Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Richard Simmons, a fitness guru who mixed laughs and sweat, dies at 76
NEW YORK | Richard Simmons, television’s hyperactive court jester of physical fitness who built a mini-empire in his trademark tank tops and short shorts by urging the overweight to exercise and eat better, died Saturday. He turned 76 on Friday.
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.
Simmons, who had revealed a skin diagnosis in March 2024, had lately dropped out of sight, sparking speculating about his health and well-being. His death was first reported by TMZ.
Simmons was a former 268-pound teen who became a master of many media forms, sharing his hard-won weight-loss tips as host of the Emmy-winning daytime “Richard Simmons Show” and author of best-selling books and the diet plan Deal-A-Meal. He also opened exercise studios and starred exercise videos, including the wildly successful “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” line, which became a cultural phenomenon.
“My food plan and diet are just two words — common sense. With a dash of good humor,” he told The Associated Press in 1982. “I want to help people and make the world a healthier, happy place.”
Simmons embraced mass communication to get his message out, even as he eventually became the butt of jokes for his outfits and flamboyant flair. He was a sought-after guest on TV shows led by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Phil Donahue. But David Letterman would prank him and Howard Stern would tease him until he cried. He was mocked in Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl” on Broadway in 1993, and Eddie Murphy put on white makeup and dressed like him in “The Nutty Professor,” screaming “I’m a pony!”
Asked if he thought he could motivate people by being silly, Simmons answered, “I think there’s a time to be serious and a time to be silly. It’s knowing when to do it. I try to have a nice combination. Being silly cures depression. It catches people off guard and makes them think. But in between that silliness is a lot of seriousness that makes sense. It’s a different kind of training.”
Simmons’ daytime show was seen on 200 stations in America, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan and South America. His first book, “Never Say Diet,” was a smash best-seller.
He was known to counsel the severely obese, including Rosalie Bradford, who held records for being the world’s heaviest woman, and Michael Hebranko, who credited Simmons for helping him lose 700 pounds. Simmons put real people — chubby, balding or non-telegenic — in his exercise videos to make the fitness goals seem reachable.
Throughout his career, Simmons was a reliable critic of fad diets, always emphasizing healthy eating and exercise plans. “There’ll always be some weird thing about eating four grapes before you go to bed, or drinking a special tea, or buying this little bean from El Salvador,” he told the AP in 2005 as the Atkins diet craze swept the country. “If you watch your portions and you have a good attitude and you work out every day you’ll live longer, feel better and look terrific.”
Simmons was a native of New Orleans, a chubby boy named Milton by his parents. (He renamed himself “Richard” around the age of 10 to improve his self-image). He would tell people he ate to excess because he believed his parents liked his older brother more. He was teased by schoolmates and ballooned to almost 200 pounds.
Simmons told the AP his mother watched exercise guru Jack LaLanne’s TV show religiously when he was growing up, but he wasn’t crazy about the fitness fanatic. “I hated him,” Simmons said. “I wasn’t ready for his message because he was fit and he was healthy and he had such a positive attitude, and I was none of those things.”
Simmons went to Italy as a foreign exchange student and ended up doing peanut butter commercials and bacchanalian eating scenes for director Federico Fellini in his film “Fellini Satyricon.” He told the AP: “I was fat, had curly hair. The Italians thought I was hysterical. I was the life of the party.”
His life changed after getting an anonymous letter. “One dark, rainy day I went to my car and found a note. It said, ‘Dear Richard, you’re very funny, but fat people die young. Please don’t die.” He was so stunned that he went on the starvation diet that left him thin but very ill.
After the crash diet he gained back 65 pounds. Eventually, he was able to devise a sensible plan to take off the pounds and keep them off. “I went into the business because I couldn’t find anything I liked,” he said.
When Simmons hadn’t been seen in public for several years, some news outlets speculated that he was being held hostage in his own house. In telephone interviews with “Entertainment Tonight” and the “Today” show, Simmons refuted the claims and told his fans he was enjoying the time by himself. Filmmaker-writer Dan Taberski, one of his regular students, launched a podcast in 2017 called “Missing Richard Simmons.”
In 2022, Simmons broke his six-year silence, with his spokesperson telling the New York Post that the beloved fitness icon was “living the life he has chosen.”
One of the online tributes after Simmons’ passing was from actor-comedian Pauly Shore, who previously developed an unauthorized biopic of Simmons, which Simmons objected to at the time.
