GONE MISSING
Where in the world is America’s beloved fitness buff?
Richard Simmons is gone.
His fitness studio in Beverly Hills is shuttered. On its stoop is a sunbleached edition of the Beverly Hills Courier from January. Inside is the wreckage of a livelihood: piles of debris, tongues of pink insulation, a dusting of pulverized drywall on the ballet barres. In the middle of it all, a forlorn scale where his students measured pounds sacrificed to the oldies.
“I knew him very well, but I don’t know what happened to him,” says Germen Helleon, the proprietor of a hair salon next door, on Civic Center Drive.
On Feb. 15, 2014, the flamboyant fitness guru did not show up to teach his regular $12 exercise class at his studio, which was called Slimmons. He cut off contact with friends and hasn’t been seen in public since. One of his regular students was an actor-writer named Dan Taberski, who last month launched a podcast called Missing Richard Simmons. It is currently the No. 1 podcast on iTunes in the United States, Australia, Canada and Great Britain.
“I think he’s important,” Taberski, a former producer for he Daily Show, says in Episode 1. In his podcast, he plumbs Simmons’ biography, interviews longtime friends and beneficiaries, and arrives at an irrefutable and overlooked truth: Richard Simmons changed and saved countless lives.
Milton Teagle Simmons was born a fat kid in Louisiana, three years after the war ended. His parents, a retired vaudeville duo, were impossible to please, and Milton believed they preferred his “perfect” older brother. So he ate his feelings. Milton renamed himself “Richard” around the age of 10 to improve his self-image, but he was ridiculed by schoolmates for his weight.
By his teenage years, he was a nearly 200-pound runaway. At 17, he moved to Florence to study art. A TV agent discovered him at an outdoor café and put him in commercials. After doing a promotion at a supermarket in the winter of 1968, Simmons found an unsigned letter on the windshield of his Fiat: “Fat people die young. Please don’t die.”
The letter saved his life, he’s said over the years, but not before imperilling it. Over two and a half months, Simmons dropped from 268 to 112 pounds through a breakneck regimen of pills, hypnosis, bulimia and extreme fasting. His hair fell out. He spent $13,000 to tighten the loose skin on his face. While recovering in the hospital, he read books on nutrition and saw his path forward: He would be the buoyant champion of the overweight.
In 1975, he opened a health-food restaurant in Beverly Hills with an adjoining fitness studio. The clientele included Paul Newman, Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand.
After making a name for himself among Hollywood heavies, Simmons became a go-to guest on Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Phil Donahue. The Richard Simmons Show debuted in 1980 and within a year was airing on nearly 200 stations. In 1980, he wrote Richard Simmons’ Never-Say-Diet Book, which was a bestseller for over a year. The Sweatin’ to the Oldies videos started coming out in 1989 and featured average overweight Americans doing aerobics alongside Simmons.
“I work for the underdogs: the obese, the people in wheelchairs, the elderly,” Simmons told the Toronto Star at the time. “I adore Jane Fonda ( but) she has Stepford Wives with perfect bodies. I use real people.”
He made a fortune in the process. The second Sweatin’ to the Oldies tape sold 1.5 million copies, rivalling Fonda’s Workout. Simmons claimed that over his career, he helped the world population lose 12 million pounds.
Before he disappeared, Simmons was on CNN to talk about his new single, a ridiculous dance song called Hair Do, but the conversation turned into an on-air therapy session — for Simmons.
“What do you say to yourself in the mirror in the morning?” anchor Brooke Baldwin asked.
Simmons pursed his lips and looked away from the camera. His eyes moistened.
“I say, ‘Try to help more people,’ because there are more obese children and teenagers, young adults and seniors in the world right now — more than ever in the history of the United States,” said Simmons. “And when you’re out of work, a dollar hamburger looks great. And when you get a divorce or lose a job, you really just don’t want to take good care of yourself.”
“But just remember: You’re one of a kind,” Simmons said. “And God could have made you a butterfly that lasts three months, but he made you a human being.”
Six weeks later, poof. In the absence of satisfying information, the public has supplied its own intrigue, which has been categorically denied by the few people who remain in Simmons’ orbit.
“Richard is not missing,” his longtime publicist, Tom Estey, writes in an email. “He is simply willingly living his life outside the public eye.”
A year ago, after a New York Daily News investigation into his disappearance, Simmons called the Today show to squelch the rumours. He was healthy, he said, and under no one’s control.
“I just sort of wanted to be a little bit of a loner for a while,” he told Savannah Guthrie. “Right now, I just want to sort of just take care of me.”
“Not to worry, Richard’s fine,” Simmons promised. “You haven’t seen the last of me. I’ll come back, and I’ll come back strong.”
Richard Simmons isn’t missing in the legal sense. But he is missed.
I just sort of wanted to be a little bit of a loner for a while. Right now, I just want to sort of just take care of me.