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Democracy or Babel?

The following is an excerpt from the "Democracy or Babel?" that recounts the life of an immigrant whose hard work, embracement of American culture, society and our common language earned him unprecedented success – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

American Success Stories: Profiles of the Spirit

Most immigrants will tell you that learning English is one of the most challenging aspects of moving to the United States. So much depends on your being able to communicate needs and wants – and to make your voice heard on political and social issues of concern to all. For the two men profiled in this chapter, there’s an especially powerful twist to their language acquisition. Both use the English language extensively in their careers – so you could say language is fundamental to their survival!

No Grass Under His Feet!

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s story

How do you become athletic legend, a multi-millionaire businessman, an internationally acclaimed movie star, and a governor of the state of California?

Well, you start by pumping iron, and then, learning English.

That’s not as far-fetched as it may sound. English has helped in the ascent of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rising star. And his story is an impressive one for an Austrian immigrant of modest background.

Certainly, making the transition from “farm boy” to champion bodybuilder to superstar actor requires extraordinary abilities. In Arnold’s case, it meant, first, sculpting his body to truly Herculean proportions and, then, building his personality, his business acumen – and his language skills – to the point where they could translate to his ultimate goal: success in everything he undertakes.

He first became excited about coming to America while still in school. Film documentaries on New York, California, and Chicago “awakened something in my brain.” He dreamed of something more than life in his small Austrian village, where everyone and everything were the same as they had been for hundreds of years. His family, while not poor, lived quite modestly and had little left over for luxuries.

Arnold’s early years were difficult. He was used to getting up at 6:00 every morning, fetching the milk and doing chores until it was time for school, and coming home from school to do more chores and homework. Family life was traditional, regimented, and devoid of high aspirations or expectations. (It is reported that, when Arnold took up lifting weights when he was 15, in search of the perfect body, his parents considered briefly taking him to see a psychiatrist!)

But Arnold wasn’t crazy – he just always dreamed larger dreams than his native village could accommodate. It was natural that he consider making the United States his home. America for Arnold was “bigger than life…I always wanted to come here.”

At age 18, with a dozen European bodybuilding championships under his belt, he decided to imigrate to America. After all, bodybuilding was essentially considered an American Sport – the opportunities for training and competing were best in the U.S. But, in the larger sense, what attracted him most was “the freedom to choose.” America meant you could do exactly what you wanted, as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else. Arnold knew that, once he’d left home, he would return only as a visitor. On a trip home to see his mother in those early years, he cut his visit short; it had become painfully obvious to him that “I had much more the American spirit.”

He arrived on American shores in 1968, with the contents of a duffel bag as his sole possessions. Almost immediately, he became “addicted” to America, as he tells the story himself. Opportunities in bodybuilding and associated businesses simply blossomed for him. While still in his twenties, he became a millionaire.

In those days, bodybuilding was not a particularly popular sport, even though it was practiced in the United States. It wasn’t until the movie and book called Pumping Iron were released that bodybuilding began to assume greater respectability in America and throughout the world. This coincided precisely with the peak of Arnold’s career as a bodybuilder.

After piling success upon success in the bodybuilding world, Arnold – to everyone’s surprise – decided to pursue another path: becoming an actor. “I love being onstage, and I love performing. I was always ahead of the other bodybuilders because I was always more fun and entertaining onstage. I realized that I was really an entertainer, that I needed to develop another area where I could perform, and I made up my mind that it was acting.”

As an actor, though, communication is perhaps the most basic component. You have to be able to communicate clearly, effectively, and convincingly to your audience.

No one wanted to believe Arnold could master these skills and grow to be much more than a muscle-bound Austrian farm boy. His first attempts to find an agent were pitiful. One agent told him to “stay with bodybuilding. You have an accent, a too-overdeveloped body for films, and a strange name that no one can pronounce.” Another producer declared, “There is no possibility that this guy will ever make it in the movies.”

It was the same kind of resistance he’d found when trying to make it in the bodybuilding world. But now, he knew that what people said to him didn’t amount to a hill of beans. If he set about it in the right way and devoted his boundless enthusiasm to learn and improve whatever he undertook, he would surely succeed.

“I just went after it – acting. I knew it could happen if I worked on my talent and my accent, to make it understandable, and I thought eventually some people would learn to spell my name and even pronounce it… Do you forget Gina Lollobrigida?”

He set about polishing his image and acquiring the sophistication that had not been a part of his upbringing. A close friend said that, in the early days, “he didn’t know how to dress or order from a menu – things like that.” But he asked people what and where to eat, what books to read, what hotels to stay in, where he could find a good tailor. It wasn’t long before he had developed a spit-and-polish, supremely sophisticated look.

More than anything else, Arnold’s cleverness and risk-taking seem to have been the factors that made his dreams come true. In the mid-1970s, Lucille Ball spotted him on the Merv Griffin Show and asked him to be a guest in a special she was producing.

Perseverance, the desire to tap every ounce of talent he had, and hard work paid off, perhaps not immediately but eventually. In this first movie, his roles were restricted, the dialogue severely limited because of his English, his “acting” involving more muscle-flexing than character development. In one film, his voice had to be dubbed over.

Just as his muscles had given him an entrée into the movies, so they were also a drawback to his being given serious roles. It was clear that, without a thorough command of the language, Arnold would make money and movies only if he took off his shirt.

Gradually, his English improved and his acting skills developed – all with the help of numerous teachers and coaches. Arnold was now able to appear in a wide variety of roles in movies such as The Terminator, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Batman and Robin, Jingle All the Way and Collateral Damage. From a muscleman to a dramatic and comic actor, Arnold has accomplished in the acting arena what many aspirants have only dreamed of. His financial success is overwhelming…!

Arnold is deeply grateful to America, its people, and its way of life. He has an enormous silk stars and stripes hanging across one wall of his office – that’s how passionate he is about America.

As a businessman and investor, Arnold has also been immensely successful. Forbes magazine listed him as one of the ten wealthiest entertainers in America.

But without a solid command of English and a strong drive to be accepted as an American, Arnold could never have reached this pinnacle of success.