Charles Gaines Dead: ‘Pumping Iron’ Author Was 84

Charles Gaines, whose 1970s book and documentary Pumping Iron helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career, died July 21. He was 84.

Schwarzenegger announced the news on his social media channels with a heartfelt tribute to the writer and lover of outdoor pursuits whom he described as “a lifelong friend.”

Born in Jacksonville, Florida on January 6, 1942, Gaines spent his childhood and adolescence in Birmingham, Alabama. He took up bodybuilding as a teenager and then pursued his love of writing after school with a BA from Birmingham-Southern College and an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa.  

Across his career, Gaines wrote more than 25 books and also contributed to a variety of magazines including Harper’s, GEO, Sports Illustrated, Town & Country, Playboy and Outdoor Life.

He is best known for his 1974 non-fiction best-seller Pumping Iron exploring the world of professional bodybuilding, which was then spun into the 1977 docudrama of the same name centering on the competition between Schwarzenegger and main rival Lou Ferrigno for the title of Mr. Olympia.

Written and narrated by Gaines, and directed by George Butler and Robert Fiore, the film is credited with having put professional bodybuilding and Schwarzenegger on the mainstream map.

“He climbed mountains, trekked across ice, fished, and hunted on almost every continent, writing about every adventure in a way that captured people’s hearts and minds. He was interested in everything – and his interest was contagious,” Schwarzenegger wrote of Gaines in his social media post.

“I’m lucky that he was always looking for new frontiers, because that’s how he found me and our niche sport of bodybuilding. That’s how the book and the movie Pumping Iron launched me into the mainstream – he wrote that book and then worked relentlessly on the documentary and introduced bodybuilding to millions and millions of people. It’s how I broke into Hollywood with my first big role in Stay Hungry – a movie Charles also wrote.”

Based on Gaines’ 1972 novel of the same name, which he adapted in 1976, Stay Hungry starred Jeff Bridges as a wealthy layabout who becomes embroiled in a mobster scheme to buy a beloved local gym so the land can be redeveloped, with Schwarzenegger appearing as the venue’s star bodybuilder.

In another achievement in his varied career, Gaines is also credited with inventing the team sport of paintball in the early 1980s with Wall Street trader Hayes Noel following a debate over whether city-dwellers had the same survival instincts as people who grew up close to nature, pursuing activities such as hunting, fishing and building cabins.

Inspired by the discussion, Gaines, who was living on a farm in New Hampshire at the time, devised a survival game using sheep-marking dye pellets, hosting the first iteration in woods on his land in June 1981.

Gaines is survived by his wife, the artist Patricia Ellisor Gaines, whom he married in 1963, as well as his three children, Latham, Greta, and Shelby Gaines.