Today marks the 99th birthday of Steve Reeves. He was best known as a body builder before becoming an actor. Many say that he was responsible for making bodybuilding popular worldwide. He held the title of Mr. America in 1947, Mr. World in 1948, and Mr. Universe in 1950. He wrote many books on bodybuilding and the importance of physical training.

He would work out a minimum of three days a week, and those workouts were always full body workouts. His workouts would last 2-4 hours and he never stopped until they were finished. He was so popular, an agent told him that he should consider acting.

At one point, he was teamed up with a comedian and they did some shows in vaudeville. It was there that he was noticed by one of director Cecil B. DeMille’s talent scouts. They liked him a lot and he was almost cast in the film Samson and Delilah. Cecil asked him to lose some weight for the role and Steve certainly tried. He also spent months preparing for the role, only to find out the the role went to Victor Mature.

He did some TV work, including a pilot for a Tarzan-ish show. He made appearances on Stars Over Hollywood and Topper, as well. Then in 1954, he had a small role as a policeman in Ed Wood’s Jail Bait followed by a roll in the musical Athena for MGM. However, it was what came next that catapulted him into stardom.

Italian director Pietro Francisci was hoping to make a movie about Hercules. The trouble was that he couldn’t find anyone who was built enough to play him. Pietro’s daughter had seen Reeves in the movie Athena and told her father about him. Pietro reached out to Reeves and offered him the role and tickets to Italy to make the film. Reeves thought the whole thing was a joke, but he was eventually convinced to fly to Italy.

The film did extremely well in Europe. American film distributor, Joe Levine bought the US distribution rights and promoted it in the states. It ended up being a huge box office success making $5 million.

Steve would return for a sequel in 1959 called Hercules Unchained. Despite only playing him in two films, he was forever linked to Hercules. At the height of his career, he was the highest paid actor in Europe and by 1960 he was ranked as the number-one box-office draw in 25 countries.

I am not sure how true this is, but it is said that he was offered the role of James Bond in Dr. No (which he turned down) and the role that went to Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars. His last film was A Long Ride From Hell in 1968, afterwards he retired from acting. He claims his retirement was brought about by stress, his shoulder injury, and the decline in the market for his sort of movies.

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I present all of that to you to share a radio story that is probably only funny to me. We’ll see.

I was introduced to Hercules by my morning show partner on Honey Radio. Rob was into old movies like me, and we often discussed the ones we were watching or renting from the video store. I don’t recall the conversation, but somehow I ended up getting the movie and watching it.

Radio people don’t watch movies or TV like everyone else. When we hear something we think we can use on our show, we nab it. Usually it is one line that is taken out of context, and used on air in a fun way. Those one line clips are called “Drops” in radio. For example, if the morning show characters got out of hand, I had a clip of Dean Martin saying, “Can we please get this lunacy over with?” I could play that and use it to get out of a bit.

The most common way I used drops was in what we called a sweeper. It was something that played between two songs. I had a personalized sweeper of the voice guy saying, “You’re listening to Keith Allen on Honey Radio, WHND.” I would insert a drop after my name that would poke fun at me or make absolutely no sense at all.

So why do I tell you that? Because Hercules was loaded with hilarious lines that I could take out of context and use during the show or in a sweeper. The movie was done in Italian, so it was overdubbed in English. This only made the lines even funnier. Most of the lines I used in my personalized sweeper. Here are just some of the lines from Hercules that I used:

Sweeper: “You’re listening to Keith Allen (insert drop here) on Honey Radio, WHND”

Drops:

• “You’ve been drinking too much tonight!”
• “Marvelous. That’s a way to make a fine impression.”
• “He may be an imposter, how do I know?!”
• “Listen! No one in all of this country has ever beaten me at discus throwing!”
• “My, you’ve certainly got a vast array of spectators.”

I cannot watch this movie (or many other movies) without laughing at these lines. I’m sure that there are 10-15 others from the movie that I used, but I cannot remember them. Of course, I’ll now have to find time to watch it again. I only wish Rob was still around to watch it with.

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Steve Reeves passed away in May of 2000 at the age of 74. He had lymphoma and had exploratory surgery on April 28, 2000. A blood clot that formed after the surgery, which led to his death.