Plague of Strength

The TLDR of this man’s life is that you are boring, and you have no reason to be so. Avoid sports because they’re hurt your lifts? you’re a fucking halfwit. Think reading anatomy manuals is going to make a you a good lifter, or educated? You’re a fucking halfwit. Life is too short to be boring, fat, stupid, or any combination thereof, and Bill Smith is living fucking proof that the more shit you try and wild shit you learn, the more interesting and awesome and jacked you will become.

If you’re anything like me, you’re under the impression that jacked people in film, outside of those godawful sword-and-sandal flicks that guys like Steve Reeves and Reg Park did and the Tarzan movies before those were the product of the 1980s (hell, I’ve seen at least one film documentary that idiotically claimed the 80s invented real action films). That’s the story we’ve all been told- the 80s were an era of excess, and because of that, physiques became excessive, bloated with the evil steronz and sold to America with a line of cocaine and a big glass of trickle-down economics. Arnold flexed his 20″ inchers and everyone swooned because we thought the only person who’d done anything like that was Stallone, and Stallone was fucking tiny compared to the Oak. Or that’s at least how I thought the mantle of unofficial “most jacked motherfucker in Hollywood” (Park and the other bodybuilders were Italian film stars, not Hollywood stars) had been passed down from muscular sweaty man to larger muscular sweaty man.

Recently, I discovered how jacked Chuck Bronson was in the decades prior to the advent of Arnold, and I knew the trend extended further back, but I didn’t know how deep or how far. For whatever reason, I believed the hype that jacked dudes in action films are a modern invention, and I also thought I was aware of every badass in Hollywood of whom one needed to be aware, from maniac shot-putter Brian Oldfield to karate man-turned-bodybuilder-turned-actor Sven Ole-Thorsen to psychotic NFL superstar Lyle Alzado to crazy sexy bodybuilder Sue Price, and everyone in between.

I was wrong. The man I am about to profile will likely only cause your brain to flicker at the mention of Conan or Red Dawn, or perhaps when you see the terrible handlebar mustache that made him easy to identify in those unwatchable green-and-brown flicks of the 60s and 70s. Bill Smith, considered the greatest bad guy actor of all time, has hundreds of movies and maybe a solid decade of television experience in which the man almost never had a day off, rocking a physique that varied between that of Reeves and that of Arnold throughout, and making all of the other shit he did even more impressive.

Frankly, with this man’s list of preposterous accolades, achievements, and victories it’s hard to understand how he ever could have flown under the radar (save for the fact that the films of that era are mostly unwatchable), and although they might seem apocryphal at best, I managed to verify the vast majority of the stuff in legitimate historical sources or interviews with the man himself, so try and suspend your disbelief as I detail this man’s unreal life as softcore gay strap-and-sandal model turned armwrestling bodybuilder turned actor trained by Vince Gironda, his amateur boxing career, his martial arts background, and all of the other shit that will have you insanely pissed that Roper in Enter the Dragon ended up going to John Saxon rather than Bill Smith because of delayed shooting on some B-movie no one ever saw.

Bill Smith Vital Statistics

Born:

Height: 6’2″

Weight: 200lbs (competition); weight varied greatly in film

Best Lean Upper Arm Measurement: 19.5″

Best Lifts: Reverse Curl of 163 pounds at 171 pounds bodyweight (WR) (Roussin)

Martial Arts Highlights:

• amateur boxing record of 31-1
• studied kenpo karate under Jimmy Woo and Ed Parker for eight years. Peruvian weightlifter turned power bodybuilder Hugo Labra was also an Ed Parker student at the time, so it seems like the Venice Beach crrew was the wrong crew to fuck with back in the day (Chuck Liddell also trained at that school, for instance, as did eventual almost martial arts star Jeff Speakman

Sports Highlights:

• training partners of Dave Draper and Mr. Olympia Larry Scott
• worked as a trainer at Bert Goodrich’s LA gym
• did 5100 consecutive situps in five hours
• performed 35 inverted handstand dips to win a Muscle Beach contest
• competed in AAU downhill skiing events
• won US Army Forces Light Heavyweight Weightlifting Competition
• 2 time u200lb World Arm Wrestling Champion (as related in my Mac Batchelor article) He was also multiple winner of the Film and Television Industry Arm Wrestling Championship.
• played semi-pro football for the Wiesbaden Flyers in Germany
• threw the discus 151 feet when the top AAU record was 150.6 feet
• won the German-Austrian light heavy boxing championship while in the Air Force
• was identified in a 2010 History Channel show called “Markmen” as the most accomplished living bull whip handler

“Winners of preliminary matches earned the chance to face Bill Smith to try to take his crown. He defeated the first few challengers without too much effort. It seemed like he would have an easy day, until a young man came out of the crowd. The young man in question was Johnny Haemmerle , the lead singer of the group that was hired to play music throughout the days’ festivities. Johnny wasn’t a huge individual, and Bill figured it would be an easy final match for him. He was mistaken! Johnny proved to be a formidable adversary – he actually got the jump on Bill and looked headed towards a victory but an issue with the table required that the match be restarted. This time Bill took his opponent very seriously. He hit hard and brought Johnny’s arm about halfway down before it stopped. There was no movement for a short while before Bill finally mustered up enough force to bring Johnny’s arm down to the table top. Bill successfully defended his title of champion of the motion picture and television industry!” (Roussin).

[Scroll to the end for Johnny Haemmerle’s story, because he might be Elvis’ bodybuilding, armwrestling, and inventor of the acoustic progenitor of the flying-v electionc guitar twin brother]

Military Service: Air Force, NSA. Korean War veteran.

Languages Spoken: English, Russian, French, German and Serbo-Croatian

Academic Accolades: Master’s in Russian from UCLA; served as a lecturer at that school in Russian in the late 50s)

Film and Television Highlights:

The man has nearly 300 film and TV credits on IMBD, so I’m not going to list all of them. Most of the shit for which he was recognized is stuff no one under the age of 65 will likely ever see on purpose, but it was mostly cowboy and biker tv shows. Like Kurt Russell (with whom he later worked on screen) Bill Smith began his career as a child actor on the Ghost of Frankenstein (1941) in which he worked with screen and horror legend Lon Cheney (who bought all the kids ice cream onset). Additionally, you might know him from:

• Conan (1982)- Conan’s father
• Red Dawn (1984)- Strelnikov, the Russian commander
• he was the Marlboro Man in the final televised Marlboro commercial
• he appeared in the final episode of Batman (1966), a role that was initially supposed to be played by one of his training partners, Mike Henry (who died last month of a brutal combo of CTE and Parkinsons). Henry would have been pound for pound the most muscular Batman of all time, standing 6’2″ and between 200 ripped-as-fuck pounds for his Tarzan films and his NFL playing weight of 220, which means he’d be 20 to 40 lbs heavier than Bale at the same height.
• Laredo (tv show)- this western was what likely made him a name, and in it he was shirtless and bound more than any man has been outside of a Wonder Woman comic book, because a sweaty, muscular man bound with rope quietly had massive appeal to most of Hollywood, it seems.

The Batman show conceived in the early 60s with Mike Henry in the titular role likely would have drastically changed the trajectory of the Batman franchise- rather than going campy, they planned a serious, dramatic Batman series with the musclebound NFL star. With that in place, there would have been no Batman ’66 to give a gritty reboot in ’89, so there is absolutely no telling where Batman might have gone. The tv station that was busy fucking up all of the DC properties in the 80s and 90s was the WB, which turned into CW, and their shows were usually a half campy, overly wrought, saccharine mess, as most tv of that era was. As such, we likely lucked out with the way our timeline ended up (a campy Batman ’89 movie starring Kurt Russell might have been the greatest thing ever, perhaps with a Bruce Campbell Batman sequel?), but it is always fun to speculate. That dude in a Bat costume would have likely looked as good as Clark Bartram did in the 90s in the Batman short Dead End, however, which really would have been cool to see on TV back in the day.