“I just got word like everyone else that the beautiful Richard Simmons has passed,” he began in an Instagram post. “I hope you’re at peace and twinkling up in the heavens,” adding “You’re one of a kind, Richard. An amazing life. An amazing story.”
Baldwin’s criminal case was about ammunition at its shocking beginning and its sudden end
SANTA FE, N.M. | The criminal case against Alec Baldwin was about the handling of bullets from the beginning. And the handling of bullets brought it to an end.
When cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed nearly three years ago on the New Mexico set of the film “Rust,” one question obsessed authorities yet was never definitively answered: How was it possible that live, lethal rounds had gotten into the mix with the blanks that traditionally make movie gunfire and the inert dummy rounds that play the role of bullets on screen, then into the revolver that Baldwin, in character, was pointing at Hutchins?
Evidence that Baldwin’s attorneys unearthed as part of a possible explanation — ammunition turned over by a man who walked into the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in March — brought the actor’s involuntary manslaughter trial to a swift and sudden end Friday when a judge ruled prosecutors had improperly failed to share that evidence.
One of two special prosecutors on the case, who resigned just a few hours before the dismissal, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the judge’s decision was correct.
“When you step back and you think about, ‘OK, could the defense have made use of this in preparing a defense?’ And the answer is possibly, yeah. … Then the proper remedy should be dismissal,” Erlinda Ocampo Johnson said, adding that it’s unfortunate that the jury “never got to hear the facts and make a decision.”
With the trial ended in its infancy, it is difficult to say whether the case made by Baldwin’s elite and expensive team of lawyers would have shed light on the live rounds question or would have muddied it further.
But the dismissal shut off one of the final avenues where the bullet question could be addressed.
“I feel like this this entire case has run its course, and we will never know,” said John Day, a New Mexico attorney who followed the case but is not involved in it. “You can’t redo a bad investigation. Once it’s done, it’s done like this. There’s really nothing else that can be done.”
The other special prosecutor, Kari Morrissey, and other authorities said they are nearly certain of the answer to at least who brought the live rounds on to the set, if not how they got into Baldwin’s revolver: Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, who was convicted in March of involuntary manslaughter and got the 18 months in prison Baldwin might have gotten if he had been convicted.
Photos found on Gutierrez-Reed’s cellphone showed her with the box where the bullets came from, according to testimony this week from a crime scene technician.
And at the hearing that led to the case’s dismissal on Friday, Seth Kenney, who provided the firearms and some of the blanks and dummy rounds to the set of “Rust,” testified that shortly before “Rust,” Gutierrez-Reed had called and texted him about shooting live ammo with the guns to be used as props in the Nicolas Cage film “The Old Way,” which she was working on in Montana.
“I said ‘absolutely not’ and ‘it’s a big mistake’ “ Kenney said from the stand. “I even said ‘it always ends in tears.’ “
Baldwin’s lawyers tried to suggest that authorities had under-investigated Kenney and had an overly cozy relationship with him, and they had looked away from his possible responsibility for the live ammunition because Gutierrez-Reed could be tied directly to Baldwin. The defense didn’t get to provide the thorough version of this theory because the trial ended so quickly.
Police and prosecutors say there is zero evidence that Kenney is responsible, and he testified Friday that he was absolutely certain he had not been the source.
Gutierrez-Reed is appealing her verdict as she serves her time. Her lawyer says he is planning a new motion to dismiss after the Baldwin ruling.
When that ruling came, Baldwin wept in the courtroom and hugged his lawyers and his wife.
He made his first public comments Saturday when he thanked supporters.
“There are too many people who have supported me to thank just now,” Baldwin said in a brief Instagram post that accompanied a photo of him sitting in the courtroom. “To all of you, you will never know how much I appreciate your kindness toward my family.”
Several civil lawsuits against Baldwin and “Rust” producers could still end up shedding light on the bullet question.
A lawsuit from Hutchins’ husband and son that had been settled could be revived. And lawsuits from the cinematographer’s parents and sister and crew members are still being pursued in court.
The attorneys in those cases won’t have the investigative power of police, but they could have one advantage the prosecution didn’t. The resolution of the criminal case could open the way for a deposition of Baldwin in civil litigation if he can no longer claim it would expose him to criminal liability.
“I’m still here. We have a very large legal team,” Gloria Allred, a lawyer representing Hutchins’ parents and “Rust” script supervisor Mamie Mitchell. “I have been doing this for 48 years, as long as I’ve been practicing law, and I have never allowed the dismissal of a criminal case or a conviction in the criminal case that was later vacated on appeal to deter me.”
