On July 14, 2024, there was news that celebrity fitness guru Richard Simmons had died at age 76 (just a day or so after his birthday). His obituary published in the Los Angeles Times can be viewed.
The Associated Press reported:
"Simmons died at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Tom Estey said in an email to The Associated Press. He gave no further details.
Los Angeles police and fire departments say they responded to a house — whose address the AP has matched with Simmons through public records — where a man was declared dead from natural causes."
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We learned more in a statement from a spokesperson for Richard Simmons' family, Tom Estey, provided a statement to ABC News confirming the death was "accidental."
Subsequently, we learned "This morning, Richard Simmons' brother Lenny, received a call from the LA Coroner's office," began the statement. "The Coroner informed Lenny that Richard's death was accidental due to complications from recent falls and heart disease as a contributing factor," the statement continued. The statement also said, "The toxicology report was negative," besides the medication that was prescribed to Richard Simmons.
Officially, the official cause of death was classified as an accident according to a report issued by Los Angeles' Medical Examiner. The report listed his cause of death as "sequelae of blunt traumatic injuries" that were caused by a "ground level fall," and added that "arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease" was a "contributing condition."
Richard Simmons was born as Milton Teagle Richard Simmons, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Richard Simmons described himself as a former 268-pound teen. In an interview, he told NPR "I was 200 pounds in the eighth grade. And when I graduated high school I was almost 300 pounds." He used to joke that he grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where, his biography noted, "lard was a food group and dessert mandatory."
In 1974, upon relocating to Los Angeles, Simmons opened his own fitness studio in Beverly Hills that catered to people who wanted to lose weight and get into shape. Once his name had become a household name for fitness, he renamed the studio as SLIMMONS. It even featured one of the first salad bars in the area, called humorously enough "Ruffage." Simmons continued to be a presence there until 2013. Below is a 1982 digitized episode of the "Richard Simmons Show" (or you can visit https://archive.org/details/the-richard-simmons-show-with-louis-perry to see it):
During his career, Richard Simmons became a master of many media forms, sharing his hard-won weight-loss tips as host of the Emmy-winning syndicated daytime television show known as the "Richard Simmons Show" which earned two Daytime Emmys for best direction and best talk show. Simmons was beloved for his upbeat and goofy personality and for connecting with regular people who wanted to get fit using his unintimidating workout routines.
Richard Simmons also became an author of several best-selling books, and later selling a successful direct-to-consumer diet plan known as Deal-A-Meal. He starred in many exercise videos which he sold on videocassette formats, including the wildly successful "Sweatin' to the Oldies" line of videos featuring music from the fifties and sixties which sold over 22 million copies and had become a cultural phenomenon. At that time, he had met and bonded with Jane Fonda who had her own workout and fitness line of videos, hence the two had "talked shop" and became fairly close friends.
He told People magazine:
Richard Simmons: "Jane Fonda's studio was about three miles away from me, and I've always been a fan — so I dressed up one day with a brown wig, a mustache, and glasses and a gray sweatshirt and heather-gray pants — and I went to her class. And she never knew it was me. And she was an excellent teacher."
However, as he entered his sixties, and dealt with knee replacement surgery, eventually Richard Simmons grew tired of being the center of a media empire which he had created, and he decided to close his famous Beverly Hills fitness studio SLIMMONS. Because he had become such a fixture in the media for so many years, it led to speculation about the underlying reason for his withdrawal from public life, and even whether he was a hostage to his long-term housekeeper. Indeed, a successful podcast known as "Missing Richard Simmons" was dedicated to that very topic. Those closest to Richard Simmons say that one reason for his recent seclusion was that he had just had knee surgery and he needed time to recover.
In his last interview with People magazine (read the interview at https://people.com/richard-simmons-final-interview-2-days-before-his-death-exclusive-8678205 for more), the magazine asked him:
People magazine: "People say you disappeared, but you really have not. You've still been quietly helping people over the last years."
Richard Simmons: "Well, when I decided to retire, it was because my body told me I needed to retire. I have spent time just reflecting on my life. All of the books I wrote, the videos. I never was like, "Oh look what I've done." My thing was, "Oh, look how many people I helped."
People magazine: "Where did this ethos come from, this need to help others?"
Richard Simmons: "My parents instilled that in me. They did not have a lot of money in New Orleans. They weren't Catholic but I went to Catholic school because it was three blocks away. And I fell in love with nuns. I'd never met a nun in my life. One of the nuns decided to leave the order. And she had nowhere to go. She had a small suitcase with maybe two outfits in it. And where did she go? She went to my house. My mother gave her clothes. My father gave her money for a Greyhound bus ticket to go back home. I was always embroidered with caring for people."
However, recognizing that he had something of an obligation to the loyal, national fanbase he had developed over the years, Richard Simmons eventually went back on television to inform everyone that he had not been kidnapped, and that he was working on some projects such as a biopic about his life and a Broadway show (it's unclear without Simmons if the Broadway show will proceed).
Simmons grew up during a very homophobic era (during the infamous Lavender Scare years), plus he also dealt with weight issues, hence he had been dealt a double-negative hand in life, even if he was later able to make lemonade (low-calorie and sugar-free, of course) out of the lemons life had dealt him initially. In Los Angeles, being gay is certainly no big deal as it might have been in religiously and culturally more conservative New Orleans. But only Simmons had the right to out himself - and only when he was ready. Simmons had gone on the record as saying he was not gay, perhaps in fear that it might damage his fitness businesses among many of the loyal buyers.
However, Richard Simmons was known for, putting it diplomatically, his "flamboyant" personality. In fact, many gay men who grew up watching "The Richard Simmons Show" believed that Richard Simmons was one of their own (their "gay-dar" detection systems suggested that to be true), even if he was not out publicly. The gay and lesbian community have long believed that the only person who is entitled to "out" someone is the person being outed. Otherwise, everyone has the prerogative to come out on their own terms - if they choose to come out at all. Not everyone respects that, but within the LGBT community, it is practically sacrosanct.
That said, since Richard Simmons' passing, a number of celebrities including Denise Austin, Ricki Lake, Shaun T., and perhaps most notably, Jane Fonda, who claimed to have spotted him last with a new (male) lover on Instagram (see https://www.instagram.com/p/C9adC5ptced/ for details), took to social media to pay their respects to the late TV fitness personality.
Jane Fonda, who famously portrayed a senior woman on the series "Grace & Frankie" whose husband on the series (played by Martin Sheen) left her ... for a man.
On Instagram, Jane Fonda posthumously wrote about Richard Simmons:
"I saw him last when I took him and a boyfriend of his to lunch at the Polo Lounge. The relationship was new and he was proud. I never saw or heard from him again and, like many thousands of others, I've mourned his absence from my life."
But for those who knew Richard Simmons, it appears many now feel at liberty to out him posthumously. Maybe Richard was planning to tell people that in his planned Broadway show. Richard Simmons, in spite of his very public persona, was a very private person. It is unclear how far his Broadway show was in terms of production. Now, it is unclear whether he will be afforded the opportunity to come out to his legions of fans in the Broadway show, a biopic or even whether those projects will ever be completed. But at least a few of his acquaintances have outed him posthumously nevertheless.
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