The Times Herald from Port Huron, Michigan • Page 25

S)(fcDoO Tomes C3eD-aDd PORT HURON. MICH. Wednesday July 21.1983 Section Bill Bunn Mas' appeal S'Soil strong MOVIES He advised stavine out of niuhtrlnhs NEW YORK (AP) In the back pages I 0 SJ' '-1 because of germs and advocated going to bed early because "nothing worthwhile ever happened after 10:30 anyway." Roman, meanwhile, quit his job at the ad agency and flexed his creative muscles, dreaming up the beach ad and coining the term "Dynamic-Tension," a program that pits muscle against muscle rather than relying on weights or machines. Part of the lasting success of the Atlas course is probably due to its independence of expensive barbells and public gymnasiums neither of which a chicken-breasted 15-year-old boy may feel he can afford. Roman, still the same weight he was at 21 after a half-century of doing Atlas' special torso twists, push-ups between chairs and calf stretches on phone books, today runs Charles Atlas, in the same West 23rd Street neighborhood where it started 54 years ago.

In an unpretentious office surrounded by large photos and small statutes of Atlas in flexing poses, the 75-year-old Roman speaks of his longtime friend and partner in the present tense. "I always feel like he's still in the next office," Roman says, "I think I've carried on exactly as he would have if he were here." That includes answering mail, sending out certificates to students who complete the course, looking at before-and-after physique photos and making full refunds to anyone who asks for one. "There's about a 1 percent failure rate," Roman says of the refund requests. Roman says that unlike many correspondence courses, the Atlas program has had little trouble with charges of mail fraud or false advertising. The Federal Trade Commission did investigate the business in the 1930s, Roman recalls, deciding over the protest of a staff lawyer that not only God, but also Charles Atlas could "make a new man." The Atlas ads run in about 500 magazines.

Roman says about 25,000 men annually send in $30 for the course. Responses come in from Fiji, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Poland, and 90 exercises for chests, arms, legs, waists and other exercises, including three for constipation, are sent out in the mail in Dutch, German, French, Italian, even Braille. "We have found when there are wars or war-like conditions, business picks up," Roman says. "People want to get in shape in a time of emergency. Recently, for instance, we've been getting a lot of business from Argentina." Roman over the years has put the weakling and the bully in other settings, of magazines and comic books, the bully is still kicking sand in the 97-pound weakling's face, still humiliating him in front of his best girl.

Charles Atlas is still there in those grainy pages, too, offering the muscles that let the weakling build himself up so he can go back to the beach, punch out the bully and impress the girl. The man Charles Atlas has been dead 10 years, but his longtime business partner and best friend, Charles Roman, is keeping Atlas' physical culture movement alive. The 97-pound weakling ad, pretty much unchanged since it first appeared in 1928, is a measure of the lasting appeal of perhaps the most popular correspondence course of all time and a testament to Atlas' credo: "Nobody picks on a strong man." Atlas once was a scrawny teen-ager spitting sand kicked up by a strapping lifeguard. Atlas never went back and decked the lifeguard, but he probably thought about it a lot over the years. He died in 1972 after checking out of a hospital where he was being treated for a heart attack.

He went to the beach to swim and jog, and his heart gave out. It was probably the only time in his 80 years that he mistreated that glorious body. Today, Atlas' business is still going as strong as the 17-inch neck, 47-inch chest and 17-inch biceps that made him a vaudeville strongman and high-priced nude model for sculptors in the 1920s. Over the years, 1.5 million young men worldwide have paid $30 the same price as when Roman and Atlas went into business together in 1928 for the three-month, 13-lesson Atlas course. The average student gains three inches around the chest and an inch and a half around each bicep, according to Roman.

