Book Review	Book Reviews Archive

American Adonis: Tony Sansone, the First Male Physique
by John Massey
Universe Publishing
How to order

American popular culture has been obsessed with body-building-- and by extension, the open, erotic display of unclothed males-- since the turn of the century. American Adonis is a terrific, beautifully illustrated book that examines the life and influence of one of the first proponents of bodybuilding-- or physical culture, as it was called at the start.

Because so little decent historical work has been done on the topic, Massey's book is a welcome revelation. Here the general reader will get a crash course on the beginnings of the physical-culture movement-- in late 19th century London, when "strongman" Eugene Sandow began a chain of gymnasiums. Following suit in the US, Benarr McFadden began publishing Physical Culture in 1898. Massey shows how Sansone's own career was emblematic of upheavals in American culture in the early half of the 20th century.

View our poll archive

Massey shows how US body-building was fueled by immigrants, whose lives wove myriad connections between professional and amateur physical culture and popular entertainment, as well as high culture.

That many of America's most famous bodybuilders were from first-generation immigrant families is no surprise. There were few jobs, and often children of immigrants gravitated toward professions that might provide social status as well as income. While vaudeville and Broadway (and then Hollywood) provided an outlet for Jewish and Irish talents, many sons of new immigrants also became boxers. In the early part of the century, body-building (in its most popularized form) was connected to carnival sideshows, circuses, and 10-cent oddity museums.

Tony (whose actual name was Antony Joseph) was born in Brooklyn in 1905 and fit right into this pattern. Men of Italian heritage-- such as Achille Volpe, Joe Bonomo, Louis Attila, Angelo Siciliano (who later became Charles Atlas), and Charles Roman-- became prime movers in the scene, either as bodybuilders or promoters. Massey makes astute connections between the image of Sansone's "exotic" Italian-American sexual appeal and the popularity of Hollywood stars such as Rudolf Valentino. The sexual appeal of "the other" was as much at work in the formation of the physical-culture movement as the appeal of the well-formed male body.

But Sansone was not just a muscle-bound hunk. He was more concerned with the grace of line and form the body conveyed than how large his muscles were. While Sandow used attic Greek statuary as inspiration, Sansone looks more like those statues as interpreted by the artists of the Italian Renaissance. It was Sansone's singular grace that paved connections for him into American high art. In the mid-1920s, through his friendship with Charles Atlas, Sansone began to pose for New York artists such as Joseph Nicolosi, Arthur Lee, and Malvina Hoffman. His work on Broadway led him to begin work as a model for such important photographers as Edwin Townsend and George Platt Lyons.

While Sansone did not set out to create "gay art," these photos helped create a new public arena for homoerotic images, or at least images that could be read that way.

American Adonis makes clear that-- as with Sansone's own life-- there are no clear lines or easy answers when discussing the mutual, echoing influences of gay sensibility on mainstream culture.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com