09/28/2021
If you've never read about Elaine LeLanne, Jack LeLanne's wife, she is an absolute inspiration!
CW: Diet, Body Image
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Born Elaine Doyle on March 19, 1926 in Minneapolis, she was a cheerleader in high school. After graduation, she ventured out to California; this was initially planned as a vacation, but once there, she decided to stay put.
Fate landed her at a San Francisco television studio where she met her soon-to-be partner in life and in eternal physical fitness. She is a published author, the secret ingredient of a still-thriving fitness empire, and the undeniable "First Lady of Physical Fitness."
In today’s Brief Biographies of Badass Bi***es.
Meet Elaine LeLanne.
Known to most as fitness guru Jack LaLanne’s wife, Elaine LeLanne continues to be a force to be reckoned with in her own right.
In 2012, Sweary Historian and author, James Fell, had the pleasure of interviewing LaLanne. Fell has been a longtime fan of Lalanne’s late husband, and during the interview, he asked her if she was still involved with “BeFit Enterprises,” Jack’s company that sells exercise books, DVDs and other health-related products.
LaLanne replied matter-of-factly, “I’m the president and always have been. Jack never wanted to run it. He just wanted to help people to help themselves.” LaLanne has always been the secret ingredient in Jack’s success, and I’d bet dollars to forbidden donuts that most people had no clue. I know I didn’t.
LaLanne grew up in the Midwest, but she was soon seduced by both the sun and the culture of California and decided to enroll at the UCLA-NBC radio institute. She was soon scoped out to be a model, only to be told that, while she had a pretty face, she was too short to walk the runways (rude).
In 1949, she veered toward the very new industry of television to star in commercials, where she was an immediate hit with the television studio heads. LaLanne had what they would call the full package: Good looks AND a sunny but commanding personality. She impressed people at the studio so much, that a radio host, perhaps her future ex-husband Les Malloy, said, hey…you should create your own TV show!
LaLanne was surprised by the suggestion. When it came to making a TV show, she says, “I didn’t have a clue!”
But she’s sharp as f**k and she figured it out. And soon, LaLanne was booking 90-minute shows, complete with a twelve-piece orchestra and regular guests.
On the set of one of her shows, she met Jack. He was introduced to her as the “guy who can do push-ups through your whole show,” she recalled in an interview, laughing.
LaLanne says she was drawn to Jack but wasn’t what she would describe as the picture of health like he was. She was a chainsmoker and she loved to eat. She really didn’t give a damn if the food was healthy or not.
But, after watching how Jack lived his life and having him playfully nudge her to be healthier, she was eventually inspired to give up her ci******es and her regular indulgence of chocolate donuts and begin focusing more on her health. Part of that was that he wouldn’t f**king let up. Which of course, if someone was doing that to me, I’d probably dropkick them because mind your f**kin business. But LaLanne said that she felt that she was ready to make a change for herself.
“He told me ‘If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t tell you this.’ He showed me pictures of pink lungs versus black lungs from smoking, and I quit. I decided I was going to work out with Jack.”
Jack himself had been a super unhealthy, sugar-addicted teenager, and fully miserable. But on the advice of a nutritionist, he overhauled his life by going strict vegetarian. Feeling refreshed and inspired, he wanted to help others know that it was possible to feel better, too. He opened a backyard gym in Oakland and set out to change the world.
Jack had once said, “If something saved your life, would you be enthusiastic about it?”
LaLanne said that after she dropped the smoking habit and started eating healthier, she began to feel so much better. And when she added the exercise that Jack encouraged, it started to change her life. She began feeling better inside and out. She was sold.
That change carried over to her professional life where she not only planned out the exercise segments on Jack’s television show, she began appearing in the segments as well.
A few years later, “we danced at a company party, and we’ve been dancing ever since,” LaLanne said in an interview before Jack died. And six years after they first met, LaLanne left Les Malloy for Jack; in 1959, they shot over to Vegas and tied the knot.
She muses, “I didn’t fall in love with his brawn; I fell in love with his brain. It was a beautiful relationship. He was my friend and my husband. And we just laughed through life. He had a marvelous sense of humor.”
