Francois Henri LaLanne was born on 26 September 1914, in San Francisco, California USA, of part-French descent. Jack was a motivational speaker, nutrition and fitness expert, so well known for being the “Godfather of Fitness”. He is considered one of the first personalities to promote health benefits before celebrity promotions came in. All of his efforts helped put his net worth to where it was prior to his passing in 2011.
How rich was Jack LaLanne? As of early-2017, sources estimate a net worth that is at $15 million, mostly earned through a successful career in fitness. He hosted his own show and opened one of the first fitness gyms in the United States. He was also a successful bodybuilder, and all of these achievements ensured the position of his wealth.
Jack LaLanne Net Worth $15 million
At a young age, Jack was very fond of junk food and sugar; he had violent episodes and was miserable according to his writings, later attributing his negative childhood to the diet he had. He suffered from headaches as well, but after hearing a health food talk from Paul Bragg, was influenced to start focusing on diet and exercise. He later made his high school football team. After matriculating, he attended college in San Francisco, and worked his way to earn a Doctor of Chiropractic degree and focused a lot on bodybuilding as well as weightlifting.
In 1936, LaLanne opened the country’s first health and fitness club in Oakland, California, where he supervised training, gave nutritional advice, and was challenged by many doctors since clubs like these were almost unheard of during the period. He helped design many exercise machines that would become standard in the industry, helping increase his net worth significantly in the process. Membership of the club would grow, and this led him to a brief professional wrestling career two years later, as wrestlers would start to go to the health club regularly.
As his popularity grew, so did his net worth. He made regular appearances on television, and started his own show entitled “The Jack LaLanne Show” which would become the longest running television exercise program. During the show he promoted his gym and health products, stressing a minimalist style of fitness, even just using basic home objects to get people to exercise. Later on, he would publish several books and would make videos about nutrition. He also recorded a song, and would promote exercise equipment as well as vitamin supplements. At the age of 95 years old, he even wrote a book “Live Young Forever” in which he discussed how he maintained his health even at his age.
For his personal life, it is known that LaLanne was married to Elaine Doyle LaLanne for over five decades from 1959, and they had three children accumulatively, one from Jack’s first marriage to Irma Navarre (1942-48) while another was from Elaine’s first marriage, plus a third child they had together. In 2011, Jack passed away from respiratory failure due to pneumonia. He was sick but refused to consult a doctor during the final week of his life. Despite that, he still continued his daily workout routine.
You are a slave to your own body. You want to do things, but your body won't let you because your body has you slaved. You are in shackles and bondage... You can actually be reborn again because I was reborn again.
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You eat every day, you sleep every day, and your body was made to exercise every day.
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Living is a pain in the backside, because you have to work at it. Dying, now that's easy.
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Exercise is king and diet is queen; put them together and you've got an empire.
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Whereas Billy Graham is all about the hereafter, I'm all about the here and now.
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If man made it, don't eat it.
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[on his refusal to consume dairy products]: Am I a suckling calf? No other creature uses milk after they wean!
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Would you get your dog up in the morning and give him a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a doughnut?
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I can't die. It would ruin my image.
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Fact
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As a Pioneer, Lifelong Instructor and Living Example of the Physical Fitness Life Style, he was inducted into the National Fitness Hall of Fame in 2005; that being the inaugural class of inductees for that organization.
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Daughter Yvonne Lalanne, with first wife Irma Navarre, was born in 1944.
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Inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2008.
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Son, Jon Lalanne (born in 1961), has his own pool maintenance company, which cares for stars' pools.
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He has a TV star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard.
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Started his own gym in 1936, which included a health food store and a juice bar.
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Hasn't had dessert since 1929.
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For his 70th birthday, he pulled 70 boats across the Long Beach, California harbor with one person in each of them, swimming while shackled and handcuffed.
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Adopted his wife Elaine's two children, Daniel and Janet as his own.
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His show, The Jack LaLanne Show (1951) debuted in 1951 and was the first ever television exercise program. It ran until 1985, in spite of the fact that critics said the show would be off the air in six weeks.
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LaLanne was named Professional Mr. America in 1955.
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Appeared on You Asked for It (1950), where he performed 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes.
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Opened the nation's first health club in 1936.
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Some of his amazing feats of strength include: at age 41 proving it possible to escape from Alcatraz by swimming to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco while wearing handcuffs; at 45, completing a thousand push-ups and a thousand chin-ups in an hour and twenty-two minutes with blisters under his calluses; at sixty, swimming from Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf handcuffed, shackled and towing a thousand-pound boat, and at seventy, battling currents while handcuffed and shackled, towing seventy boats holding seventy people for a mile and a half across Long Beach Harbor.