Evergreen – Tom Schomberg’s populist 9-foot statue of Rocky has made almost as many comebacks as the Italian Stallion himself.
The bronze casting of Sylvester Stallone in character and in boxing shorts, his gloved hands raised in victory, has done road work from Colorado to Philadelphia, west to Los Angeles and back to exile in a Philadelphia basement.
Now, with the sixth film version of Rocky’s life story in theaters , a battle over the statue – which has bruised various factions of Philadelphia’s cultural community for decades – is over and the bronze finally is back where it belongs: Ready to jog up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
And Schomberg, 26 years after sculpting Stallone into the statue everyone wants to pose with, has learned Stallone’s lesson of combining art with a paycheck. Fans inspired by the latest triumph of the average guy in “Rocky Balboa” can now buy miniatures of the Schomberg statue. (The mini-“Yo Adrians” made an appearance on Home Shopping Network Monday and sold well.)
Schomberg’s renewed connection with the commerce of the Rocky franchise comes at a time when he’s never been further away from sports.
“My Rocky was done so long ago, it’s kind of ancient history for me,” said Schomberg. But the product of sculpting, of course, is history immortal, and Schomberg is speaking these words while leaning on the shoulder of one of the 30-inch replicas of the Rocky statue at his foothills studio.
And the ideal of “Rocky” remains a vibrant inspiration to the public at large, regardless of what critics think of Stallone rolling out another sequel. The 1976 Oscar winner for best picture has made international icons out of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the statue fans expect to find when they imitate Rocky’s run there.
“People come here and affirm their dream,” wrote Michael Vitez in “Rocky Stories,” a chronicle of a year’s worth of fan visits to the hallowed site.
The sculpture’s role in the daily affirmations began in 1980, with Stallone posing in Schomberg’s mountain retreat while the artist scraped wax. Stallone, you see, was in better shape than when Schomberg had made his rough model, and so a good portion of the waxy abdomen had to go.
“As a sculptor, I try to dig the personality out of the piece,” said Schomberg, 63, who grew up in Iowa but eventually took a master’s from the University of Denver.
Schomberg had his own “Rocky moment,” he says, in 1976, when he gave up the security of teaching tenure in New Jersey to move back to Colorado. He gambled on becoming a professional artist by building his own home and studio, before Evergreen was a bedroom community for the metro area.
Working with the movie star just a few years later, Schom- berg said, “I’m not sure I dug the personality of Stallone out of there, but I do think I got Rocky.”
Stallone and his studio commissioned the sculpture for the plot of his 1980 sequel “Rocky III,” for about $50,000.
In the movie, Philadelphia’s mayor dedicates a Rocky statue atop the art museum steps. Rocky fans wanted the statue to stay put after filming, but some artistic leaders felt the sculpture and the Rocky image didn’t match the museum’s neo-classical style.
It was eventually sent packing to Stallone’s care in Los Angeles. He brought it back to the art museum to film 1990’s “Rocky V,” then left it there, apparently ignoring an agreement to remove it, according to the Vitez book.
City leaders voted to put Rocky across town at the Spectrum, a giant arena where the movie fights were filmed, but by this year, it was back in storage.
Stallone, like the Rocky he penned for his scripts, is nothing if not relentless, in sequels and in life. With Rocky 6 on the way in the form of “Rocky Balboa,” a movement began to put the statue permanently at the steps.
The debate went a few rounds at the Philadelphia Arts Commission, with some commissioners arguing the statue was nothing more than a glorified movie prop. Rocky supporters said the sculpture had been transformed by popular acclaim into “a cultural icon that’s associated with Philadelphia,” said commission director William Burke. That view finally won out in September, and Rocky was stationed at the bottom of the staircase instead of the top.
“I think it’s a great compromise,” said Schomberg. “I do hope people will go inside the museum, as well, and be inspired by what they find there.”
Schomberg has other work in the public eye, including a war-dog memorial of the Vietnam War at Fort Benning, Ga., and a veterans memorial at Church of the Holy Ghost in downtown Denver. The Rocky statue cemented his status in the 1980s as a respected, if not critically adored, sculptor of athletic figures.
Schomberg had the rights to cast a total of three of the full-size Rocky sculptures, and 26 years later, the third has just been finished at a Loveland facility. The second edition, purchased for a sports museum, had an original asking price in the hundreds of thousands, while the third does not yet have a buyer.
The artist calls himself a hopeless romantic, and the classical sports figures started losing their appeal for Schomberg a few years ago, under an accumulation of huge salaries, petulant athletes and TV exposure. “I evolved into other series,” he said.
Meanwhile, letters, e-mails and photographs make their way up the mountain nearly every day to Schomberg’s hilltop retreat, telling more “Rocky stories.”
One woman wrote to say that when she lost an arm to melanoma and battled the disease for months, a picture of the Rocky statue on her refrigerator kept her going.
On his own refrigerator, Schomberg has a picture showing himself, the statue, and a couple of dozen tall redheads from Belfast, Ireland. When Schomberg and his wife, Cynthia, visited the newly restored statue in Philadelphia at Thanksgiving, a university basketball team was posing for pictures. As so many Philly tourists say – to the constant distraction of the arts board – the Belfast hoopsters told Schomberg their two ambitions while visiting Pennsylvania for a tourney were to jog up the famous steps and get a picture with the statue.
Though Schomberg lives the quiet, semi-secluded life of the working artist, he admits to rueful pleasure in those brief encounters with minor celebrity.
“It’s a good thing I don’t live in Philadelphia,” or he’d be tempted to walk by Rocky every day. “I don’t think my ego would be able to stand it.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
