IN MEMORIAM
Charles P. Roman,
Associate of Charles Atlas,
Dies at 92

Reprinted with permission from the AOBS Newsletter.

Mr. Roman did much to gain fame for the once-skinny Mr. Atlas, born Angelo Siciliano in Brooklyn, for whom the Charles Atlas bodybuilding course is named. Mr. Atlas has been called the Horatio Alger of the human body. After Mr. Atlas died in Florida in 1972, still a fine figure of a man at 78, Mr. Roman labored for years in his Manhattan office to keep the Charles Atlas legend going.

Charles Atlas Ltd., of which Mr. Roman was president from 1929 until 1997, still sells its series of mail order lessons about what it sometimes calls its exercise and healthy living program.

The "97-pound weakling" advertisement that Mr. Roman devised relatively early in his career was built around a phrase he coined that became an enduring metaphor for puniness and humiliation.

The advertisement was based on an encounter that Mr. Atlas himself had experienced while he was still a skinny youth. Mr. Roman's advertisement comprised several panels in comic-book format. They told the tale of the 97-pound weakling, a boy named Mac, who was humiliated by a bully while at the beach with his girlfriend.

The 97-pound weakling advertisement has varied somewhat over the year, but the company's current owner, Jeffrey C. Hogue, said that in its most widely used form, the weakling, known as Mac, and his girlfriend have sand kicked in their faces by a beach bully. The advertisement is entitled "The Insult that Made a Man out of Mac."

Mac loses the girlfriend, sees the light and decides to get the Charles Atlas program. Before long he looks in the mirror and says, "Boy! Look how those muscles bulge!" And in the last frame he punches the bully while the girlfriend watches and is impressed.

Besides advertising and administrative duties for the Charles Atlas system, which he named Dynamic Tension, Mr. Roman did public relations work for Charles Atlas.. One busy day, after Mr. Atlas had used his extraordinary physique to break a metal bar before an audience of 3,000 convicts, Mr. Roman telephoned tabloid newspapers and suggested a headline: "Man Breaks Bar at Sing Sing Prison - Thousands Cheer Non Escape."

Mr. Roman was a fledgling $35 a week account executive at the Benjamin Landsman Advertising Agency in New York when he met Mr. Atlas, a champion bodybuilder whose business was relatively puny at the time. Mr. Roman told Mr. Atlas that the advertising he had been using was not working. Months afterward, Mr. Roman became Mr. Atlas's partner in their new company, Charles Atlas Ltd. Mr. Roman went on to become the sole owner in 1969 and sold the enterprise to Mr. Hogue in 1997, but he maintained an influence on its operations until his death.

In recent years, Charles Atlas Ltd. has also turned to manufacturing vitamins and nutritional supplements and selling Charles Atlas workout clothing. It plans to market a series of exercise videos and to make its lessons available for downloading from the Internet.

In a 1982 interview at his 23rd Street office, Mr. Roman said: "We're doing as great as we ever did. I carry on exactly as if Charles was in the next office. The system is still the Atlas system, so he is in fact still giving the training just as he always did."

In those days, roughly 500 English and Spanish-language publications carried the Charles Atlas advertisements, and readers responded by mailing in a torrent of coupons requesting an initial free 32-page booklet "showing how Dynamic Tension can make me a new man." And every month Mr. Roman's office sent out Atlas lessons to customers who had subscribed to the program of exercises and nutrition tips.

Originally advertised only in comics and other magazines, the advertisements Mr. Roman created years ago are still a presence on the Internet and even in Modern Maturity, said Mr. Hogue, the company's current owner and president.

"In the past, the average Charles Atlas program student was age 15 to 25, but because we've been in the business for about 70 years, many of our students now are in their 60s, even 70s," he said.

Some women were among the early subscribers, but Mr. Roman said, "We don't cater to them; we never have."

Dynamic Tension is the name Roman gave to a system of exercise that Mr Atlas said was inspired by a lion at the Prospect Park Zoo. Atlas observed the lion stretch and concluded that the beast was pitting one muscle against another by strengthening them both.

Charles Roman participated as a consultant in preparing a Charles Atlas advertising campaign planned for next year. The campaign uses his 97-pound weakling ad among others.

Mr. Roman was born and raised in Manhattan, graduated from the Ethical Culture School and received a bachelor's degree in 1928 from York University. During World War II, he was a Navy officer. He married Dorothy Raphael in 1933; she died in 1997.

Mr. Roman is survived by his wife Orpha Vazquez, whom he married in 1998; two sons, Roger and Ronald, both of southern Florida; a sister, Leonore Roman Malino, of Manhattan, and two grandchildren.

Middle-sized and trim, Mr. Roman used Charles Atlas's fitness techniques until his life's end. In the interview, he said, "I keep pretty fit, keep from getting a pot belly."

New York Times, July 1999