Allred said she doesn’t know how long it will take for a civil trial to come. But “however long it takes to persevere, we want to win accountability and justice for the untimely tragedy of losing this beautiful, talented cinematographer,” she said.
Shannen Doherty, ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ star, dies at 53
LOS ANGELES | Shannen Doherty, the “Beverly Hills, 90210” star whose life and career were roiled by illness and tabloid stories, has died at 53.
After years with breast cancer, Doherty died Saturday, according to a statement from her publicist, Leslie Sloane.
“The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace,” Sloane said Sunday. The news was first reported by People magazine.
Her illness was publicly revealed in a lawsuit filed in 2015 against her former business managers, in which she alleged they mismanaged her money and allowed her health insurance to lapse. She later shared intimate details of her treatment following a single mastectomy. In December 2016, she posted a photo of her first day of radiation, calling the treatment “frightening” for her.
In February 2020, Doherty revealed that the cancer had returned and was at Stage 4. She said she came forward because her health conditions could come out in court. The actor had sued insurance giant State Farm after her California home was damaged in a fire in 2018.
“I have no idea how long I’m going to be on the chemo for. … That’s not something that I can predict, it’s not something my doctors can predict. And it’s scary, it’s like a big wake-up call,” Doherty said on a late June episode of her podcast “Let’s Be Clear,” adding that a recent change in the shape of her cancer cells meant there were new treatment protocols for her to try. “For the first time in a couple months probably, I feel hopeful because there are so many more protocols now, whereas before I was hopeful — but I was still getting prepared.”
A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Doherty moved to Los Angeles with her family at age 7 and, within a few years, became an actor.
“It was completely my decision,” she told The Associated Press in a 1994 interview. “My parents never pushed me into anything. They support me. It really wouldn’t matter if I was a professional soccer player — they’d still be as supportive and loving.”
As a child star, she worked steadily in such TV series as “Little House on the Prairie,” in which she played Jenny Wilder. She detoured as a teenager to the big screen in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (1985) and “Heathers.”
In 1990, the doe-eyed, dark-haired actor won her breakout role as Brenda Walsh in producer Aaron Spelling’s hit teenage melodrama set in posh Beverly Hills. She and Jason Priestley’s Brandon, Brenda’s twin brother, were fish-out-of-water Midwesterners.
But Doherty’s fame came with media scrutiny and accounts of outbursts, drinking and impulsiveness — the latter most notably after a very brief marriage to actor George Hamilton’s son, Ashley. Doherty’s second marriage, in 2002, was to Rick Salomon and was annulled within a year. In 2011, Doherty married photographer Kurt Iswarienko. She filed for divorce in April 2023.
She left “Beverly Hills, 90210” at the end of its fourth season in 1994 (the show aired until 2000), reportedly removed by Spelling because of conflicts with her co-stars and chronic lateness.
But in her 1994 AP interview, Doherty described her life as peaceful.
“It must be, if you pick up the Enquirer and find the only thing they can write about me is that I installed a pay phone next to my house and was seen at Stroud’s (a discount bed-and-bath chain) buying $1,400 worth of bed linens and wouldn’t go to an expensive store,” she said. “It must be calm if they’re pulling that stuff out of their heads.”
Three years later, in 1997, Doherty was sentenced to anger-management counseling by a Beverly Hills Municipal Court judge after she allegedly smashed a beer bottle onto a man’s windshield during a quarrel. After a 2001 drunken driving arrest, she pleaded no contest and was ordered to serve five days in a work-release program.
Doherty reunited with Spelling when he cast her in 1998 as Prue Halliwell in “Charmed.” In an AP interview that year, the actor expressed regrets about her past.
“I did bring a lot of it on myself,” Doherty said. “I don’t think I can point fingers and say, ‘Oh, YOU’RE to blame.’ And I don’t do that with myself, either. Because I was just growing up.”
Her personality was “grotesquely misconstrued” by the media, Doherty added.
Spelling said at the time that their relationship was never as bad as some made it seem.
“We had a few bumps along the road, but golly, who doesn’t?” said Spelling, who died in 2006. “Everything Shannen did was blown out of proportion by the rag sheets.”
Doherty starred with Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano in “Charmed” from 1998-2001, at which point her character was replaced by one played by Rose McGowan. Doherty appeared in the “90210” sequel series seven years later and competed on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2010. She also worked on the third “Beverly Hills, 90210” reboot, “BH90210,” a meta send-up that reunited most of the original cast and aired for one season in 2019.
She also appeared in a tribute episode of “Riverdale” dedicated to that show’s star — and her late “Beverly Hills, 90210” on-screen love interest — Luke Perry.
