Irving Lerner and Joseph Strick | Muscle Beach / 1948

 

bodies beautiful

by Douglas Messerli

 

Irving Lerner and Joseph Strick (directors) Muscle Beach / 1948

 

Located originally south of the Santa Monica Pier, the original Muscle Beach was constructed in 1934 by the Works Progress Administration with the purpose of creating a park within the confines of the public beach.

     Over the years, however, it developed the reputation, primarily because of its handsome beefy muscle builders and their audience as a gay hangout, appearing with a great deal sexual innuendo in Hollywood gossip columns.

 

    For filmmakers Lerner and Strick—the latter who sent on to document Los Angeles counterculture—the 1948 beach was a diverse almost family-centered spot, with children running back and forth between the tides and even, on occasion attempting the rings and athletic handstands,  and several women involved in the athletic shows of balance and even weight-lifting. The family party side of the “park” was also encouraged through the cornball, travel-guide like lyrics by Edwin Rolfe with music and singing by Earl Robinson.

      Despite these attempts in this 9-minute short to spiff up the famed gay spot, however, the images caught by Lerner and Strick’s camera remain dominated by the gay body builders, although at one point they stray so far away from the “park” itself that you might think the whole section is a children’s wading pool.

     And although it clearly misrepresented the actual place, the Academy Film Archive felt it important enough to restore this film in 2009.

 

Los Angeles, October 11, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).