Lou Ferrigno

• 1. Introduction

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  Lou Ferrigno grew up in Brooklyn knowing he was different before he had words for why. By the time doctors diagnosed his hearing loss at age three, he had already lost 75 to 80 percent of his hearing to what he believes were a series of ear infections soon after birth. His peers called him "deaf" and "mute." His own father, he would later say, rejected him for not being "the perfect son."

  So the boy from Brooklyn did what seemed impossible. He turned isolation and comic books into a blueprint for himself. He read stories about the Hulk and Spider-Man, became obsessed with power, and built his first weights from a broomstick and pails filled with cement because he could not afford to buy real ones. He started training at age 13, citing bodybuilder and Hercules star Steve Reeves as a role model.

  What followed was a life that crossed the stages of professional bodybuilding, the sets of a hit television series, the locker rooms of the Canadian Football League, the halls of multiple sheriff's departments, and the recording booth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How a partially deaf kid from Brooklyn became the face, body, and voice of one of pop culture's most enduring characters is the story this documentary sets out to tell.

• 2. Iron and Cement

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  Brooklyn Technical High School, where Ferrigno learned metalworking, was part of the practical, working-class world he navigated as a teenager. After graduating in 1969, he entered his first major bodybuilding competition and won the IFBB Mr. America title. The trajectory looked steep and fast.

  He relocated to Columbus, Ohio, early in his career and trained with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Four years after his Mr. America win, he claimed the IFBB Mr. Universe title. He would win that title again the following year. By the time he stepped onto the Mr. Olympia stage in 1974, he came in second. The next year he placed third, still chasing Schwarzenegger.

  The documentary film Pumping Iron, released in 1977, captured that rivalry and made Ferrigno famous. But fame did not pay the bills. His first job after competition paid ten dollars an hour at a sheet metal factory in Brooklyn. He worked there for three years. He left after a co-worker and friend accidentally cut off his own hand on the job.

  He tried professional football next, signing with the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League as a defensive lineman. He had never played football. He was cut after two games, having broken a fellow player's legs during a scrimmage. The detour was brief, but it underscores the restless determination that defined this period of his life, a quality he would later trace directly to his hearing loss.

• 3. The Green Giant

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  In 1977, the same year Pumping Iron was released, CBS cast Ferrigno as the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk television series. He stood 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighed around 285 pounds. No special effects were needed to make him look physically overwhelming.

  Bill Bixby played the Hulk's human alter ego, and though the two actors rarely shared the same frame on camera, Ferrigno has described Bixby as a mentor and father figure who took him under his wing. He singles out the episodes Bixby directed as particularly memorable. That relationship gave Ferrigno an anchor in an industry where he was still new.

  The series ran from 1978 through 1981, producing 82 episodes, though the final two did not air until May 1982. The two men later reunited for three Incredible Hulk TV movies: The Incredible Hulk Returns in 1988, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk in 1989, and The Death of the Incredible Hulk in 1990.

  Ferrigno also voiced the Hulk in the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk, appearing on screen as a security guard bribed by Bruce Banner, played by Edward Norton, with a pizza. He continued voicing the character in subsequent Marvel Cinematic Universe films, uncredited, through Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015. Mark Ruffalo took over the voice role after that.

• 4. European Adventures and Mixed Reviews

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  Hercules, the 1983 science fantasy adventure film, gave Ferrigno a chance to step out of green body paint and play a legendary hero in his own right. The reviews were mixed to negative. Gary Allen Smith, author of Epic Films, offered one of the more enthusiastic assessments, writing that at 6 feet 5 inches and 286 pounds, Ferrigno was "a massive and thoroughly convincing Hercules." Film critic Marylynn Uricchio of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Andy Brack of Charleston City Paper also praised him.

  He returned to the role in The Adventures of Hercules in 1985. He then played the title character in Sinbad of the Seven Seas in 1989. These European-produced fantasy films formed a distinct strand of his filmography, apart from the American television work.

  In 2014, the website Decider ranked Ferrigno tenth on its list of the hottest onscreen Hercules portrayals ever recorded. That ranking arrived more than thirty years after the original film, a sign of the role's long afterlife in popular memory.

  In 1983 he also appeared as John Six in the short-lived medical drama Trauma Center, which ran for 13 episodes. His range during this period was broad, moving between mythological heroes, genre television, and the documentary that had launched him, with a second competition documentary, Stand Tall, still ahead.

• 5. The Return and Stand Tall

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  In the early 1990s, Ferrigno stepped back onto the Mr. Olympia stage after years away from competition. He finished 12th in 1992 and 10th in 1993. The returns were modest by the standards of his earlier career, but the attempt itself said something about his character.

  His 1994 run at the Masters Olympia, where he competed against Robbie Robinson and Boyer Coe, became the subject of the 1996 documentary Stand Tall. That film documented his attempt to recapture major competitive standing late in his career. After the Masters Olympia, he retired from competition.

  During his active competitive years, he had weighed 275 pounds in 1973 and 285 pounds in 1976. His competition record also includes a fourth-place finish in the inaugural World's Strongest Man competition in 1977, in a field of eight competitors.

  By the mid-1990s, Ferrigno had appeared on the covers of Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Iron Man, Muscle Builder, and a range of other fitness publications across multiple decades, a parallel career as a physical ideal that ran alongside his acting work throughout his adult life.

• 6. Beyond the Screen

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  Ferrigno's life off camera took directions that surprised people who knew him only as the Hulk. He trained Michael Jackson intermittently beginning in the early 1990s, and in 2009 he helped Jackson prepare physically for a planned series of concerts in London. Those concerts were cancelled after Jackson's death.

  In February 2006, he was sworn in as a Los Angeles County reserve sheriff's deputy at Level II. In November 2010, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio swore him in as a member of a volunteer posse alongside actors Steven Seagal and Peter Lupus. In June 2012, he completed his Level I law enforcement academy through the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department, bringing him to full peace officer status. In September 2013 he was sworn in as a special deputy to the Delaware County, Ohio, Sheriff's Department.

  He also launched a line of fitness equipment called Ferrigno Fitness. In January 2009, he appeared on The Price Is Right to demonstrate the equipment as a One Bid prize.

  In May 2018, President Donald Trump appointed Ferrigno to the Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition. In 2017, he was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame. On The Celebrity Apprentice in 2012, he competed on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, managing a team called Unanimous to victory in an episode centered on a promotional video for O-Cedar's ProMist Spray Mop. The win brought fifty thousand dollars to the charity.

• 7. Hearing, Determination, and Family

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  Ferrigno has used hearing aids since age five. Later in life, a cochlear implant restored much of his hearing. He has spoken openly about his condition, saying, "I think that if I wasn't hard of hearing I wouldn't be where I am now." He describes his hearing loss as having created a determination within him and a strength of character.

  He married Susan Groff in 1978, divorcing a year later. On the 3rd of May 1980, he married psychotherapist Carla Green. She became his manager and later a personal trainer. They have three children: Shanna, born in 1981; Louis Jr., born in 1984; and Brent, born in 1990.

  Shanna has a recurring role as Nurse Janice in Days of Our Lives and has appeared in the NBC series Windfall. Louis Jr. played linebacker for the University of Southern California Trojans football team before becoming an actor, with recurring roles in S.W.A.T. and Outer Banks.