While the world was focused on the tragedy at Martha’s Vineyard, I was saddened by a death much closer to home: that of Charles P. Roman, age 92.
Who was he? He happened to write one of the all-time great pieces of Americana, an ad in which a 97-pound weakling gets sand kicked in his face at the beach by a bully.
Yes, from 1929 until his retirement just two years ago, Roman ran Charles Atlas Ltd. a mail order firm with only one product: a 13-part “isotonic” exercise course, based on the principle of dynamic tension. He wrote the famous ad, “The Insult that Made a Man out of Mac,” in 1940.
Though that story has appeared in probably tens of thousands of ad insertions, and has been ripped off many times, Roman didn’t think of much of it at the time. But it touched a chord with millions of 97-pound weaklings like me.
Told in comic book form, the tale starts when the protagonist, (based loosely on Charles Atlas himself) is humiliated on the beach: “Listen here,” the bully says. “I’d smash your face…only you’re so skinny you might dry up and blow away.”
In the space of only a few comic panels, though, Mac sees a Charles Atlas ad, and decides to send for the course. One sweet day he runs into the bully again.
“What you here again! Here’s something I owe you!” He then punches him in the jaw.
“Oh, Mac!” says his girlfriend. You ARE a real man after all!”
Roman met Atlas, whose real name was Angelo Siciliano, in 1928, shortly after joining the Benjamin Landsman ad agency. He was given the Atlas account, the worst job in the shop.
Atlas, one of several muscle men who sold courses by mail order (anyone remember Joe Bonomo?), wasn’t doing well. He offered Roman a deal: He would make him a partner if he would take over the marketing and business end.
It was the start of a long friendship. Though a small man, Roman did the exercises himself right into his 90’s, and continued with habits like chewing milk (the saliva makes it easier to digest). And when Atlas died in 1972, no one was more upset than Roman (as he told it, Atlas kept exercising even after having a heart attack because he didn’t believe it could happen to the great Charles Atlas).
I met Roman in 1982 when I was assigned to a story on the Atlas company. We stayed in touch, and occasionally met for lunch at the Player’s Club in New York. He told me many wonderful stories about Atlas (i.e., the time he pulled a boat to shore with a rope in his teeth), and tried to teach me the basics of how to buy mail order space.
But my favorite meeting with him was the time he showed me his scrapbooks of other ads he had written. Some were as good as the weakling ad:
“The Hog of the Dance Floor”
“How Joe’s Body Brought Him Fame Instead of Shame”
“If you only had 10 days to live…what would you give for another 10 years of gloriously healthy life?”
Maybe this tells you something about the man: The last one was his favorite.
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