New Muscle At the Box Office

By Gerald Clarke.

"Ten years ago, muscles were the most important thing," says Arnold Schwarzenegger. "People knew me for one thing, body building. They wanted to see me with the muscles. But eventually I think they will forget about the 'Body.' " Well, maybe, but they have not forgotten the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls or any other awesome force of nature. Nor are they soon likely to ignore Schwarzenegger's biceps, which are about as big around as watermelons at harvest time, his calves, which appear to have the diameter of a California redwood, or his stomach, which seems to be made of Vermont granite. The audiences crowding into Schwarzenegger's latest picture, Commando, may just be there to enjoy blood and guts, but it is the Body--a wonder like that deserves a capital letter--that they will remember. In only eleven days the film has grossed $16.9 million, and Rambo, which was the No. 2 boxoffice hit of the summer (after Back to the Future), had better reload. There is a new action movie shooting up the country, and Schwarzenegger is Hollywood's newest and, quite literally, its biggest star.

Schwarzenegger, 38, plays a commando whose career has been saving the U.S. and its friends from all sorts of sinister types. Retiring to a mountaintop in California, he hopes to spend the rest of his days in peaceful pursuits, like raising his motherless daughter. But bad guys being bad guys, they want revenge. They kidnap his child and threaten to kill her unless he assassinates the President of a fictional country in Central America. The rest of the film is devoted to Schwarzenegger's pursuit of his enemies. He shoots them, drops them off cliffs, slits their throats, chops off their arms, breaks their necks, and blows them up. And, oh, yes: he also punches a steam pipe through his archenemy. "Let off some steam," he snarls--not exactly Noel Coward wit, but it is one of Schwarzenegger's favorite lines in the script. "The thing that separates me from the rest of the action leads, like Stallone, Eastwood and Norris, is that I bring in all this humor to my films," he says. "I love that, to have all this intensity, and then all of a sudden there is a funny line and you can relax."

That sentence sums up most of Schwarzenegger's life: intense activity combined with relaxation. He was born in Austria, in the city of Graz. His father was a policeman, his mother a hausfrau, and they instilled in him a strong ambition. By the time he was 15, he had decided he wanted to be a body builder, and hung pictures of a former Mr. Universe all around his room for inspiration. That former Mr. U., South African Reg Park, not only had muscles but money, and young Arnold wanted both. He created himself, pumping iron three or four hours a day. At 18 he was Mr. Europe Jr.; at 20 he was Mr. Universe himself, the youngest in the history of the contest. "Arnold wouldn't be content with anything less than perfection," says his fiancee, Maria Shriver, 29, co-anchor of the CBS Morning News. "When he writes a book, he aims for a best seller; when he acts, he wants to be the best."

Even in Austria, Schwarzenegger felt American, although he barely spoke English. "I was always fascinated by size and bigness," he says, "and I knew that America was a very strong country, strong in every way. If you say to an American that your goal is to be a world champion in body building or to become a millionaire, he says, 'That's terrific! Go for it!' In Europe, people will have a million reasons why you will never make it." After coming to the U.S. in 1968, he won more contests, started a mail-order business in weight- lifting guides, and wrote four books about how to grunt and groan in the proper manner. He also graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a double major in business and international economics and has made millions in real estate.

His acting career was the only part of his life that he did not plan long ago. Lucille Ball saw him on the Merv Griffin Show and hired him for a TV special. After that came leads in Stay Hungry and Pumping Iron--films about body builders, of course--two Conan the Barbarian epics and last year's Terminator, in which Schwarzenegger for the first time played a villain. After Commando he plans to do more action pictures and hopes to show his sense of humor in comedies. "I'm a businessman," he says. "I'm interested in the movie making money. I'm not hung up on being an actor's actor or doing what they call artistic movies." That modesty is well founded. Schwarzenegger is unmistakably a better actor than Chuck Norris (who isn't?), but he lacks Sylvester Stallone's hammy flamboyance and Clint Eastwood's icon-like gravity.

In California, where he has a modest Spanish-style house in Santa Monica and an office in Venice, he stays away from the Hollywood party scene and still works out an hour a day. A U.S. citizen since 1983, he is an ardent Republican, a fact of life that Shriver, a niece of John and Robert Kennedy's, has learned to live with. Schwarzenegger and Shriver have both temporarily accepted a long-distance romance--the CBS Morning News is broadcast from Manhattan--but he expects her to come to California more often on vacations and business after their marriage in April. "If they don't let her go, I'll just go back to New York and strangle the producer," he says genially. "Then I know they will let her go." Just joking, of course.

With reporting by Denise Worrell/Los Angeles