Book Review: Caged Lion by John Howard Steele

One thing you learn when you are becoming a Pilates teacher (or just a Pilates enthusiast), is that there are a whole lot of legends out there about Joseph Pilates, but not a lot of sources to back them up.  Everything from his upbringing and health, to his interest in physical fitness, to how and why he ended up in America is seemingly up for debate.  

Joe was a boxer!  He was in the circus!  No, he was a gymnast and diver! 

He was in an internment camp on the Isle of Man during the war— but was he a soldier? A nurse for the interned? A captured enemy alien?  

He escaped the German political climate by getting on a ship to New York… and he met his wife on the ship and cured her of her arthritis and by the time they landed, they were in love!

And he had an illegitimate child back in Germany! … but we don’t know anything about that person.  

What?!!!!

From the mouth of Joseph Pilates himself we have two small books (Your Health and Return to Life), probably dictated to a translator, but they are really just manifestos of his philosophy and method of Contrology (which is what Pilates was called before, when Joseph Pilates was teaching it.). The documents have virtually no personal historical information in them, so how were we ever to know what we heard was real and what was just a sensationalized version of a Pilates teacher telephone game, with legends and rumors being passed along from person to person over time?

Enter John Howard Steel.  While he is just one man who had personal experience with Joseph Pilates, and only for the last few years of Pilates’ life, Steel finally brings us some insight and clarification to the man and his history.  A lawyer and client, Steel developed a close personal  friendship with Joseph Pilates and his wife, Clara, and ended up helping Clara get her financial affairs in order after she was widowed in the late 1960’s.  He was involved in helping the studio stay open after Pilates’ death so the clients could continue their practice of Contrology.  And he was instrumental in helping organize the resistance to the infamous lawsuit of the early 2000s where the trademark and use of the name and word “Pilates” was called into question.  If it were not for Steel, perhaps the lawsuit would have been decided the other way, and Pilates would have never become something practically everyone has heard of at this point, but instead may have faded away into obscurity. 

John Howard Steel has also done perhaps the most sleuthing of anyone in regards to Pilates’ biography, and is able to clear up some questions of why he may have been held on the Isle of Man, how he was able to travel to the United States, and what sort of relatives or progeny he may have left being in Germany.  Additionally, he gives us the history of the manufacturing of Pilates equipment and how those builders were also instrumental in winning the lawsuit.

Written with a sweet, yet not overly reverent tone, from the perspective of a man looking back at an important facet of his life over the last several decades, Caged Lion is a worthwhile read for any Pilates instructor or interested practitioner.