Mickey Hargitay

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Mickey Hargitay (January 6, 1926 – September 14, 2006) was an actor and Mr. Universe 1955. He was born Miklós Hargitay in Budapest, Hungary.

Growing up in Hungary, he performed in a acrobatic act with his brothers. He also played soccer and became a champion speed skater.[1]An underground fighter during World War II, Hargitay fled Hungary after the war and moved to the United States. He settled in Cleveland, where he met and married his first wife, Mary Birge (with whom he also had an acrobatic act and one child, Tina, who was born in 1949), and worked as a plumber and carpenter. He was inspired to begin bodybuilding after seeing a magazine cover of Steve Reeves, famed for playing Hercules. He became NABBA Mr. Universe in 1955.

After winning Mr. Universe, he joined Mae West's muscleman revue at New York's The Latin Quarter. The story goes that when actress Jayne Mansfield's dinner companion asked her what she wanted the evening they caught the show, she quipped, "I'll have a steak and the man on the left." West, never to be outdone, tried to break up the attention-grabbing couple but failed. Hargitay and Mansfield married on January 13, 1958, after his divorce became final. They had three children (including TV actress Mariska Hargitay, who was born after Mansfield divorced Hargitay in Juarez, Mexico; the divorce was later ruled invalid by a judge and the marriage was soon ended in a U.S. court. From 1959 to 1961, Hargitay hosted a television exercise show.

He remodeled much of his and Mansfield's Beverly Hills mansion, "The Pink Palace", building its famous heart-shaped swimming pool. In November 2002, the house was razed by developers. Its previous owner had been Engelbert Humperdinck.

After Mansfield's death in a car crash on June 29, 1967, Hargitay sued her estate for over $275,000 to support the children; in their divorce decree, she had agreed to pay child support and to give him approximately $70,000 in cash and property. Hargitay married again that September.

Mickey Hargitay had a brother, Ede (the grandfather of actor Eddie Hargitay) and Mickey was Eddie Hargitay's godfather. Mickey is the first recipient of the Joe Weider Lifetime Achievement Award. He was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1982 TV-movie The Jayne Mansfield Story.

Hargitay appeared in an episode of his daughter Mariska's series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In the episode "Control", Hargitay played a man on a subway station escalator who witnesses the aftermath of a brutal assault. (Mariska's character, Olivia Benson, is later seen interviewing him.)

He also starred as Travis Anderson in the Italian horror film Bloody Pit of Horror.

In May 2006, he received the Muscle Beach Hall of Fame Award from the Muscle Beach Historical Committee. The Los Angeles Times noted in Hargitay's obituary:

"Walter Winchell once said that what [President] Eisenhower did for golf, Mickey Hargitay did for bodybuilding, because he brought it to the forefront," Gene Mozee, a bodybuilding historian and writer for Iron Man magazine, told The Times on Monday. "Back in those days, bodybuilding was thought of as a freakish, unusual activity that wasn't popular with the general public," Mozee said. "At that time, athletic coaches discouraged lifting weights, thinking you'd become muscle bound. And along came Mickey Hargitay, a great all-around athlete."