With a million and a half students, figuring roughly, that could mean the Atlas course may have added as much as 70 miles of chest muscle, 35 miles of right bicep and 35 miles of left bicep to 20th century man. The course is basically the same as it was when Roman, then 21 and fresh out of college, was assigned the Atlas mus-clebuilding account because he was the low man in his advertising agency. The two men hit it off and formed a partnership that allowed Atlas to concentrate on building his body and showing it off at the drop of a shirt. He toured schools and civic groups and military installations, preaching physical fitness and clean habits. He hoisted bathing beauties, pulled locomotives and took off his tuxedo jacket and ruffled shirt for admirers at formal dinner parties.

ivi i A XL-'- r- ATI Film's humor more bedpan than deadpan The first scene of "Young Doctors in Love" tells viewers what kind of comedy to expect. Above surgeons laboring on a patient is a basketball hoop with a sign on its backboard that orders, "No Ball Playing During Operations." If that's funny along with a self-adjusting bed that propels patients into the walls and ceiling and a public address system that announces things like, "Due to a mix-up in urology, apple juice will not be served today" then this film is funny. But viewers seeking a level of wit somewhat higher than a nurse bulging bosom should avoid this picture. "Young Doctors in Love" is an almost-plotless series of farcical episodes with a background of unrelated slapstick gags. The standard hospital humor includes bungled diagnoses, botched operations and jokes relying heavily on human sexual and excretory functions.

Garry Marshall, director and executive producer, has permitted publicists to assume this is a spoof of the TV soaper "General Hospital." But the film spoofs only itself. Successful self-spoofing requires intelligence and selectivity, neither of which is displayed by writers Michael Elias and Rich Eustis. Anything gross or crude is thrown in whenever the screenplay needs a laugh. Viewers still hoping for an "Animal Hospital" or a "Porky's Leaves Medical School" should be advised that the picture lacks a unifying theme. It also lacks characters who stop taking themselves seriously long enough to recognize and respond to lunacy.

Amid the confusion is an ambitious and priggish intern, Michael McKean. He's the sort of obsessively studious fellow who can say to beautiful Sean Young, "Any romance at this point would be ludicrous and counterproductive to our studies." The dominant subplot to this improbable courtship concerns a mob family. Godfather enters the hospital and is visited by his son, disguised in drag, and a hit man, who is mistaken for a patient. Hector Elizondo gives the film's best characterization as the son. Also excellent is Patrick Collins as the sensitive intern on godfather's Case.

Collins whose specialty isn't gynecology falls for the costumed son, who begins to worry about latent transvestism. Others in good form are Dabney Coleman as chief of staff and Pamela Reed, who provides an interesting personality for the stereotype of a sexually repressed nurse. But the film as a whole fails to take a fresh approach toward its basically bedpan humor. "Young Doctors in Love," rated to restrict viewers younger than 17 (18 at some theaters) without accompanying adult, has obscene language, nudity and sexual scenes. It is showing at the Playhouse Theatres, Marysville.

Bill Bunn is a Times Herald reporter. WHAT'S HAPPENING Today Croswell Fair: Midway children's discounts, 1 to 5 p.m. Judging of exhibits and livestock, from 9 a.m. Coon Futurity harness racing, 8 p.m. Free movie, "Adventures of Tom Sawyer," 2 p.m., St.

Clair County Library. AP Charles Atlas has been dead 10 years, but his longtime business partner and best friend, Charles Roman, keeps Atlas' physical culture movement alive. The classic ad featuring the bully cutting in on the weakling at the prom or pushing him in the locker room. But the beach ad is still the mainstay, unchanged except that the girl no longer wears a sun hat and has changed from a one-piece swimming suit to a bikini. the bully and the weakling on the beach runs in 500 magazines worldwide.

Each year 25,000 men sign up for the $30 course. "This same scenario, a bully and a weakling, is a classic," Roman says. "That's life, really. This appeal will never be outdated. It's based on health, vanity and wealth.

You can even earn more money when you're strong. With those three appeals, how can we miss?" Arts roundup MUSEUMS Blvd. Open 1:30 to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. St.

Clair Historical Museum Open 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 308 S. Fourth St. Clair.

Tours available during museum hours, or by arrangement from 8 to 10 a.m. daily. Governor Frank Murphy Museum Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 11 a.m.

to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, through August. 142 S. Huron Harbor Beach. New Baltimore Historical Museum Open Saturday 11 a.m.

to 2 p.m., or by appointment. In the New Baltimore Public Library. Sanilac County Museum Open by appointment. Admission $1 for adults, 25 cents for children aged 5 to 12, no charge for preschoolers. More information is available from the Sanilac County Historical Society, Port Sanilac.

lister Legate landscapes and portraiture by Anne Thorpe, Tuesday to Aug. 13. Maps of Canada, Aug. 14 to 29. Photographs by James N.

