Sylvia of Hollywood

was an early Hollywood fitness guru. Between 1926 and 1932, "Madame Sylvia", as she was also known, specialized in keeping movie stars camera-ready, through stringent massage, diet and exercise.

Sylvia stated that in 1921 she weighed in at 157 lbs at 5 feet tall and looked like a dutiful Norwegian wife. Seeing her husband, Andrew, flirting with his slender stenographer caused Sylvia to study reducing methods. Getting her own weight down to 95 lbs

Promoting a three-pronged approach of massage, exercise and diet, Sylvia's stringent, often painful yet apparently effective techniques - said to ‘squeeze off fat’ - were infamous within the ranks of Hollywood.

In 1932, Sylvia exposed the foibles of the Hollywood system and her illustrious clientele in the book Hollywood Undressed: Observations of Sylvia As Noted by Her Secretary.

Of Hollywood Undressed, Louella Parsons wrote, "Perhaps no one has ever played Hollywood quite as mean a trick as the woman who came here and made her money taking care of the stars and then turned around and wrote the cruelest articles about them that have ever been written.

Sounds great! I have never heard of her but she sounds fascinating!

If you like old school Hollywood she is. She made all the lesbians sleek and attractive, weightwise.

Hollywood Undressed revealed intimate details of Sylvia's famous Hollywood clientele which included Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler,[40] Mae Murray, Alice White, Bebe Daniels, Mary Duncan, Ramón Novarro, Ruth Chatterton, Ann Harding, Norma Talmadge, Grace Moore, Constance Bennett, Gloria Swanson, Nella Webb, F.W. Murnau, Elsie Janis, Ernest Torrence, Lawrence Tibbett, Laura Hope Crews, Ronald Colman, Constance Cummings, Ina Claire, John Gilbert (actor), Carmel Myers, Helen Twelvetrees, Carole Lombard, Ilka Chase, Dorothy Mackaill, Pepi Lederer, Marion Davies, Neil Hamilton (actor), Alan Hale Sr and Vivienne Segal

We talked about her over here before I think. She looked like a man and there were even rumors that she was secretly male.

She apparently had people impersonate celebrities on her radio program and Ginger Rogers sued her for it!

[quote]In 1934, Sylvia denied knowledge of events which caused a $100K suit against her by Ginger Rogers, who claimed that she was not on Sylvia's show when an interviewee on the show was purported to be her.[74][75][76]

[quote]Rogers won the lawsuit, settling out of court.

We just starved them and handed-out speed.

There’s a great episode of the podcast “You Must Remember This” all about Sylvia. She definitely changed the way Hollywood and women thought about their bodies.