Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Sit Down

Jack LaLanne turns 95 and he wants you to get some exercise:

LaLanne has made a fortune, but he won't retire. He carries on his crusade with the zeal of a man whose jumpsuit is on fire.

"If you believe something, live it!" LaLanne barks.

...LaLanne at 15 was "a miserable goddamn kid. It was like hell." He was a sugarholic, gorging on sweets then barfing to make room for more. He was constantly sick, underweight, had zero energy, headaches so bad he would bang his head against a wall. He had an explosive temper, severe depression and a head full of demons when he dropped out of Berkeley High.

Then a neighbor gave Jack and his mother tickets to a lecture by clean-eating advocate Paul Bragg. Boom! Jack LaLanne was born.

Says LaLanne, "Bragg said, 'My dear friends, it matters not what your physical condition is. If you obey nature's laws, you will be born again.' I went home and prayed, 'Dear God, give me the willpower to refrain from those foods that are killing me.' "

Soon LaLanne was healthy beyond his dreams. He became a football star, a wrestling champ and a babe magnet. At 22, he opened a gym in downtown Oakland, and when business didn't boom - maybe because in 1936 nobody knew what the hell a gym was - he told himself, "Jack, people are not coming to you. You gotta go to them!"

He trained cops and firefighters, he recruited at high schools, and in 1951, he began hosting a daily exercise show on KGO (Channel 7) - where he met Elaine - that became a network smash, running until 1985.

Using his personality and pep - with his muscles serving as his background singers - he bullied a nation into rethinking its nonapproach to nutrition and exercise. He invented and pioneered the fitness industry.

"My whole life," LaLanne says, "is, 'How can I help people like that man (Bragg) helped me?' "