Richard Simmons and the Dancing Powder Puffs

50 years ago, Richard Simmons tried for television stardom.

It took a few more years. He appeared on the daytime talk shows—Merv, Mike Douglas, Dinah—in the late ‘70s (as well as the soap General Hospital) before becoming a star in the Golden Age of Infomercials, slickly pushing his “Deal-A-Meal” and those “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” videos. He won Emmys for his own daytime show. He visited Late Night With David Letterman, with a host who seemed to love demeaning him, as the audience awwwed in sympathy. It was all a ruse, of course. One thing Richard Simmons knew how to do was promote himself.

Despite being ultra-hyper, even in conversation, he came across as sincere, certainly with women with whom he empathised on camera. He made them feel he wanted to be their friend and if no one else supported them, he did.

However, long before this, he received periodic mentions in the Fashion section of the Los Angeles Times. Here’s an unbylined clipping from Aug. 26, 1974.

SOUND LIKE A MILLION?—The audience, sitting at cafe-style tables in a KTLA studio, slowly enunciated in unison, "I looooovvvvve Gucci." And then, again to its own wonderment, "I looooovvvvve Sears."
The home audience was asked to compare body skin with facial skin (“skin is the largest organ of the body”) in order to see what exposure to the elements can do, and a member of the studio audience was picked to come up on stage, clean her face and then was largely ignored.
The occasion was the taping of "Look Like a Million," a daytime beauty show pilot developed and hosted by Richard Simmons. If it sells, look for it to have the greatest camp following since Queen for a Day and You Bet Your Life.
Simmons, 25, wanted to open the show with a group of dancers costumed as powder puffs. A huge lipstick case would wheel forward, he said between taping segments, then it would twirl up and he'd be the lipstick. The idea cost too much—for now at least.
Simmons was able to get Sally Struthers, however, to join him for most of the show, and Vidal Sassoon and his wife Beverly turned out in the studio audience. Larry Van Nuys, the star of KTLA's Help Thy Neighbor, which tapes in a nearby studio, also watched the proceedings and predicted the show would do well in Los Angeles and New York.

His next venture found itself the subject of the same column in the Nov. 14, 1975 edition of the Times:

STRETCH AND SALAD—Despite the shower rooms, wall-to-wall exercise mirrors and plush carpeting—it's hardly your everyday inner city health spa.
In the first place, Barbra Streisand and Cher are among the body buddies stretching their muscles there. Secondly, the whole center is located in an old warehouse next to Woniier Bread in an industrial section of Beverly Hills. And thirdly, it won't do you any good to take an exercise class and then sneak off to La Scala and gorge those pounds back. They've put the health food restaurant next door to the gym just to make sure you stay in shape.
Even the name has been given a different flavor. They call the exercise-gym the Anatomy Asylum, the health food section Ruffage.
"Because we're in Beverly Hills, people automatically think we're just another phony hangout for the beautiful people," says co-owner Richard Simmons, a kind of freaked-out Jack LaLanne who credits exercise with having helped him reduce from 270 to his present 140 pounds. "I don't want to look in the paper and see a caption that says Liza Minnelli at Ruffage. She's here. But that's not the point. The point is, if you don't stay in shape—you're not beautiful."
Simmons (“Just like the mattress, honey”) teaches the beginners. But the contours of Raquel Welch and other long-time exercisers fall into the hands of Kim Lee. If his work on Cher's torso isn't recommendation enough, Lee is also a look-alike for his cousin, the late kung cult figure Bruce Lee.
Prices are steep. The introductory 10-time exercise class rate runs $100. (The salads are extra). After that a one-hour exercise class levels to $4. What do you get there that you can't get for $100 a year at your local “Y”?
"It's a matter of life-style," says Simmons. "Some people like to buy a dress at Lerner's. Some people prefer Bonwit's. In our field, we're the Bonwit's."

What was Simmons doing before this? The Oakland Tribune devoted almost a half page to him on May 11, 1972 (photo to the right) in a story headlined “Metamophosis of a Formerly Fat Singing Waiter” where he spoke of his mother being in the Follies and his father singing on either stage or film, how he had a scholarship to study at the University of Florence, and gained weight (268 pounds) because he could make more money modelling that way. When he returned from Italy and worked as a singing waiter in New York “I got the message that fat boys aren’t so hot in the U.S.” He slimmed down and found work as a training director for Coty and Dina Merrill companies.

In Lois Kwan’s column in the March 4, 1973 Times, she reviews a restaurant in the Beverly Comstock Hotel and mentions “a maître d’hotel and an effervescent catalyst named Richard Simmons.”

While it’s not safe to assume two people with the same name are the same person, could there have possibly have been two effervescent Richard Simmons in the same city? If nothing else, Richard Simmons was one of a kind.

He has died a day after his birthday. Age 76.