"MEETING THE TERMINATOR"

I don’t believe in celebrity autographs unless you’re asking for an ill child, young fan or aging relative. But I enjoy sharing my encounters with headliners, such as when I met the Terminator.

“MEETING THE TERMINATOR”

I don’t believe in celebrity autographs unless you’re asking for an ill child, young fan or aging relative. But I enjoy sharing my encounters with headliners, such as when I met the Terminator before he was a movie star.

         On my first trip to La-La Land in summer 1978, I was cruising Santa Monica Boulevard with my friend Jim when I saw two muscle-bound guys and some pretty L.A. women. One man looked very familiar. He was built like a defensive tackle, but he wasn’t a pro football player. He was: “The Austrian Oak.”

         “Hey, that’s Arnold Schwarzenegger!” I said as if speaking in tongues.

         “Who?”

         “Arnold Schwarzenegger. I heard about him when I was a kid lifting weights back in N.Y. “Turn the car around. I want to meet him.”

         Today, Schwarzenegger is notable because of his action movies, his two terms as California governor, and his pop culture legacy. But in 1978, few knew the guy, unless you followed his bodybuilding career in magazines like Strength & Health and Muscular Development or had seen the movie “Pumping Iron.”

         I began weightlifting in the mid-1960s to bulk up for high school football, to boost my strength and self-confidence. I worked out with friends in my basement or at the Harrison Rec Center. We never dreamed of becoming world-class bodybuilders, but we liked getting “pumped up.” Sometimes after a workout, we posed like our hero “Ah-nold.”

         On that memorable sunny L.A. day, Jim obliged me and pulled a U-turn. But there was no one outside the corner restaurant. So I went inside, almost bumping into Schwarzenegger, who was with his friends waiting for a table. He looked at me quizzically.

         I smiled and offered my hand: “Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

         “Yaah?”

         “I’m Mark Massé. I always wanted to meet you. How ya doin’?”

         “Gudd. I’m gudd. How you doin’?”

         “I’m good,” I said, realizing how puny I looked compared to this mountain of a man, who would soon be starring in “Conan the Barbarian,” then “The Terminator,” and a host of other films. But on this day, he was just Arnold Schwarzenegger to me. No need for an autograph. I said, “Take care” and quickly departed.

         Few knew back then, the fame awaiting this friendly bodybuilder with the tongue-twister name. But I believed in him. Because even in 1978, we were old acquaintances: The Austrian Oak and me.

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