Doherty struggled to recapture her “Beverly Hills, 90210” star status, but worked in big-screen films including “Mallrats” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” and in such TV movies as “A Burning Passion: The Margaret Mitchell Story,” in which she played the “Gone with the Wind” author. A nadir was “Blindfold: Acts of Obsession,” an erotic thriller opposite Judd Nelson.
Doherty’s lawsuit against her ex-business managers was settled in 2016. She was open about the toll that cancer was taking. She posted photos that showed the baldness that followed treatment and, in an August 2016 interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” shared her fears.
“The unknown is always the scariest part,” she said. “Is the chemo going to work? Is the radiation going to work?” she said. “Pain is manageable, you know living without a breast is manageable, it’s the worry of your future and how your future is going to affect the people that you love.”
Doherty advocated for cancer awareness and care, and spoke to the AP in 2021 about how spending years with the disease affected her life and sense of optimism.
“When you get something like cancer, your tolerance for drama is zero. I don’t like people wasting my time. I don’t like negativity,” she said. “It’s odd because I think if you look back, you’re like, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s so much drama around her,’ but I don’t think I was necessarily into the drama. I just think if we took young 18-year-old Shannon, 19-year-old Shannon, and we took her and planted her like right now, I would be a nerd and nobody would be writing about me.”
Man sentenced to life over plot to kidnap, rape and murder UK TV personality Holly Willoughby
LONDON | A man was sentenced to life in prison Friday for plotting to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby, one of Britain’s most high-profile television personalities.
At the sentencing hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court, around 40 miles east of London, Judge Edward Murray told Gavin Plumb, 37, that he would have to serve a minimum term of 16 years before he can be eligible for parole.
Plumb was found guilty by a jury last week following an eight-day trial.
“Over a number of years, you pursued an unhealthy sexual obsession with Holly Willoughby that led you ultimately to plan over that period to kidnap, to rape and to murder her,” the judge said. “You intended to harm her husband and her children as part of your plan.”
Plumb’s kidnap plans, as fleshed out in vivid detail in an online chat group, involved attempting to “ambush” Willoughby at her family home. He had even discussed taking time off work in order to organize the attack.
The judge said Plumb’s plans were so “horrifying, shocking and graphic in detail” that they were not shared in open court, though the jury did hear them.
They were, he added, “particularly sadistic, brutal and degrading” and he had no doubt the plans were “considerably more than a fantasy.”
Plumb, who had prior convictions for attempted kidnap, had argued in his defense that his detailed plan was just online chat and fantasy.
Though Willoughby’s impact statement was not relayed, the judge said it was clear that Plumb’s plot had a “catastrophic and “life-changing” impact on the TV personality, privately and professionally.
Willoughby, 43, has for years been one of the most high-profile television personalities in the U.K. Soon after Plumb’s arrest, she stood down after 14 years in her role presenting “This Morning,” a magazine program on ITV that mixes celebrity interviews and entertainment news with discussions about current affairs. She did return to co-host the channel’s “Dancing on Ice” earlier this year.
Plumb was snared after a U.S. undercover police officer infiltrated an online group called “Abduct Lovers” and became so concerned about Plumb’s posts that evidence was passed to the FBI.
Plumb told the officer, who was using the pseudonym David Nelson, that he was “definitely serious” about his plot to kidnap Willoughby, leaving the officer with the impression that there was an “imminent threat” to her.
U.S. law enforcement in turn contacted their counterparts in U.K., and when Essex police officers raided Plumb’s flat in north London they found bottles of chloroform and an “abduction kit” complete with cable ties.
When he was arrested and officers told him that the allegations concerned Willoughby, the defendant told them: “I’m not gonna lie, she is a fantasy of mine.”
Willoughby waived her right to anonymity in connection with the charge against Plumb of assisting or encouraging rape. In the U.K., alleged victims of sex offenses or targets of sex offense conspiracies have a right to automatic anonymity for life from the moment an allegation is made by them or anyone else.
Detective Chief Inspector Greg Wood, of Essex Police, the senior investigating officer, said the case “brought misogyny and violence against women and girls to the fore” and paid tribute to Willoughby and others
“It has demonstrated that we all have much to do to stamp it out of society,” he said outside of the court following the sentencing. “It cannot be right that men like Gavin Plumb are able to join online forums where they freely vent their hatred towards women and girls and plot to cause them harm. We need everyone to stand up and call out misogyny and to report those causing violence towards women and girls.”
—From AP reports
