RARE "Health & Fitness Guru" Bernarr MacFadden Hand Signed Card COA For Sale

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RARE "Health & Fitness Guru" Bernarr MacFadden Hand Signed Card COA:
$149.99

Up for sale a RARE! "Health & Fitness Guru" Bernarr MacFadden Signed Card.  This item is authenticated By Todd

Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.

ES-3135

proponent of physical culture, a

combination and health theories. He founded the Publications. He

was the predecessor of Charles Atlas and Jack LaLanne; together they shaped the American cultural trend

of "obsession with diet, health and fitness". However, Macfadden

himself thought it best "to live a wholesome, rational life, and to forget

the body as much as possible. Born in Mill Spring, Missouri,

Macfadden changed his first and last names to give them a greater appearance of

strength He thought "Bernarr" sounded like the roar of a lion,

and that "Macfadden" was a more masculine spelling of his last name. As

a young child, Macfadden was weak and sickly. After being orphaned by the time

he was 11, he was placed with a farmer and began working on the farm. The hard

work and wholesome food on the farm turned him into a strong and fit boy. When

he was 13, however, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri and

took a desk job. Quickly his health reverted again and by 16 he described

himself as a "physical wreck". He started exercising again with dumbbells, walking up to six miles a day with a lead weight in

his clothes, and he became a vegetarian. He quickly regained his previous health. Macfadden

founded Physical Culture magazine in 1899, and was editor up

to the August 1912 issue. Aided by long-time Supervising Editor Fulton Oursler, Macfadden eventually grew a publishing empire,

including Liberty, True Detective, True Story, True

Romances, Dream World, Ghost Stories, the

once-familiar movie magazine Photoplay, and the tabloid newspaper, The New York Evening Graphic. Macfadden's magazines

included SPORT, a

preeminent sports magazine prior to Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated. Ghost

Stories was a nod in the direction of the rapidly growing field

of pulp magazines, though it

was a large-size magazine that preserved Macfadden's confessional style for

most of its stories. In 1928, Macfadden made more overt moves into

the pulps with, for example, Red Blooded and Tales of Danger and Daring (1929).

These were all unsuccessful. In 1929, Macfadden underwrote Harold Hersey's pulp chain, the Good Story Magazine Company. Macfadden titles like Ghost

Stories and Flying Stories continued as Good Story

publications. Other intended Macfadden pulps, like Thrills of

the Jungle (1929) and Love and War

Stories (1930), originated as Good Story magazines. In

1931, Macfadden purchased the assets of the Mackinnon-Fly magazine publishers,

which gave him the pioneering sci-fi pulp Amazing Stories, and several other titles; they were published

under the Teck Publications imprint. This apparently made Good Story expendable

and financial support was withdrawn almost immediately. The Teck titles lasted

under Macfadden control until being sold in the late '30s, after which

Macfadden was absent from the pulp field.Macfadden also contributed to many

articles and books including The Virile Powers of Superb of Physical Culture (1911–1912), Fasting for

Health (1923), and The Milk Diet (1923). Macfadden

popularized the practice of fasting that previously had been

associated with illnesses such as anorexia nervosa. He felt strongly that fasting was one of the

surest ways to physical health. Many of his subjects would fast for a week in

order to rejuvenate their body. He claimed that "a person could exercise

unqualified control over virtually all types of disease while revealing a

degree of strength and stamina such as would put others to shame" through

fasting. He saw fasting as an instrument with which to prove a man's

superiority over other men. Macfadden had photographs of himself taken before

and after fasts to demonstrate their positive effects on the body. For example,

one photograph showed Macfadden lifting a 100-pound dumbbell over his head

immediately after a seven-day fast. Macfadden acknowledged the difficulties of

fasting and did not support it as an ascetic practice but rather because he

believed its ultimate benefits outweighed its costs.

He was particularly opposed to the consumption of white bread, which he

called the "staff of death". Macfadden

established many "healthatoriums" in the eastern and midwestern

states. These institutions offered educational programs such as "The

Physical Culture Training School". Although he gained his reputation for

physical culture and fitness, he gained much notoriety for his views on sexual

behavior. He viewed intercourse as a healthy activity and not solely a

procreative one; this was a different attitude than most physicians had at the

time. He also attempted to found a "Physical Culture City" in Monroe

Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey, which folded after a few

years and became the vacation-cabin neighborhood, and, later, suburban

development of Outcalt. Nicknamed "Body Love Macfadden" by Time – a moniker he detested – he was branded a

"kook" and a charlatan by many, arrested on obscenity charges, and

denounced by the medical establishment. Throughout his life, he campaigned

tirelessly against "pill-pushers", processed foods, and prudery. Macfadden

made an unsuccessful attempt to found a religion, "cosmotarianism",

based on physical culture. He claimed that his regimen would enable him to

reach the age of 150.

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