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= Gypsy_Boots =
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Introduction
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Gypsy Boots (August 19, 1915 - August 8, 2004), born Robert Bootzin
(also known as Boots Bootzin), was an American fitness pioneer, actor
and writer. He is credited with laying the foundation for the
acceptance by mainstream America of "alternative" lifestyles
incorporating elements such as yoga and health food. He is also known
for his vegetarian guide 'Bare Feet and Good Things to Eat' and his
memoir 'The Gypsy in Me'.
Life and career
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Bootzin was born in San Francisco, California, to Russian Jewish
immigrants. His father, Max, worked as a broom salesman. His mother,
Mushka, raised Bootzin and his four siblings in a vegetarian
household, while also leading the family on hikes in the hills,
performing Russian folk dances and feeding the homeless with her
home-baked black bread.
Bootzin's older brother, John, died of tuberculosis as a young man;
this led to Bootzin's decision to grow his hair long and pursue
healthful, natural living.
By 1933, he had dropped out of high school and left home to wander
California with a group of self-styled vagabonds. In the 1940s,
Bootzin, along with ten to fifteen other "tribesmen," lived off the
land in Tahquitz Canyon near Palm Springs, slept in caves and trees,
and bathed in waterfalls. Decades ahead of the Hippie movement,
Bootzin and his companions had long hair and beards, lived a carefree
existence, and were seasonal fruit pickers. The group became known as
"Nature Boys." A combination of the philosophy of the Nature Boys and
growing counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s in California may have
been responsible for the emergence of California spirituality in the
1960s.
The 1948 Nat King Cole hit "Nature Boy" was inspired by Bootzin and
his fellow "tribesmen" and was composed by eden ahbez.
In 1958, Bootzin married Lois Bloemker, a conservative, academic woman
from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and settled in the Los Feliz - East
Hollywood area (Cumberland Ave). They had three children: Daniel, Alex
and Freddie (who died in 2001). The two divorced in the late 1990s.
His health food store and organic restaurant "Health Hut" was one of
the first of its kind and was patronized by dozens of Hollywood
celebrities in the early 1960s.
The original Health Hut, located on Beverly Blvd. just west of La
Cienega Blvd., had an authentic "tiki" style to it, being made with
leaves and bamboo.
Bootzin personally advocated never eating meat, drinking alcohol, or
smoking tobacco. He was an early believer in the health properties of
organic foods. One of these organic foods was garlic--and he later
became a spokesperson for the "Kyolic" variety. He also did work for a
Sonoma cheese factory. He would often have a garlic-spiced cheese,
"Sonoma Jack", at his booth at health festivals and fairs in Sonoma
Valley, along with his all-natural, sugar-free "Boots Bars", wheat
grass, spirulina, and kyolic garlic, as well as "honey-sweet" Medjool
dates from his grove.
His childhood vegetarian lifestyle was something Bootzin continued
with his own family, as his son Daniel Bootzin corroborated:
Bootzin died in Camarillo, California at age 89. He was survived by
his former wife, Lois Bootzin, a Lutheran, two of his sons (Daniel and
Alexander), three grandchildren, and a sister. His son Freddie died in
2001.
Appearances
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Bootzin received national exposure in 1955 when he appeared as a
contestant on Groucho Marx's network TV show 'You Bet Your Life'
(September 30, 1955, Season 5 Episode 3). Introduced as "Robert
Bootzin," he cheerfully espoused his philosophy of clean living,
exercise, and healthy eating. Even though he was over 40, he acted
like a gangling, goofy, but polite teenager, causing mildly
sensational reactions from the audience. When asked by Groucho to
demonstrate how he sold figs, he stepped toward the edge of the stage,
shouted an attention-getting sales pitch for a few seconds, and then
performed a perfect pratfall (the type where one falls sideways after
swinging one leg to knock the other one out from underneath). In the
game portion of the show, he spelled the word 'intelligible'
incorrectly before his partner overruled him. Groucho, who usually
displayed little tolerance for extremists, admired Bootzin's rugged
individualism and said so, on camera. He also seemed to appreciate the
perfect execution of one of vaudeville's classic bits.
His wife appeared on the same programme a few years later with a man
who worked as an organ grinder with 13 children who had a monkey that
looked and walked like Groucho. She appeared very conservative and
polite and nothing like her former husband's appearance, who was as
described above. She recalled how she met him while she practiced her
ballet on a beach. Bootzin was standing on his head. She found his
antics interesting enough to approach him, and the relationship
developed from there. Her connection with him was not mentioned on the
show and, perhaps because of the organ grinder, may have been
overlooked due to time and Groucho's interest in the monkey act.
Bootzin made personal appearances with the Spike Jones musical-comedy
troupe, speaking about health foods. He was a regular guest on
American television talk shows in the 1960s, appearing 25 times on
'The Steve Allen Show'. On the Allen show he would often play up his
role as a health advocate by swinging from a vine on stage as a
"Nature Boy", and persuade Steve to drink one of "Gypsy Boots'"
concocted fruit health drinks. He referred to this drink as a
"smoothie", giving credence to Gypsy Boots as one of the originators
of the popular style of blended natural fruit health drinks. He also
made frequent appearances on 'George Putnam's Talk Back', which came
at the tail end of the popular KTLA 'George Putnam News' in Los
Angeles, California.
He released a record album, 'Unpredictable', on Sidewalk Records in
1968.
Gypsy loved to participate in parades, including the annual, wildly
creative and noncommercial Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Parade. Boots
appeared at the Annual Calabasas Pumpkin Festival in 1973. Even in his
late 80s he would energetically dance, make music, and holler all the
way up the parade route for a couple of miles. He would show up for
weekly farmers' markets in his wildly painted van promoting kyolic
garlic, and would always be a showman with the gift of gab, giving out
free garlic samples. Bootzin also participated in several Fourth of
July parades in the town of Sonoma, California, in the late 1990s
and/or early 2000s, throwing a football to a fellow participant.
Bootzin was an avid fan of the USC Trojans football team and was known
for eccentric clothes and an ever-present cowbell. He also regularly
attended Los Angeles Dodgers, Lakers and Raiders games with spirited
cheers, noisemakers and streamers. At age 86, he was still able to
throw an American football at least 40 yards.
In movies, Bootzin appears sitting in the diner scene in Michael
Douglas's film 'The Game'. Other movie appearances include 'Mondo
Hollywood', 'A Swingin' Summer,' and 'Confessions of Tom Harris', and
he can be seen quite frequently at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
Bootzin also appeared as a guest emcee at the Newport Pop Festival in
August 1968. The Newport Pop was the first festival to draw over
100,000 in attendance. Bootzin also helped with the promotion of the
two-day event at the Orange County Fairgrounds. Bootzin enjoyed
mingling with the performers, including Sonny and Cher, The Jefferson
Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Tiny Tim, Eric Burdon and the Animals,
Canned Heat, and a dozen other great acts of the day.
Bootzin's son, Dan, appeared on Dan Harmon's "Harmontown" podcast with
his wife Beth, discussing the status of their beloved eucalyptus
trees.
Bootzin was warmly remembered by comedian Billy Saluga (whose comic
character was named Raymond J. Johnson, Jr.: "You can call me Ray! Or
you can call me Jay!") on the December 11, 2017, episode of 'Gilbert
Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast'.
Books
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*[
https://archive.org/details/BareFeetAndGoodThingsToEat1965GypsyBoots
'Bare Feet and Good Things to Eat'] (1965)
*'The Gypsy in Me' (1993)
See also
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*eden ahbez
*William Pester
*List of vegetarians
License
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License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_Boots