Flynn, Aug. 16 to 31. Open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.

to 5:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday. 124 S. Christina St.

St. Clair County Farm Museum Sunday soft sculpture craft by Pat Paterson. Aug. 1 Depression glass display by Charlotte Eveningred. Aug.

8 latch hook rug demonstration by Richard Eastman. Aug. 15 musical afternoon featuring John Loxton on dulcimer. Open 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays through September.

St. Clair County complex, Goodells. More information is available from Helen Dickinson, 1418 Stanton St. Marysville Historical Museum 887 E. Huron Museum of Arts and History Lake Huron Lore exhibit, Shipyards Old and New, through Aug.

20. Michigan printmakers, Sept. 8 to 26. Open 1 to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

Group appointments available at other times. 1115 Sixth Port Huron. Sarnia Art Gallery Cape Dorset engravings, through Sunday. Cigar box top designs, through Monday. Thursday Croswell Fair: Dog show judging, 1 p.m.

Coon futurity harness racing, 8 p.m. Meet Your Candidates night for candidates running for the 72nd District Court, 7:30 p.m., St. Clair County Community College cafeteria. Sponsored by the Port Huron Area League of Women Voters. YMCA Scuba Class, registration 7 a.m.

to 10: 30 a.m., Lions Club Pool, Algonac. Sponsored by the Algonac Lions Club. Concert by Sarnia Citizens Band, 8 p.m., Canatara Park. Pressure canner gauge testing, 1 to 3 p.m., Guy Center, Marine City. 1D wvn 1,1,1 Library show features two Sarnia artists SARNIA People and places are the subjects of works to be freatured July 27 to Aug.

13 at the Sarnia Public Library and Art Gallery. Indscapist P. Lister legate has lived in Sarnia for 18 years. Her paintings show strong vertical and horizontal sweeps and are influenced by her fascination with the city's petrochemical plants. The portraits of Anne Thorpe, another Sarnia resident, reflect Thorpe's belief that the exterior likeness should reveal the interior character of the sitter.

Both artists will answer questions about their work at the exhibition opening reception at 8:30 p.m. July 30 in the gallery, 124 S. Christina St. The gallery also plans a series of film screenings during August. The series, "Ways of Seeing," was produced by the British Broadcasting Corp.

and was written and narrated by art historian John Berger. The films examine attitudes toward art and how those attitudes are and were modified by the culture that created it. The free 30-minute screenings will be at noon Aug. 4, 11, 18 and 25. Friday Croswell Fair: Horse and pony show, 8 a.m.

Demolition derby, 7 p.m. Summer Festival, choral concert at 7 p.m., Port Sanilac. "Gypsy," 8 p.m., Port Austin Community Playhouse. "Once Upon a Mattress," 8 p.m., Port Huron Little Theatre, 14th and Wells Streets. Workshop and pressure canner checks, 1 to 3 p.m., Yale Senior Citizen Meal Site, First Street, Yale.

Sponsored by the St. Clair Cooperative Extension Service. Garden dinner dance, 6:30 p.m., St. Clair Inn's river room. Sponsored by the St.

Clair County American Cancer Society. Information and reservations are available from the Cancer Society Office, 618 Huron Suite B. Garage sale, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and ice cream social, 4 to 7 p.m., First Methodist Church, 206 W. MiU Street, Capac.

Times Herald Kevin Balchelder sion with the W.L. Wetmore. It was donated by Wayne Brusate, Marysville, who discovered it while diving south of the Blue Water Bridge. Other parts of the M.E. Tremble also are on display at the museum, 887 E.

Huron Ave. Dropping anchor Harry Carle, left, nautical curator of the Marysville Historical Museum, and Bill Ellis, president of the Marysville Historical Commission, stand next to the museum'3 latest addition. The anchor is from the 693-ton schooner M.E. Tremble, which sank Sept. 8, 1890, in a colli-.