LaLanne Pumped Up Over Star

By CHRIS PAGE, Californian staff writer
e-mail: cpage@bakersfield.com

Thursday September 26, 2002, 10:54:20 PM

Reed Saxon / AP Physical fitness expert Jack LaLanne strikes a characteristic pose as he takes the first official step on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday.

HOLLYWOOD -- Comparatively speaking, Jack LaLanne's 88th birthday on Thursday was a low-key affair.

Sure, the fitness guru and exercise innovator was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But that was no sweat for the still-boisterous health nut.

The former Kern County resident just slipped on one of his 30 or so trademark jumpsuits -- this one black, for formal occasions -- then Velcro'ed on a pair of running shoes and climbed into a limousine with his wife, Elaine.

No big deal?

No big deal. After all, this is the guy who, at 70, towed 70 boats -- each with 70 people aboard -- from the Queen's Way Bridge in Long Beach Harbor straight to the Queen Mary. And just 10 years earlier, LaLanne swam from Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf while handcuffed and towing a 1,000-pound boat. Getting an award was like taking a nap.

"I'm going to live to be 150 years old," LaLanne told an audience on Hollywood Boulevard for the Walk of Fame ceremony. "Stick around and find out."

Friends from the entertainment and fitness industries came out to wish LaLanne well. Actress Jane Russell led a modest crowd of about 150 onlookers in singing "Happy Birthday" to him. Bodybuilder and "The Incredible Hulk" star Lou Ferrigno said a few words, as did "Dateline NBC" correspondent Keith Morrison. Arnold Schwarzenegger had delivered a giant bouquet of balloons. Throughout most of the speeches, LaLanne gazed out over the crowd and pointed a triumphant fist and smile at those people whom he recognized.

That his star was being placed just outside of a Tully's Coffee shop was an irony largely lost on those in attendance: LaLanne would never order a double iced mocha or cheese Danish. Too much sugar. Not healthy.

Hard to believe this barrel-chested octogenarian with a twinkle in his eye and a wide, closed-mouth grin plastered perpetually on his face could ever have been the scrawny kid who got sand kicked in his face.

But it's worse than that. He was the kid too weak to even be out at the beach in the first place.

Kern sweet Kern

LaLanne's come a long way from a little boy living in Greenfield, the son of French immigrants who moved to Kern County when he was 4 to be sheep ranchers. But hold your civic pride: It was there, on a farm just off Highway 99, that LaLanne started getting terribly ill -- a side-effect from being what LaLanne calls a "complete sugarholic."

"My mom used to appease me with sweets," LaLanne said from his Morro Bay home in a telephone interview with The Californian earlier this week. "I had an uncontrollable temper, and she'd give me cakes and pies. I'd take a quart of ice cream and eat it and put a finger down my throat and heave it up. I was addicted."

Eventually, by the time LaLanne was 14 (a few years after a fight with one of his brothers prompted LaLanne to set the family home on fire), the farm was bankrupt. Foot-and-mouth disease, the Depression, drought -- all ravaged the family business, and the sheep were unmarketable. Bankrupt, the family moved to the Bay area.

Changing his routine

There, just beginning high school in Oakland, LaLanne had a total life makeover courtesy of pioneer nutritionist Paul Bragg, who was speaking at the Oakland City Women's Club.

The talk turned his life around. LaLanne vowed to eat right and get plenty of exercise. He ate only natural foods (no sugar) and ended up building a gym in his back yard, inventing what later became standard gym equipment like the Smith gym (long before Rudy Smith put his name on it) and an adjustable lat press.

He got Oakland firemen and policemen to use the gym. A few years later, LaLanne got into bodybuilding. He modified his otherwise vegetarian diet to allow for fish and egg whites, then meat, then the most extreme workout diet possible: a quart of blood a day.

That lasted six weeks.

"I never felt better," LaLanne said, describing how he would pick up cattle blood from butchers. "Fruits and vegetables and blood. It just wasn't the most acceptable thing, socially. I gave it up when I got a blood clot in my throat. That was just a good excuse."

At 21, the fitness buff opened a new Oakland workout club and sold memberships door to door, though most people were slow to catch on. In the late '40s and early '50s, weight lifting and exercise equipment were for muscleheads, not everyday men and women.

"I'd be 6-foot-4 if people hadn't beat me down so much," the 5-foot 4-inch LaLanne said. "Doctors said women working out with weights would just get bulky. ... You can't believe what I had to go through."

That all changed once LaLanne got his own TV show, the first workout show on the tube. "The Jack LaLanne Show" debuted in 1951 and ran for 34 years, a record-holder for longest-running program. The focus of the show was simple: "to get people to exercise and eat right," LaLanne said. "If there was a better plan, don't you think I would have it?"

LaLanne built up an empire of gyms -- owning 100 at his peak -- and marketed a bevy of Jack LaLanne-logo'ed products, from vitamins to home-workout gizmos.

The way he tells it, LaLanne invented many of the things that are common to today's health afficionados. Beyond exercise equipment, he put his name on the first health snack bar. He convinced an early sponsor of his TV show, a yogurt company, to try adding fruit inside (though he suggested prunes).

And now, he is the first fitness guru to have a star on the Walk of Fame.

"I've never thought I was anybody," LaLanne said. "Who the hell am I? People are people. I do things you can't do. You do things I can't do."

Pumping away

These days, LaLanne still works out two hours every day. Though recently hyped studies suggest the average person should work out an hour every day, LaLanne says that's poppycock. (He says that about many things, like exercise and diet gimmicks, 24-hour fitness clubs and any advice that doesn't stick to eating smarter and working out -- though he uses much more colorful, and unprintable, words than "poppycock.") Most people only need 30 minutes a day, he said. For LaLanne, pushing his body as far as it will go -- which is why he got down next to his star on Hollywood Boulevard and did a push-up on his fingertips for photographers -- is more of a personal challenge.

"I want to see how long I can keep up this physical prowess," he said.

"It's an eagle thing. I want to see how long I can do it."

LaLanne sold his gyms to business partners or to Bally's Total Fitness.

He isn't selling those vitamin-enriched breads or Glamour Stretchers anymore, though he does appear on home shopping channels regularly to hawk his Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer and maintains a Web site (www.JackLaLanne.com) to sell videos and memorabilia.

But he stays busy on the lecture circuit when he's not on the Home Shopping Network or traveling.

In fact, LaLanne comes to Bakersfield occasionally, visiting with friends and dining at Wool Growers -- though hold on to that civic pride once again:

"I like to go there (to Wool Growers) and watch the people eat," LaLanne said, adding that he normally gets soup and nibbles on fish and veggies. "In the summer, you get these big, fat people with their guts on 'em ... They give you so much food, it comes out of their ears. They're eating; they're sweating."

Of course, LaLanne's not a total stickler. Even he will engage in a little excess, like a nice glass of wine -- though he emphasizes research that shows wine's benefit for the heart.

"If you had to just work out all the time, you'd lose interest," he said. "You gotta have a little fun. I stick so damn close to what I believe because I have to. People know, 'If Jack LaLanne said something, it has to be true.'"

One thing he's said but hasn't done yet is a final feat of strength, one to rival his boat-tugging stunts of decades passed. Since his 81st birthday, LaLanne's been talking of swimming from Catalina Island to Los Angeles. He estimates it would take him 22 hours. He would need to train for three months.

"We'll see," LaLanne said. "My wife says if I do another one of those feats, she's going to divorce me."

 RonJones.Org | Back to Top | Back to Jack La Lanne Tribute | Site Map

                      Get Fit.  Be Strong.
                                 Corporate Wellness · Consulting · Health Promotion