With a Little Help, Viewers Go for the Glow

If Jane Fonda pops up on your TV screen doing a highly unlikely set of exercises, look again.

It may not be Jane at all . . . but rather a look-alike, Kathleen O’Connor-Hayden, the star of a videocassette, “Couch Potato Workout, Going for the Glow.” The tape spoofs both America’s TV viewing habits and its national obsession with exercise. It’s due this spring.

Producer Richard Saperstein swears he wasn’t casting for a Fonda double when Hayden’s photo showed up on his desk. “She looked so much like Fonda that it blew us away,” he said.

Then Saperstein tested her and found that the model-actress was more bubbly and energetic than her look-alike--”like Jane Fonda on amphetamines.” Coincidentally, like Fonda, she is married to a guy named Hayden. The ages differ considerably--O’Connor-Hayden being about half of Fonda’s 51 years.

Larry (Bud) Melman, he of “Late Night With David Letterman” fame, co-stars in the 45-minute video. In one challenge workout, O’Connor-Hayden shows the sluggish Melman “how to eat, drink and turn the television channel without lifting a finger from his Lazy-Boy recliner.”