Arthur Jones' workout regimen included Nautilus pullovers and chain smoking.

Bill Bowerman, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the recently deceased Jack LaLanne all helped spark fitness crazes in America, but half-crazy Arkansan Arthur Jones may have had a bigger influence on the modern health club than anyone else. Jones created Nautilus machines, which resembled the exterior of a shellfish, selling his first unit in 1970. This equipment shifted the focus of exercise from barbell lifting to high-intensity machine training.

In 1985, Time profiled Jones and his growing empire. If he just pioneered exercise equipment, Jones would have been interesting in a small way. But he was also a cantankerous world traveler and adventurer who was married six times to much younger women and had the kind of massive ego and appetites particular to the self-made American male.

His 2007 obituary in the New York Times included Jones’ famous quote: “I shot 630 elephants and 63 men, and I regret the elephants more.” An excerpt from the Time piece about Jones when he was 58:

“The gravel-voiced Jones has none of the polish of his machines. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and ill-fitting pants, gulps coffee, chain-smokes Pall Malls and often totes a Colt .45. ‘When I was broke, I was crazy; now that I am rich, I am eccentric,’ he declares. He is about 65 but refuses to confirm it. His motto for summing up his favorite pursuits: ‘Younger women, faster airplanes and bigger crocodiles.’

Jones has had five wives, all of whom he married when they were between the ages of 16 and 20. He lives with his current spouse Terri, 23, on his 600-acre Jumbo Lair spread near Ocala, Fla., which is also home to 90 elephants, three rhinos, a gorilla, 150 snakes, 300 alligators and 400 crocodiles. The animals come in handy for Jones’ research projects, which he and his staff conduct with no particular goal. ‘If I knew what I was going to discover, I wouldn’t do it,’ huffs Jones. ‘Very little in life happens according to plan.’ But with his growing fortune, Jones has plans that tend to happen.”