Al Treloar

He won the first international bodybuilding contest in 1904, appeared in early silent films, and toured the United States as a vaudeville performer.

Showman Florenz Ziegfeld created an evening vaudeville production at the city's Trocadero nightclub, centered around German bodybuilder Eugen Sandow.

[5] The production opened on August 1, 1893, and consisted of a series of athletic acts—acrobats, cyclists, trapeze artists—interspersed with musical interludes (during which food and drink were served).

After various demonstrations of feats of strength, the show's climax was Sandow lifting a barbell with a large wicker basket attached to each end.

[1] He studied independently under lecturer Dudley Allen Sargent, director of the Hemenway Gymnasium, and perhaps the foremost American expert on physical education.

[1] She was his partner in multiple areas—under the pseudonym "Edna Tempest," she appeared as a fitness model on the cover of Physical Culture magazine,[9] she was his onstage assistant in their vaudeville act, and she contributed a chapter to his book on muscular development.

Treloar graduated from Harvard in 1896 with a special degree in physical education,[10] and remained in Cambridge for a year to coach the freshman crew team.

[13] One of the most remarkable and unique expositions ever given in this country will be the First Physical Culture Exhibition, which will be held at the Madison Square Garden, New York City, during the week beginning December 28 and ending January 2.

The magnificent specimens of manhood and womanhood that have entered the contests for the two $1,000 prizes will tend, in themselves, to prove what can be done by persistent attention to the great laws of health.

[21] A poster of Treloar "wearing a pair of sandals and a leopard's skin as a breech-cloth" was deemed "obscene" by Anthony Comstock,[22] founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

[24] Treloar, billed as an "Ex-Harvard Varsity Oarsman and Champion Athlete, and Exponent of Modern Physical Culture," put on an act that was neat and interesting from start to finish.

[1]The Los Angeles Athletic Club offered Treloar the position of physical director, and he began work there in February 1907.

[29] Treloar held the position of physical director at the Los Angeles Athletic Club for 42 years, from 1907 to his retirement at age 76 in 1949.