Jack La Lanne
Eighty-nine-year-old Jack La Lanne enters a San Francisco hotel gym and immediately starts bantering with staff and guests and offering exercise advice.
One man lies on the floor upon La Lanne's order and begins a series of arduous sit-ups as La Lanne barks out directions. Everyone is stunned, not only to see the fitness guru unexpectedly at the hotel, but to witness an evangelical zeal for health seemingly undiminished by advanced age.
"Jesus Christ was for the hereafter, right? I'm for the here now," La Lanne said during a visit to his birthplace San Francisco last weekend. His wife Elaine, who sometimes finishes La Lanne's sentences or reminds him of his best lines, then shouted out, "Hallelujah."
La Lanne has been preaching his gospel of exercise and good diet since 1936 when he opened his first gym in Oakland, California, across the Bay from San Francisco.
He gained a national following after "The Jack La Lanne Show" premiered on television in 1951 and started a 34-year run. La Lanne encouraged viewers to exercise with him using simple props such as a chair to the tune of organ music.
Over time he entered the popular culture and made many guest appearances on television shows including "The Addams Family," "Here's Lucy," "Laugh-In" and the "The Simpsons."
All these years later, La Lanne's exercise shows still air on cable television and he is marketing a juicer, exercise mat, videos and skin cream on the Internet and in commercials.
In person, he delivers the machine-gun fast patter of a salesman par excellence.
"Was Jesus a good salesman, if you believed in the Bible? He believed in something. I believe in something," he said. "When I lecture, I have one thing in my mind, to help those people."
In an oft-told tale, La Lanne said he converted his life as a wayward, sugar-addicted youth to the path of fitness fanatic at age 15 and never looked back. All of this has also made La Lanne, who lives in Morro Bay on California's coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a rich man and a celebrity.
SCORN FOR STEROIDS
Even as La Lanne and subsequent generations of fitness promoters spread their message, performance-enhancing drugs have spread in sports, and obesity among the American population has also grown to be an ever-larger problem.
Even back in the 1930s, La Lanne said, a few body builders were already taking performance-enhancing drugs, a problem that has cast a shadow over the 2004 Olympics in wake of the San Francisco-area BALCO lab scandal.
"You'll never stop any of that stuff; it's impossible. As long as the emphasis is on winning, they'll do anything," he said. "I think it's terrible. It's like going to bed with a rattle snake. It's going to get you."
La Lanne said steroids were vital to the bodybuilding career of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites), whom he calls a good friend. The two met when the Austrian immigrant was a 19-year-old in southern California, La Lanne said. Schwarzenegger has acknowledged he used steroids.
"He could have never had made it without the steroids," La Lanne said. "He would have never have been of that caliber."
Yet La Lanne is a big admirer of the former Hollywood star turned politician, perhaps because they both share an optimistic anything-is-possible outlook on life.
"Arnold's always been Arnold. If you don't like Arnold, you don't like sex or money," he said. "Arnold never made an excuse for anything, he just set out and did it."
Such a can-do spirit has propelled La Lanne to perform a series of unusual feats. In 1956, he did 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes. He swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco on his 60th birthday handcuffed and shackled on his legs while pulling a 1,000-pound boat. On his 70th birthday, he towed 70 boats carrying 70 people for a mile and a half.
The point? "To show that anything in life is possible. What the mind can conceive the body can do," he said.
Despite his own indefatigable sales pitch, La Lanne scorns advertising as the root of the problem for America's growing obesity epidemic. And as for eating fads such as the low carb Atkins diet and others, La Lanne does not mince words.
"It's a bunch of bull," he said.
He is no less sparing of health clubs which promise easy weight loss. "All of them are bogus unless you include nutrition," he said.
Like many old men, La Lanne has strong opinions. But with a trim physique and a reserve of energy, he is a living example of what happens after a life devoted to physical fitness.
He is also a font of one liners. "I can't afford to die, it would hurt my image," he joked.
One man lies on the floor upon La Lanne's order and begins a series of arduous sit-ups as La Lanne barks out directions. Everyone is stunned, not only to see the fitness guru unexpectedly at the hotel, but to witness an evangelical zeal for health seemingly undiminished by advanced age.
"Jesus Christ was for the hereafter, right? I'm for the here now," La Lanne said during a visit to his birthplace San Francisco last weekend. His wife Elaine, who sometimes finishes La Lanne's sentences or reminds him of his best lines, then shouted out, "Hallelujah."
La Lanne has been preaching his gospel of exercise and good diet since 1936 when he opened his first gym in Oakland, California, across the Bay from San Francisco.
He gained a national following after "The Jack La Lanne Show" premiered on television in 1951 and started a 34-year run. La Lanne encouraged viewers to exercise with him using simple props such as a chair to the tune of organ music.
Over time he entered the popular culture and made many guest appearances on television shows including "The Addams Family," "Here's Lucy," "Laugh-In" and the "The Simpsons."
All these years later, La Lanne's exercise shows still air on cable television and he is marketing a juicer, exercise mat, videos and skin cream on the Internet and in commercials.
In person, he delivers the machine-gun fast patter of a salesman par excellence.
"Was Jesus a good salesman, if you believed in the Bible? He believed in something. I believe in something," he said. "When I lecture, I have one thing in my mind, to help those people."
In an oft-told tale, La Lanne said he converted his life as a wayward, sugar-addicted youth to the path of fitness fanatic at age 15 and never looked back. All of this has also made La Lanne, who lives in Morro Bay on California's coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a rich man and a celebrity.
SCORN FOR STEROIDS
Even as La Lanne and subsequent generations of fitness promoters spread their message, performance-enhancing drugs have spread in sports, and obesity among the American population has also grown to be an ever-larger problem.
Even back in the 1930s, La Lanne said, a few body builders were already taking performance-enhancing drugs, a problem that has cast a shadow over the 2004 Olympics in wake of the San Francisco-area BALCO lab scandal.
"You'll never stop any of that stuff; it's impossible. As long as the emphasis is on winning, they'll do anything," he said. "I think it's terrible. It's like going to bed with a rattle snake. It's going to get you."
La Lanne said steroids were vital to the bodybuilding career of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites), whom he calls a good friend. The two met when the Austrian immigrant was a 19-year-old in southern California, La Lanne said. Schwarzenegger has acknowledged he used steroids.
"He could have never had made it without the steroids," La Lanne said. "He would have never have been of that caliber."
Yet La Lanne is a big admirer of the former Hollywood star turned politician, perhaps because they both share an optimistic anything-is-possible outlook on life.
"Arnold's always been Arnold. If you don't like Arnold, you don't like sex or money," he said. "Arnold never made an excuse for anything, he just set out and did it."
Such a can-do spirit has propelled La Lanne to perform a series of unusual feats. In 1956, he did 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes. He swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco on his 60th birthday handcuffed and shackled on his legs while pulling a 1,000-pound boat. On his 70th birthday, he towed 70 boats carrying 70 people for a mile and a half.
The point? "To show that anything in life is possible. What the mind can conceive the body can do," he said.
Despite his own indefatigable sales pitch, La Lanne scorns advertising as the root of the problem for America's growing obesity epidemic. And as for eating fads such as the low carb Atkins diet and others, La Lanne does not mince words.
"It's a bunch of bull," he said.
He is no less sparing of health clubs which promise easy weight loss. "All of them are bogus unless you include nutrition," he said.
Like many old men, La Lanne has strong opinions. But with a trim physique and a reserve of energy, he is a living example of what happens after a life devoted to physical fitness.
He is also a font of one liners. "I can't afford to die, it would hurt my image," he joked.
