By Two icons of television past have both passed away – fitness guru Richard Simmons and famed sex therapist and talk show host Dr. Ruth.
Simmons had just turned 76 on Friday. Reports indicate his housekeeper found him unresponsive on Saturday morning local time and Los Angeles police were called.
TMZ says police are treating it as death from natural causes, no foul play is suspected.
Simmons, best known for his positive, flamboyant energy, has mostly been out of the public eye. He did regularly post on social media and had recently had a skin cancer removed from his face.
Simmons’s line of fitness videos exploded in popularity in the 1980s, most notably the “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” series. He was a well-known guest star on talk shows from David Letterman to Rosie O’Donnell along with a recurring role on the soap opera “General Hospital”.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City according to The New York Times, she was 96.
The German-accented Westheimer was famed for very frank talk about sex both on radio and television talk shows where she was known as ‘Dr. Ruth’.
Westheimer hosted at least five shows on Lifetime and other cable stations from 1984 to 1993. She also appearing frequently on talk shows including Letterman and Johnny Carson, and even appeared in an episode of “Quantum Leap”.
Her history was incredibly colorful – raised in a Swiss orphanage after her father was sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis, she trained as a scout and sniper in Palestine in her teenage years until she was wounded in action.
She began studying psychology, earning a PhD in education, masters in sociology. Her frank talk on the air helped the then burgeoning women’s rights and abortion rights movements in the United States. She was married three times and is survived by two children and four grandchildren.
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