Workout (1982)
April 25, 1982Release Date
Plot.
Where to Watch.
Cast & Crew.
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Jane Fonda
Self
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Leslie Lilien
Self
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Beverly Brown
Self
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Sidney Galanty
Director
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Brian J. Reynolds
Cinematographer
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Edward Brennan
Editor
Details.
Wiki.
Jane Fonda's Workout, also known as Workout Starring Jane Fonda, is a 1982 exercise video by actress Jane Fonda, based on an exercise routine developed by Leni Cazden and refined by Cazden and Fonda at Workout, their exercise studio in Beverly Hills. The video release by Karl Home Video and RCA Video Productions was aimed primarily at women as a way to exercise at home. The video was part of a series of exercise products: Jane Fonda's Workout Book was released in November 1981, and both Jane Fonda's Workout video tape and Jane Fonda's Workout Record, published as a double-LP vinyl album, appeared in late April 1982. The VHS tape became a bestseller, and Fonda released further videos throughout the 1980s and into 1995. The video also increased the sales of VCRs.
The original 1982 Jane Fonda's Workout was the first non-theatrical home video release to top sales charts. In total, Fonda sold 17 million videos in the 1982β1995 series, considered an enormous success. Fonda's accomplishment spawned imitators and sparked a boom of women's exercise classes, opening the formerly male-dominated fitness industry to women and establishing the celebrity-as-fitness-instructor model. The ballet-style leg warmers she wore increased the popularity of an ongoing fashion trend, and her encouraging shout, "Feel the burn!", became a common saying, along with the proverb "no pain, no gain."
The success of Fonda's workout series funded her political activism, which was her original goal. Profits from the Workout franchise supplied money for the political action committee (PAC) she had been running with her husband, the activist and politician Tom Hayden. Their PAC, named Campaign for Economic Democracy, promoted left-wing political issues such as women's rights and the anti-war movement. In 1984, Fonda used her Workout money to help pay for a new PAC with Barbra Streisand and ten others forming the Hollywood Women's Political Committee.