Charles Gaines, whose book Pumping Iron helped to popularize bodybuilding, dies at 84 | Books
Author Charles Gaines, whose book and documentary Pumping Iron helped bring professional bodybuilding into the mainstream and introduced Arnold Schwarzenegger to the world, has died. He was 84 years old.
Gaines died Tuesday, according to the author’s daughter, Greta Gaines. He did not give a reason.
“You always marched to your own drummer and inspired everyone around you to do the same,” he wrote in a tribute to his father. “Follow that happiness, catch that fish, and kiss those lips while you can, because my father was a man who lived life to the fullest.”
Gaines collaborated with George Butler to write Pumping Iron: The Art and Sport of Bodybuilding, which led to the production of the documentary Pumping Iron, for which Butler and Gaines wrote the script.
In the introduction to their 1974 book, Gaines wrote that he and Butler considered it “a kind of respectful report from the inside of an interesting, colorful, and hitherto ignored region of American life.”
In the 2022 edition, he admitted that neither author thought “many people outside the bodybuilding world would be interested in the book.” Gaines wrote that Schwarzenegger almost single-handedly “brought bodybuilding out of the shadows where it had languished since its early days in America and into the spotlight.”
Schwarzenegger, who won seven Mr. Olympia and five Mr. Universe titles and was photographed flexing on the cover of Pumping Iron, turned attention to his career, first in films including The Terminator, True Lies, Twins and Predator, and then in politics, becoming governor of California from 2003 to 2011.
Gaines wrote that he had been involved in bodybuilding in some way since the age of 16, when he started lifting weights. Pumping Iron began in 1972 as an article in Sports Illustrated about a bodybuilding contest for Mr. East Coast.
“If at times we felt like 19th-century explorers, it was because we found bodybuilding to be as primitive and mapless as patches of Labrador,” he wrote. “We discovered that no one came back to this to submit a report on what it was like.”
Gaines and Butler used the book as the basis for their 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, which focused on the rivalry between Schwarzenegger and fellow bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno for the Mr. Olympia title. Ferrigno later appeared on television in The Incredible Hulk.
Gaines grew up in Alabama and earned a bachelor’s degree from Birmingham-Southern College and a master’s degree in fine arts in writing from the University of Iowa.
Gaines has published numerous books throughout his career, including Waters Far and Near: A Fishing Adventure and Tales of Misadventure Around the World, as well as the novels Stay Hungry, Dangler, and Survival Games. Stay Hungry was adapted into a movie starring Jeff Bridges, giving Schwarzenegger his first film role.
“He climbed mountains, hiked on ice, fished, and hunted on nearly every continent, writing down each adventure in a way that captured people’s hearts and minds. He was interested in everything, and his interest was contagious,” Schwarzenegger wrote on Instagram.
“I’m lucky that he’s always looking for new frontiers, because that’s how he found me and our niche sport, bodybuilding.”
In addition to his daughter Greta, Gaines is survived by his wife, artist Patricia Ellisor Gaines, and two other children, Latham and Shelby Gaines.