LaLanne becoming “The First Lady of Fitness” was pretty damn revolutionary at the time. Back in that day, women were discouraged from doing much exercising, especially anything that might build muscle as, you know, it might ruin their figures by making them - *gasp* - manly. Or make their uteruses fall out and MY GOD, WHAT THEN? WHAT GOOD ARE YOU IF YOUR UTERUS FALLS OUT AND YOU CAN’T MAKE BABIES?!
LaLanne, as part of the show, felt it was important that people saw her performing these once “only for men” exercises to prove that they were, in fact, safe for women to perform.
For 34 years, LaLanne appeared five days a week on “The Jack LaLanne Show,” doing her part in getting people, especially women who had been previously discouraged by patriarchal bu****it, into physical fitness and encouraged a healthy, balanced diet based on fresh fruits and vegetables. She and her husband Jack became extremely vocal -and very effective - cheerleaders for preventive health.
When he was alive, Jack would regularly shout from the rooftops about how lucky he was to have Elaine as a partner.
“Everyone can’t be perfect like my wife.”
LaLanne, who has lost quite a bit of her eyesight in the last few years to Macular Degeneration, says that keeping a good attitude is key, and that “anything is possible if you believe you can make it happen.”
Making the decision to consciously choose positivity has been what’s kept her afloat when things have gotten hard for her. When her daughter died in a car accident at the age of 21, “I could go ‘pity party’ or I could go through life because I had my life to live,” LaLanne said. “I decided I’ve gotta do what I have to do to push onward.”
She had to cling to that same positivity to make it through when her beloved Jack died in 2011.
She added, “It’s very important to have a sense of humor. There’s a positive and a negative way to go through life.”
LaLanne readily admits that, even though she prioritizes her physical fitness as essential, she didn’t even TRY to keep up with the insane exercise regimen that her husband had adhered to his whole life. Most of his workouts happened while she was still asleep.
“He rolled out and I rolled over!”
In the interview with James Fell, he wanted to know how she felt about some of the crazy physical stunts that he pulled, like swimming long distances while shackled, and he asked if she ever feared for his life.
“Oh, my, yes. I was worried about him. It was tough, and I was worried every time. I always wore this hat every time he did a stunt because it was my lucky hat to keep him safe. Back then, if you were over 40 you were over the hill. When he was 60 he said he wanted to swim from Alcatraz to the mainland with hands and feet shackled and towing a thousand-pound boat. And I said, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
These days, keeping her peers moving, older folks who sometimes have a tendency to slow down to their own detriment, is one of her biggest focuses. While acknowledging that sometimes we have mobility issues and how hard it can be to get started, LaLanne says that even a little bit makes a difference in the long run.
“I’ve observed over the years that my friends who maintain a positive attitude and a real zest for life, those who exercise and remained active are still alive, while those who didn’t exercise and didn’t care what they put into their mouths either died early or lived with ailments that eventually landed them in nursing homes and several lost their memories.”
She was adamant that people who hit retirement shouldn’t just sit around the house and do nothing, but rather find a hobby to keep active, and to “get out and be involved in the world.” She also encourages “lifelong learning.”
In 2020, LaLanne talked to “Good Morning San Diego” about how hard it’s been for seniors during Covid.
LaLanne went on to recall how she lived through World War 2. Life was bopping along and then BOOM, everything changed. And she says that while of course it’s a different scenario, dealing with massive changes to our norm is what we’re all experiencing now, and it’s hitting seniors in a way that’s especially rough.
“We cannot sit down and have a pity party for ourselves. The only thing constant about life is change. And we have to keep that positive attitude to get through it.”
For LaLanne, she just wants people to honor who they are and use it to thrive, no matter their background. She believes in people and wants them to know that they should believe in themselves even more.
“You have a story. Your story can change your life.”
Elaine LaLanne was inducted into the National Fitness Hall of Fame in 2017. At the time of this writing, she is 95 and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
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Thank you for reading installment #104 of !
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