Decades Later, Arnold Schwarzenegger Discloses How He Made Millions While America Was Witnessing One of the Biggest Inflations in the 70s

It is 7th June 2023 and the day every Arnold Schwarzenegger fan was eagerly waiting for has finally arrived. Episodes of Arnold, a 3-part documentary mini-series, are finally on Netflix and viewers are getting an up close and personal view of the superstar. In the 2nd episode itself, Schwarzenegger takes everyone back to the 1970s, the glorious decade when everything started to go upward for him. The US was going through massive inflation, and earning money was tough. But courtesy of advice from his former mentor Joe Weider, Schwarzenegger soon made millions.

Schwarzenegger landed in America in 1968 with the hopes of making it big in bodybuilding before moving to Hollywood. He achieved exactly that in a decade or so. But even before that, he had to survive in the US and he did so by doing bricklaying work. Later when he got into real estate in the early 1970s, his financial well-being improved drastically.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was rich even before he got his breakthrough

Nearly a month ago, the former Mr. Olympia teased everyone with his new Netflix documentary on his life, Arnold. Divided into three parts, it deals with the three facets of his life – bodybuilding, movies, and politics, which he later joined. In episode 2, around the 12-minute mark, Schwarzenegger talks about how he initially struggled to make a mark in America after he landed. But he was lucky that he wasn’t in dire need of any money at the time.

Even though Schwarzenegger came to the US to become a great bodybuilder, he didn’t get any work right off the bat. He made his first million dollars in America by laying bricks with fellow bodybuilder Franco Columbu. And later on, Joe Weider, who was the main person behind Schwarzenegger’s entry into the US, got him into real estate.

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He said in the docuseries, “Joe Weider taught me real estate is one of the greatest investments. I bought my first apartment building in the ’70s when there was a huge inflation… I became a millionaire in the ’70s”. Even before his multitude of talents was put on display, Schwarzenegger had great business acumen.

Despite his success in real estate, Schwarzenegger struggled in Hollywood

Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said in the docuseries that he knew where the potential to earn money was. No sooner than Weider put him in the real estate business, Schwarzenegger started buying apartment buildings on Main Street in Santa Monica. While the easy money policies of the American Central Bank promised monetary growth and generate higher employment by the 1970s, it backfired to result in inflation.

However, it was still a struggle for Schwarzenegger to make it in movies. His film The Villain was brutally slammed by the critics, and he realized that actors like Dustin Hoffman, and Robert De Niro, had the X-factor that he didn’t. But with his earnings made through real estate, Schwarzenegger survived and prospered, and slowly but steadily wiggled his way into Hollywood. After he made The Terminator in 1984, the superstar never looked back again.

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