The two tragic near misses of Bill Smith’s career were brutal, given how they could have changed the trajectory of his career due to their martial-arts heavy themes and the fact they would have gotten Bill out of the wildly homoerotic biker and cowboy shit he was primarily cast in, making him far better known to people like you and I.

• Kung Fu (tv show)- he auditioned for Caine in prosthetic epicanthic folds (yeah, yellow face was a serious, serious thing in Hollywood at the time for some reason) but was ultimately considered too menacing and muscular to play the role in spite of the fact that he actually knew both kung fu and boxing, making him perfect for a role originally intended for Bruce Lee (and conceived by Bruce Lee). He did however end up on the show anyway, fighting against Caine using a length of chain as a whip.

“Even David Carradine saw it – I showed it to him when I was doing a KUNG FU [“The Chalice,” 1973], and he said “God, you shoulda gotten that role, Bill.” It really was a fantastic piece of film. I wrote the thing, and Jack directed it. We shot it as if this guy was working on building railroads, because that’s what most of the Chinese did in those days. It was a terrific thing, and they really liked it, but I don’t know — for whatever reason, they went for David. I was really working out a lot, and Jack had me in this…almost like a Judo suit, but with no sleeves on it. David said he thought my arms were too big. People out here seem to have the idea that if you have 18-inch arms, you’re a dummy or something, y’know? And I got my Masters cum laude from UCLA, so I think that makes it sort of irrelevant” (Master Cylinder).

• Enter the Dragon– when Bill was working with Jeff Bridges on The Last American Hero, Bruce Lee flew to the set to pitch the role of Roper to him. Bill loved it, but The Last American Hero ran two weeks over schedule and Smith had to back out. Thus, instead of kicking off a career in martial arts films with the seminal kung fu flick, Bill was a forgotten character in a shitty flick that only made half of its budget in the box office.

Sexytime Highlights: modeled for Bob Mizner’s Athletic Model Guild as William Brown. Mizner’s guild primarily published “posing-strap-clad hunks… for a mostly-gay male fanbase” (William Smith).  He was also a regular at crazy-ass gay and gay-friendly parties held by the agent of famous secretly gay actor Rock Hudson. You might say “who gives a fuck?” to that, but you’d be missing a fun piece of Hollywood history, as that agent, Henry Willson, used his stable of gay-for-pay actors to blackmail Hollywood execs into casting them. Willson was best friends with Scotty Bowers, who ran the infamous Hollywood fuck shop Mr. America Steve Reeves used to frequent, all which which makes both this story and Reeves’ story that much more rad and scandalous.

Not that his sexual dalliances ever hurt his lifts- it was usually his lifts that hurt his career, in fact. Take Arnold, for instance- he was so bitter about losing in an arm wrestling match to the much lighter Smith that he never cast Smith in his flicks again, in spite of the fact they ran in the same circle of lifters and friends.

“I heard that you arm wrestled Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of Conan.

William Smith: No, I arm wrestled him the day after he got here from Europe – and I beat him. He weighed two-eighty, and I was the two hundred pound arm wrestling champion of the world three years in a row at that time. And then I got some good reviews on CONAN. One review – I forgot where it was said the movie got bad when I quit talking. I work out in a World Gym now, which Arnold owns with Joe Gold. Arnold’s never hired me again, and Joe said ‘It’s not because of the review, it’s because you beat him arm wrestling!’ Yeah, he was not at all pleased with that. He spoke hardly any English at the time. After I beat him, he left he was so wide, he could hardly get out the front door of this house I lived in Laurel Canyon – but he turned around and said [in German] ‘I will be a movie star.’ And he is” (Master Cylinder) [Pictured: Smith (l), Franco Columbo (c), and Arnold (r)]

