We publish this article as images of Arnold Schwarzenegger are about to feature prominently in a major UK government advertising campaign to persuade people to take up their rights for compensation for mis-sold PPI insurance.
To reach the top of your chosen profession - particularly in the USA - is some achievement. To do it in three very different disciplines (body-building, the movies and politics) is almost unheard of. To do it, with your professional and social skills being honed in Forest Gate, is unique.
We have written before about Arnold (the name by which he and those closest to him prefer him to be known as - we'll follow suit)Schwarzenegger and his Forest Gate connections: his training and stay with Dianne and Wag Bennett on Romford Road (here) and his gratitude to them and the area, expressed in his autobiography - see footnote for details (here).
![]() |
Arnold and Wag Bennett, outside the Bennett's home, at 353 Romford Road, in the late 1960's |
This article looks at his on-going relationship and influence with the Bennett family who did so much to launch his careers.
It was a two-way street. Wag Bennett used AS to promote his gym, products and techniques, after his rise to fame, as illustrated in the adverts, above and below - taken from the Liberty Clinic |
Arnold's journey is an interesting one - with very little formal education, he propelled himself from a small town in Austria to the world stage, driven by self-belief and hard work. These - and a capacity to innovate and inspire people - are characteristics he learned and developed in the home of the Bennetts of Forest Gate.
Arnold and Wag - after Schwarzenegger had moved on to his second career |
Arnold was effusive in his autobiography for the help Wag and Dianne Bennett gave him, in the mid 1960's, when he slept on their couches and floors as he honed his body-building skills.
He expressed his gratitude to the family not only for training him as a body-builder - but for providing the social skills that were to become so important in his two subsequent professional careers.
Wag Bennett (the unusual first name was an inherited, family one) was born in Canning Town in 1930 and brought up in the district during the war years. He used building rubble caused by German bombers as some of his first weight-lifting equipment.
He developed as a body builder, and had a business head on him. He married Dianne, who was from a Portsmouth, gym-owning, body-building family. She was famous in he own right, and trained and managed a troop called "Dianne Bennett's Glamour Girls", who performed as body-builders.
Wag opened his gym, originally in the house of the recently restored 335 Romford Road, before acquiring the Emmanuel church hall, next door, and using that as his operating base.
The pair spotted AS in 1966, as a rather gauche, poor, non-English speaking, recently demobbed Austrian army conscript. He was a 19-year old body builder who entered (and came second in) the Mr Universe competition. Wag was a judge, and the couple recognised his potential. They took him under their wings and became what Arnold calls "my English parents".
They brought him back to 335 Romford Road and looked after him - and their six children - for a couple of years - during which he achieved his then goal, of becoming Mr Universe, in 1967.
Dianne Bennett with three of her children (Luke in the middle), in part of the world the family introduced Arnold to, in 1966 |
Part of Wag Bennett's board of fame (now in the Liberty Clinic), of body-building characters he introduced Schwarzenegger to. NB - mis-spelling of Park |
![]() |
AS, with another of his body-building role models - Reg Park |
![]() |
Reg Park in a Hercules movie role: an inspiration that took Arnie to Hollywood |
It was about this time his thoughts turned to politics - and he married a Kennedy (they have subsequently divorced). But his politics were not that of the famous family. In the 1990's he began to work with the first President Bush and by the millennium was ready to make his own pitch for political power.
He was Republican governor of California from 2003 - 2011, but in many ways his politics sat equally comfortably with the Democrats. It was, perhaps, only the USA's constitutional insistence that its presidents had to be US-born that prevented AS from entering the White House in the top job (as fellow Hollywood actor, Ronald Regan had done before him).
![]() |
AS wins the California governorship, for a second time |
For example, he recalls, in his memoirs, that the Bennetts made him improve his bodybuilding moves to music - mainly the film track from the movie, Exodus. Dianne Bennett, who meets with Arnold regularly (annual visits to California and meet-ups in London whenever he is in town), recently dug up her original copy of the long-player record and sent it to him, as a reminder, for his 70th birthday (at the end of this July).
![]() |
A recent photo of Dianne, in her Southsea gym - note image of Arnold from his Pumping Iron film, behind her (Photo: Stefani Gratz) |
Dianne - now in her 80's - still runs her family's gym in Southsea, having separated from Wag in the 1990's (he died in 2008). It is, in many ways, a shrine to her former protégé, as shown by some of the photographs in this article.
![]() |
A tribute to Schwarzenegger, in Dianne Bennett's Southsea gym (photo: Stefani Gratz) |
Luke Bennett's base, today - The Liberty Clinic, 394 Romford Road |
Luke is an osteopath, and is dedicated, as his parents were - to the care of the human body. His osteopathy works with damaged human tissue, and the small gym in the clinic is used to help people work on some of their physical and bodily needs.
Luke, lifting weights in his gym - with more an eye to a healthy body, than a "beautiful" one. |
A motto for Luke's gym |
The Schwarzenegger memories linger, in the Liberty Clinic - this and the images, below |
A major difference between Luke and his parents' style and approach - perhaps - is that their efforts were dedicated to the body beautiful, while his is to the body healthy.
Luke's mission is to work with the body and its tissues to improve and repair themselves. So, no health supplements and additives here, but more than a passing endorsement of Voltaire's observations that:
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient, while nature cures the disease
Footnote: Arnold's autobiography is: Total Recall - my unbelievably true story, by Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Peter Petre, published by Simon and Schuster, 2012.