I’ve met Jay several times, I don’t think he is exaggerating his height.
My dad met Arnie a few years after the OP. Dad’s an even six feet, and he noticed that the Goverator was slightly shorter than him.
Hollywood has been using boxes for short actors since at least the 1930s. Clark Gable practically had a monogrammed one he carried around.
LOTS of ways to make a short actor appear taller than cast mates, even in full-height shots.
More vague, anecdotal data:
My sister once found herself sharing an elevator with Arnie, exchanged pleasantries with him during their 36 seconds together.
She’s 5’6" and was quite surprised by his height-- Not that he was “short”, but that he wasn’t nearly as tall as she would have imagined.
ETA: Damn it! I didn’t notice he was a not-so-tall Zombie.
If you watch “Pumping Iron” to is almost impossible to imagine that he is less than six feet.
This is purely anecdotal, but Arnie tried out for the part of the Incredible Hulk on the TV series and lost out to Lou Ferrigno because he wasn’t tall enough.
See? I’ve heard that story so many times over the years and I have always heard it told that he lost out on the part because he was too tall.
According to Kenneth Johnson, executive producer of The Incredible Hulk, on the first season DVD commentary Schwarzenegger was rejected because of his “inadequate height”. Lou Ferrigno is 6’5", so even if Arnie were 6’2", Ferrigno still had a height advantage of several inches. In fact, Richard Kiel was initially hired, but Johnson didn’t feel even he was big enough, so he was replaced by Ferrigno.
Wow! I’ve got everything backwards.
I always thought Ferrigno was not particularly tall. I imagined him as the ultimate short stocky bodybuilder type. In my imagination, his appeal as The Hulk was that a broad stocky physique, when filmed to appear tall, would suggest a truly huge character- whereas a tall actor would have the character simply look tall.
I’m just all kinds of wrong on this board today.
I have a former friend, a restauranteur who was born in Groz around the time Arnold was. He has a photo of the two together at the restaurant. (Massimo’s in Walnut Creek if anyone cares it is on the wall). They are both about the same height in the picture, and Massimo is about 5’10" according to himself and my estimate, I’m a lot taller than he is at a mere 6’2". No way is AS 6’2" as claimed.
Actually, that’s why Kiel lost the part. He was simply tall, but without the broad physique. Ferrigno is both tall and muscular.
At 6’5" and built like that, Ferrigno was damn scary big.
At 5’10", Arnie’s just a munchkin.
If Lou Ferrigno was 6’5" and Arnold was 5’10", then there is something off about this picture.
All you need to do is have the two of them stand at different distances from the camera to even out their height from that viewpoint. 2D photos can mislead, and Hollywood has been taking advantage of that for decades to make short leading men look taller than they actually are.
OK, I can agree with that as a possibility; but then there is the matter of an entire documentary film(Pumping Iron) which has him next to many different people, and he absolutely towers over some of them in a way that a 5’10" man could not. A whole film is much harder to fake than one picture, especially if it was made in the 70’s.
It says on the internet Clark Gable was 6’ 1" tall. Isn’t that tall enough?
Arnold was in a WWE ring earlier this year and was easily the shortest person in there.
Given this chart, your statement does nothing to really settle the issue, or sway the evidence in one way or another.
A lot of what I am reading on the net about this says he was 6’1.5" maximum in his prime, but since shrunk to 5’11". This seems much more plausible to me; it seems hard to refute all the measurements and photo documentation taken in his pro bodybuilding career, but it is hard to refute the large number of people who seem to think he is significantly shorter than 6’2" after meeting him in person. The only thing I wonder is, “do people really shrink that much as they age?”
They can.
Shrinking an inch as you age (and remember, Arnold is in his late 60’s now) is nothing unusual. If you’re talking about going from 6’ 1" to 5’ 11" that’s two inches (about 5 cm for you metric types) which is a bit more than typical but not unheard of. If a person suffers from osteoporosis and their spine is affected (leading to “Dowager’s hump”, for example) the loss of height can be even more significant. While osteoporosis is generally considered a woman’s disease it most certainly does affect men, too.
Which is all just wild speculation, I hasten to add. It’s a possible reason for height loss over time.
Yes, it’s possible he’s shrunk 2-3 inches over time. It’s also possible his height was exaggerated, he wears/wore lifts in his shoes, and even some combination of the above.