Unfortunately, we have very little on how the man trained. That’s not to say that nothing has ever been written on the subject, as Vince Gironda mentioned in the Wild Physique being besieged by questions from fans about how Bill Smith trained. Vince’s gym at the time was jam-packed with famous actors and lifters, so it must have been damn near impossible to be small, fat, or otherwise useless in that gym. The member list included:

• 1960 Mr. America overall winner Ray Routledge (who lost the most muscular to the aforementioned diminutive Oly lifter, powerbuilder, and kenpo practitioner Hugo Labra). Perhaps it was his choice to do heavy machine squats on a machine designed specifically to build his thighs while leaving his ass tiny that kept him from winning the most muscular, but his thighs were the biggest in Vince’s gym.
• beefcake actor Clint Walker, who was perpetually shirtless in cowboy tv shows (and one of Henry Willson’s honey pot actors for those zany Hollywood parties)
• Mr. California, Bill McArdle
• Mr. America, Don Howorth
• Short class Mr. Universe winner Gable Boudreau
• 1962 Mr America short class winner John Tristam, who also did some “side modelling” for the same agency as Bill Smith and Clint Walker

Gironda’s gym wasn’t the only place in which Bill Smith trained- like anyone, he liked to train all over so he could train with and against the best. After Vince’s, Bill went to Bert Goodrich’s gym before training with the Gold’s crew and all of the big names of the 70s, along with the aforementioned Christian cult gym Zuver’s. Bill’s story also seems to support my theories about the extremely homoerotic nature of Christian cult gym Zuver’s, as Bill was known to train there with nearly homeless drunken wife beating psychopath Bert Elliot– as much as the right hates to hear it, the dudes you looked up to growing up likely saw a lot of cock up close and the vast majority of them weren’t racists or wife-beaters, so you might want to rethink your prejudices.

Though Smith’s training routines appear to be lost to us today, we do know how his training partner, Mr. Olympia Larry Scott, did for his 1965 run at the Olympia, which was contemporaneous with their training and Bill Smith’s arm wrestling titles. Their training weights were light at Vince’s, by and large, because Vince encouraged bodybuilding as opposed to strength building or strength sports. Basically everyone trained six days a week precontest, and this is what Larry Scott and ostensibly Bill Smith were doing when they hit the gym. They would alternate the following two workouts back and forth, and Larry Scott occasionally went two weeks without taking a day off from training at the time. That said, six days of training with Sunday off was the general rule of the day.

Larry Scott’s Split Routine

Mon / Thurs: Chest / Back.

Tues/Fri: Shoulders / Arms.

Weds / Sat: Legs.

According to Larry, this pretty much sums up his training methods, which would have been Bill’s methods as well:

• “I work approximately 2 or 3 muscles or muscle groups per day.
• I do 3 to 4 exercises for each muscle or muscle group 2 or 21/2 times per week.
• I do 8 to 10 repetitions for each set and from 6 to 8 and sometimes even 10 sets. This holds true of all muscle areas but the calves and forearms. Because of the nature of their muscle fibers I use higher rep’s (up to 20 repetitions). I finish many of my sets with the “burns” (rapid, short movements to give an intense, aching, burning feeling).
• Considering the above you will find that I do about 20 to 30 sets per body part, muscle or muscle group. Let me use the biceps as an illustration.
• I would probably use about 4 different exercises for the biceps and 5 to 6 sets for each exercise of 8 to 10 repetitions. This would make a total of 24 sets for the biceps.
• If I were working the Biceps, Triceps, and Deltoids today. I would have 4 exercises for each and say 5 sets of each exercise or a total of 60 sets for my workout today.
• This type of workout takes me about 2 hours.
• I do not rest too much between exercises or between sets but try to keep moving along pretty well.
• Tomorrow I would work another body part or group of muscle, perhaps two or three groups or single muscles as the case might be. So each day I change body parts, groups of muscles or individual muscles. I get back to these muscles about twice per week. Each workout takes me about 2 hours each night or 12 hours work per week” (Rippeder).

