The granny-hug delight of "Sit and Be Fit"

How much do you love this lady? God bless her!

Mary Ann Wilson's the name, and exercise for old or mobility-impaired folks is her game. She's led the delightfully low-budget "Sit and Be Fit" for over 20 years, which is produced by a nonprofit organization of the same name and has won a bunch of health/wellness/old people awards.

First off, HOW BOUT THEM GAMS! Lady's got one of the best sets of legs in the sassosphere, and she knows how to show them off. Colorful scrunched socks + short high-waist shorts + loose sweatshirt or baseball shirt or tucked-in tee (+ some hosiery, methinks) = OFF-THE-CHARTS SASS. Take notes, boys and girls.

Hands up if you've done this by yourself after finding it on public television. Own it.

This show makes me wish my beautiful grandma were still around, because I would have loved to have done this with her -- most likely with a peach cobbler or some snickerdoodles in the oven. Which, come to think of it, is what watching "Sit and Be Fit" feels like: grandma hugs and baked goods.



Back to Auntie Wilson.

Even though it's ostensibly for the elderly, you could learn a thing or two from "Sit and Be Fit." No joke. For example:

Jack LaLanne, Mother's Little Helper

I just followed along with the first episode of "The Jack LaLanne Show" from 1959, (which you can watch on YouTube or at www.jacklalanne.com), and though I'm not sweating, I'm smiling. I'm also thinking about high-fructose corn syrup.

I'll explain that later. First, the good stuff:

LaLanne, founder of Trimnastics and the "Godfather of Fitness," was an impeccably-torsoed he-man everyman who invited himself into American living rooms and basically invented workout videos. For this, World of Sass owes him a great deal.

A bodybuilder and nutritionist at a time when "feeling the burn" meant "social disease," LaLanne was aware he was pushing a new concept. So he structured his half-hour TV broadcast with "Trimnastic" exercises the average housewife could do in her living room -- or while sitting down with a cigarette and a cocktail in hand -- interspersed with 1- to 2-minute-long morsels of wisdom, encouragement and self-promotion.

He was smart, this Jack LaLanne. (I'd like to start calling him Trimnasty, because was just that balling.)  Trimnasty often starts out episodes by addressing the children inevitably left in front of the television set, asking the boys and girls to go get their mothers and "tell her that Jack LaLanne is waiting!" Sometimes, as a reward for doing his bidding, he shows them how he can "blow up" his muscle.

This guy is chock full o' plainspoken corniness like that. He wears a silhouette-hugging, waist-cinched jumpsuit and black ballet slippers. As he goes into an exercise, you know it's time to follow along by the jolly live organ accompaniment playing "Daisy Bell" or "That's Amore." When LaLanne tells the audience to take a deep breath, the organ gives a big wheeze to join in the exhale.

Seeing as at-home fitness as we know it was still in its infancy in the '50s, it makes sense that the program comes across to a modern audience almost as a kids' show. However, though the calorie-burning aspect of LaLanne's routines are mild by today's standards, they're full of classic moves you just can't argue with, many of them taken from ballet and basic calisthenics. Stationary leg and knee raises, relévés, hamstring curls and pedal kicks haven't gone anywhere; it's just the intensity and the soundtrack that's changed.