost no one under the age of eighty has ever heard of him? A: Because his ideas—daily exercis