Vince Gironda told everyone who would listen that Bill Smith had the best long head of the triceps he’d ever seen. To get his sick triceps, Smith apparently did endless sets and reps of overhead cable extensions.

As I realize those suggestions are too vague for some, here are the routines listed for Larry Scott in Joe Weider’s Ultimate Bodybuilding. Joe was known to get a little loose and fast with the details of his athletes’ routines, but these bodypart workouts seem to be in line with what Larry Scott told Irving Johnson about his training in the 60s.

Biceps

Incline DB Curls– 3×6

DB Preacher Curls– 3-4×6*

Barbell Preacher Curls– 3-4×6*

Reverse Curls– 3-4×6*

• do four quick partials at the end of each set of each exercise

Shoulders

Standing DB Presses– 4-5×6*

Prone Incline DB Laterals– 4-5×6-8*

Cable Bent Laterals– 4-5×6-8*

One Arm DB Side Laterals– 5×8

• are all supersetted. He starts with the heaviest poundage he’ll use and then steps the weight down as he goes so he can get all of his reps

Forearms

Machine Reverse Curls– 3-4×8

Seated Barbell Supported Wrist Curls– 2-3×20

Standing Barbell Wrist Curls– 2-3×20

Triceps

Skullcrushers– 4-6×6*

High Pulley Rope Extensions– 4-6×6*

Kneeling High Pulley Rope Extensions– 4-6×6 (I thought it was particularly interesting that these were done with a high cable, and it’s worth a try- it certainly changes the angle of attack on your tris)

• are supersetted and at least 4-6 burnout partials should be done at the end of each set

If you want more Larry Scott routines, there are some good ones on Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.

Diet

Bill Smith never shared his diet tips, insofar as I know, but given that everyone at Vince’s had the same look, it’s a certainty they were all doing virtually the same shit. Vince’s guys were all lean as shit, year round, as Vince refused to allow them to bulk and blur their definitiion.

Larry Scott’s secret for going from 170lbs to 200lbs (aside from dbol), was Irving Johnson’s protein on a high fat, high protein, high calorie, low carb diet that Vince had all of his lifters use. If you want in depth information on recipes for these shakes, their macros and ingredients, and the history behind protein powder, click these words to learn how the dudes in the 60s did it before most of the shit we take for granted in aiding hypertrophy had not yet been invented.

Larry’s method was:

“I was using from 11/2 to 2 cups of Johnson’s Protein (Rheo H. Blair’s Protein) per day. I would mix it with cream and milk. I used about 2/3 of a quart of cream a day in mixing this along with the milk to make it the desired consistency. I took this protein-cream mix three times per day. I would eat 6 to 8 times per day. I would have breakfast, then a snack at 10 A. M. and then lunch at noon, then another snack at 2:30 P.M., then dinner plus the Protein-Cream drink. My evening meal is eaten after I work out.”

Short class universe winner Gable Boudreaux had a similar method, outlined by Vince himself:

Gable took about 4 cups of protein per day. He would mix 1/3 cup of protein to 1 glass of half and half (cream and milk).

He took about 1 glass of this every hour for approximately 12 hours a day. This is about 386 grams per day.

He would not have been able to digest so much except for the protein digestant protocol (see the Blair Report book for details on digestive enzymes, etc.) as cream should not be used on its own with protein supplements (Gable).

Like I said at the outset, this man is a national treasure and hardly anyone knows it. What’s worse, he might have been the most badass martial arts star we ever had, yet fate had other plans.

Regardless, the man is certainly worthy of mention for the part he played in bringing bodybuilding to the masses two decades before Arnold.

Guys like Reeves and Reg Park couldn’t act worth a shit and generally starred in foreign films, so they were mostly unknown to American audiences. Bill Smith, however, was jacked and shirtless on our televisions day in and day out for decades, almost single-handedly paving the way for later stars like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, future American president the Rock, Van Damme, and Jason Statham, who as bad ass as he might be still can’t hold a fucking candle to the inimitable Bill Smith.

