Vic Tanny

During semi-retirement in Florida, Tanny made a few, unsuccessful attempts to restore his brand. In 1985, at age 73, after a debilitating stroke, Tanny died of heart failure in Tampa, Florida. Although the earlier, traditional gyms might have eventually evolved similarly without him, Vic Tanny was a visionary—the other most arguably being Jack LaLanne—who rapidly outmoded them and ushered in today's familiar, modern fitness club.

Tanny's vision was, as now understood, "less perspiration than aspiration, and Tanny was anointed the era's dream maker". The hardcover magazine Wisdom, following issues that featured Einstein, Disney, and Jesus, placed Tanny on its December 1961 cover. Yet Tanny's excesses—gilding one gym in real gold, even down to plating the barbells and dumbbells—brought parodies of Tanny and of his gyms to media.

New constraints on business fostered backfire of a Tanny strategy: maximize a location's membership, and offer expected revenue to borrow money to open a new location. In the 1960s, apparently by over-expansion, poor management, and insufficient capital, the franchise entered bankruptcy. Tanny's centers closed or sold, some retaining his name. Others joined the Bally Total Fitness network.

Vic Tanny Centers flourished from the 1950s through the early 1960s, attaining some 100 locations in the U.S. and Canada. Tanny also pioneered the annual membership, and offered a budget plan to draw working-class families. Yet he demanded, of salespersons, sales tactics so aggressive that the New York State Attorney General responded by imposing a fair-practices code on all gyms.

Tanny's younger brother, Armand Tanny, had also moved west in 1939. That year, the two emptied their joint bank account of its $500, borrowed another $200, and opened their first gym, West Coast Tanny, near Santa Monica Beach. Two more locations—one in Long Beach, and one on Wilshire Boulevard—opened in 1941. The war dwindled gym users, and both new locations soon closed.

In 1935, while a full-time school teacher, Tanny opened his first fitness club. Located in his parents' Rochester garage, the gym uniquely had carpeting, bright colors, and background music. In 1939, he closed that gym, which had done poorly, moved west, and, for a teaching degree, attended the University of Southern California.

Victor "Vic" Tanny (born Victor A. Iannidinardo; February 18, 1912 – June 11, 1985) was an American bodybuilder, entrepreneur and physical culture advocate. He is considered a pioneer of the modern health club.