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TALE OF THE TAPE: Arnold Schwarzenegger is shooting a pilot for cable network Showtime, which recalls his bodybuilding days in Venice Beach, Calif. in the late 1960s.

TALE OF THE TAPE: Arnold Schwarzenegger is shooting a pilot for cable network Showtime, which recalls his bodybuilding days in Venice Beach, Calif. in the late 1960s.

TALE OF THE TAPE: Arnold Schwarzenegger is shooting a pilot for cable network Showtime, which recalls his bodybuilding days in Venice Beach, Calif. (right) in the late 1960s. (
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He is famous for saying “I’ll be back.” And now he is.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is ready to return to his roots to star in a TV drama that will trace the birth of the bodybuilding industry.

The show, called “Pump,” will be set in the 1970s in a no-frills gym in Venice Beach, Calif., where Schwarzenegger honed the physique that made him a star.

The actor has described those years as a whirl of intense training, hard partying and the occasional group sex session. Showtime, which airs “Homeland,” is making a pilot to test audience appetite.

Should a full series result, Schwarzenegger, now 65, is expected to take an acting role. He is also an executive producer and has shared his story with the writers.

The former California governor certainly has a tale to tell. According to promotional material for his memoir, published last September: “He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town. By 21 he had emigrated to the United States and been crowned Mr Universe. He became the “world’s greatest bodybuilder,” conquered Hollywood, married into the Kennedy clan and ran as a Republican to become the Governor of California.”

Then came a fall. In 2011 he was forced to put the rehabilitation of his acting career on hold after it emerged that he had fathered a child with one of his wife’s housekeepers while on a break from filming “Batman & Robin.”

The circumstances of the split with his wife, Maria Shriver, scandalized the country. Schwarzenegger was dubbed the “Sperminator” and the media raked over his past, including the period in which “Pump” will be set.

When he moved to the US in 1968, speaking little English, he lived in LA and trained at Gold’s Gym in Venice.

In an interview from that period he described his drug use – “grass and hash, no hard drugs” — and how bodybuilders would indulge in group sex sessions.

“I can look at a chick who’s a little out of shape and if she turns me on, I won’t hesitate to date her,” he told Oui magazine in 1977. Since making an acting comeback following seven years as California governor, he has appeared in “The Expendables 2” and “The Last Stand,” in which he played a sheriff.