Yes those are ballet slippers you see on muscleman Jack LaLanne in the great old clips of his workout shows. (If you don’t know LaLanne, he was a famous TV exercise guru of the 1950s and 1960s, “preaching good nutrition and physical fitness long before they were popular in the United States.” LaLanne had a Houdini-like flair for publicity: On his 70th birthday, swimming handcuffed in Long Island Harbor, he towed 70 rowboats for a mile.)
His official blog addressed the ballet slippers in November:
“Many of you fans have been writing to us asking why Jack wore ballet slippers to work out in… In those days tennis shoes were not popular, and only used to play tennis in… Most show business people and Hand Balancers wore ballet slippers, and Jack being a Hand Balancer, that was what he wore!”
“Hand balancer,” it turns out, is an old-fashioned term for tumblers and acrobats who specialize in handstands and other arm-strength routines. The chair pushup seen above was one of Jack LaLanne’s favorites.
See our full biography of the late, great Jack LaLanne »