So raise your fucking glasses, bowls, or j’s to one of the coolest motherfuckers to ever walk the planet, Bill Smith. Everything you can do, he could do better, save for obviously squatting… unless you happen to be wheelchair-bound.

The Johnny H Sidebar:

The musician Bill ended up armwrestling in 1965 was Johnny Haemmerle aka Johnny H (of Johnny H and His Henchmen) aka Jesse Garron Presley, the possible long-lost brother of Elvis, inventor of the insanely fucking metal widebody flying-v acoustic guitar, singer in a doo wop band, actor, and bodybuilder.

He may also have just been a fucking crazy person, but his story has enough of the right talking points that even the biggest skeptic could admit that it appears that Jesse Garron Pressley was not actually still born but rather given up for adoption, as the two were born on the same day in the same place. You can click these words for the long version of his story, though the bit about Mr America appears to be incorrect, as he isn’t listed as a contestant in the AAU or IFBB Mr Americas on Muscle Memory. From his pics, I think that Johnny H did the same sort of soft-core bodybuilding modeling that Bill Smith did, rather than anything competitive.

“Jesse Haemmerle had been using the name Johnny H as the leader for his band. But he had learned from three family members that his real birth name was Presley. His legal father obtained his birth certificate and it showed his birthday to be January 8th of 1935 and his birthplace was Tupelo Mississippi.

Coincidentally Elvis Aaron Presley was born on that same day, January 8th of 1935 and his birthplace was  also in Tupelo, Mississippi. It is said that Elvis had a twin brother named Jesse, who was declared dead at birth. This baby was named Jesse Garon Presley. This is something that haunted both men throughout their lives. Jesse says that he was able to meet Elvis in 1964. He tells the story about that time. Elvis rarely talked to anyone about his “stillborn” brother, but on that afternoon when they met, the floodgates opened up and that’s all both men talked about for hours.

Was he actually Elvis Presley’s twin brother? I do not know if that mystery will ever be solved” (O’Hara).

SUPPORT THE STRENGTH SPORTS UNDERGROUND AND A ROGUE ACADEMIC HELLBENT ON FORCIBLY EDUCATING EVERY PERSON WHO’S EVER LOOKED ASKANCE AT A BARBELL.

Sources:

Gable Boudreaux and Rheo H Blair.  Iron guru.  Web.  9 Feb 2021.  http://ironguru.com/gable-boudreaux-and-rheo-h-blair/

Hinburn, Bill.  Facebook post.  Facebook.  1 Aug 3014.  Web.  5 Jan 2021.  https://www.facebook.com/SuperStrengthTraining/posts/william-smith-hollywood-tough-guy-extraordinaireborn-on-a-cattle-ranch-in-missou/10152546677401132/

How Larry Scott trained and diet.  Rippeder.  Web.  9 Feb 2021.  http://rippeder.com/content/how-larry-scott-trained-and-diet

O’Hara, Marc. Johnny H and the Henchmen aka Jesse Haemmerle – The Original Hollowbody V Acoustic Guitar.  https://uniqueguitar.blogspot.com/2016/01/johnny-h-and-henchmen-aka-jesse.html

Roussin, Eric.  The International Federation of Arm Wrestlers.  Armchair Archives.  2017.  Web.  21 Aug 2019.  https://www.thearmwrestlingarchives.com/international-federation-of-arm-wrestlers.html

Seven things to know about William Smith– actor, bodybuilder, poet (and more!). Classic Film and TV Cafe.  28 Sep 2018.  Web 5 Feb 2020.  https://www.classicfilmtvcafe.com/2017/09/seven-things-to-know-about-william.html

Weider, Joe and Bill Reynolds. Joe Weider’s Ultimate Bodybuilding. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1988.

William Smith: bodybuilder, biker, brawler, actor.  The Master Cylinder.  2 Jun 2020.  Web.  5 Jan 2021.  https://0themastercylinder0.com/2020/06/02/william-smith-bodybuilder-biker-brawler-actor/

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