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Terry Robinson, Chiropractor and Fitness Trainer to the Stars, Dies at 98
[This article was borrowed from the New York Times]
Terry Robinson arrived in Hollywood in 1948 with a fortuitous portfolio. A competitive bodybuilder, licensed chiropractor and self-styled physical therapist, he specialized in treating muscle tension and neck pain — weightlifters’ ailments that were gaining a whole new host of sufferers in postwar Hollywood.
Movie box-office receipts were declining steeply as television caught on. Cold War hysteria had spawned accusations of Communist influence in the film industry. The studio system was in its last days.
It was in the form of a terrible headache and a stiff neck that Mr. Robinson got his big break. The pain belonged to one of the most powerful men in the business, Louis B. Mayer, the MGM studio chief. A grateful Mayer, after being successfully treated in 1948 for his spasmodic torticollis (as his muscle-bound therapist would later describe it), put Mr. Robinson on the MGM payroll.
Mayer fell victim to the industry’s woes and MGM’s in-house intrigues in 1951. But Mr. Robinson, who died on May 19 at 98 at his home in West Los Angeles, stayed on for many years as the studio’s in-house chiropractor and fitness trainer to Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, George C. Scott, Glenn Ford and other stars.
“The Lord must have been looking down that day,” Mr. Robinson said of his treatment of Mayer’s stiff neck in “Remembering Muscle Beach,” a 1999 memoir by the bodybuilder Harold Zinkin. “When I touched him, he popped into place.”
Mr. Robinson’s most enduring movie star client was the opera star Mario Lanza, whom Mayer signed to a seven-year contract in 1947. Mr. Robinson, ordered to help Mr. Lanza lose 25 pounds for his movie debut in “That Midnight Kiss” (1949), became his close friend, traveling companion and movie stand-in for the next 10 years.
Keeping Mr. Lanza fit was not easy. A binge eater and heavy drinker, he was nearly 50 pounds overweight before filming began for “The Great Caruso,” his 1951 film. “Robinson had fixed him up with a fitness routine — jogging, throwing weights, push-ups, more jogging — which began at 5 a.m,” David Bret wrote in “Mario Lanza: Sublime Serenade,” a 2009 biography. “Mario said they were the toughest weeks of his life.”
When Mr. Lanza died in October 1959 and his wife, Betty, died six months later, Mr. Robinson was named legal co-guardian to their four children. He moved into the Lanzas’ Hollywood home to help raise them.
Mr. Robinson was born in Brooklyn on March 9, 1916. His father, an ex-boxer and prizefighting judge, introduced him early to the pleasures of physical training, he said. He found weight training especially helpful in overcoming the physical and psychological barriers he felt as a young 5-foot-6 athlete.
At 18, he won a Golden Gloves amateur featherweight boxing title. As a Marine in World War II, he taught hand-to-hand combat to troops heading to the Pacific.
Mr. Robinson briefly attended Columbia College on an athletic scholarship, but through his interest in bodybuilding and rehabilitation therapy he transferred to the New York Chiropractic College, graduating shortly before the start of the war.
Working after the war as a chiropractor by day and a bodybuilder by night, Mr. Robinson became a star of an increasingly popular sport that took hold in postwar New York, when Charles Atlas and Dan Lurie were among the more famous names.
He won a Mr. New York City bodybuilding title in 1948, shortly before leaving for California.
His survivors include his wife, Silvia Richard Robinson; a daughter from a previous marriage, Madelyn Appel; three grandchildren; and Ellisa Lanza Bregman, the last surviving Lanza child. His death was confirmed by a spokesman for Sports Club/LA, a luxury gym where Mr. Robinson worked until near the end of his life, as a fitness coach and greeter.
Until he was 95, he greeted clients when the doors opened at 5 a.m., and fit a workout into his daily routine: “One hour with the weights,” he told an interviewer, “then swim for a half-hour. Then I pray.”
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