Oh, that's Rich!

Celebrating a Deathday™: An actor named Richard Simmons died on this day (January 11, 2003), but not the Richard Simmons you're thinking of. Born in 1913 in St. Paul, Minnesota, this Richard Simmons was a stalwart, good looking, middle class cuss who fell into acting after traveling the world working on freighters and tankers and the like, eventually landing a gig as a studio hand in Lost Angeles. As the story goes, studio 'tard Louis B. Mayer spotted the manly, mustachioed journeyman breaking in an Arabian horse on a Hollywood lot, offered him a screen test, and he was off to the races (sans horse). Simmons landed a host of swarthy male bit parts in MGM movies, but finally struck gold in the mid-1950s when he starred in the TV series, “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” Canadian Mountie Sgt. William Preston ably patrolled the wilds of the Yukon, Jack, with his horse Rex, his dog King and his pals Spinner and Paddlefoot, battling the elements as well as Gold Rush criminals. The uniformed "Sergeant Preston" was on the air from 1955 to 1958, and enjoyed a goodly run in syndication after that. Alas, in Simmons' golden years, another Richard Simmons would enter the spotlight — the frizzy haired, sequined exercise goofball of the same name — and one can just imagine the frustration that the one-time, machismo Canadian Mountie felt every time he turned on the telly and was subjected to “Richard Simmons” shaking his athletic-shorted fannie to the camera, or every time he introduced himself in public as “Richard Simmons,” and people would say, “The Sweatin’ With The Oldies Richard Simmons?” He probably had to explain to every bemused Arthur Treacher's waitress who eyeballed his credit card that, “no, I am not THAT Richard Simmons, I am THE Richard Simmons, Sergeant Preston of the Bloody Yukon!” Perhaps it was for the best, if his family will forgive me for saying, that he later contracted dementia, leaving him oblivious to the effrontery of “which Richard Simmons are you?” Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, then, to 50’s actor Richard Simmons, who passed away at age 89 on this day in Oceanside, California. The other Richard Simmons, one supposes, is carrying on with all the usual nonsense, bless his shart-stained undies.