Dan Haggerty, known for his role as a gentle mountain man with a lush beard and a bear named Ben in the 1974 film "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams" and its NBC TV series, passed away on Friday in Burbank, California.
He was 73 years old.
His friend and manager, Terry Bomar, confirmed that the cause of death was spinal cancer.
Before his acting career, Mr. Haggerty worked as a stuntman and animal handler in Hollywood. A producer approached him to act in some additional scenes for a movie about a woodsman and his bear.
The film was based on Charles Sellier Jr.'s novel "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams." It tells the story of a California man wrongly accused of murder who escapes to the wilderness. There, he forms a bond with the animals and befriends an orphaned bear.
Mr. Haggerty agreed to act in the film but only if he could play the lead role throughout. The movie was remade for $165,000 and went on to earn nearly $30 million at the box office. Subsequently, it was adapted into a television series. In February 1977, Mr. Haggerty reprised his role as the eco-friendly guardian of the forest and animal friend.
John Leonard reviewed the first episode in The New York Times, stating, “It lukewarms the heart. Man and bear hide out in a log cabin, to which Mad Jack (Denver Pyle) and the noble red man Makuma (Don Shanks) bring flour and advice. When they leave the cabin, man traps fur while bear washes his. Meanwhile, there are raccoons, owls, deer, rabbits, hawks, badgers, cougars, a lot of communing with nature and a big lump in the throat.”
The genial and sentimental series endeared Mr. Haggerty to audiences, earning him a People’s Choice Award in 1978 for the most popular actor in a new series. The success of "Grizzly Adams" led to two follow-up projects: "Legend of the Wild," aired in 1978 and released theatrically in 1981, and "The Capture of Grizzly Adams," a TV movie broadcast in 1982, where Adams is pursued by bounty hunters and clears his name.
Daniel Francis Haggerty was born on November 19, 1942, in Los Angeles. His parents separated when he was three, leading to a tumultuous childhood. He ran away from military school multiple times before eventually moving in with his father, an actor, in Burbank, California.
At the age of 17, he married Diane Rooker, which ended in divorce. His second wife, Samantha Hilton, passed away following a motorcycle accident in 2008. He is survived by his children: Megan, Tracy, Dylan, Cody, and Don.
Mr. Haggerty's debut film was "Muscle Beach Party" (1964), where he portrayed a bodybuilder named Biff alongside Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. He later had minor roles in biker and wildlife movies, playing characters such as “Bearded Biker” or “Biker With Bandana.” He had a brief appearance in “Easy Rider” as part of the hippie commune visited by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.
In his personal life, Mr. Haggerty resided on a small ranch in Malibu Canyon with a variety of wild animals he had either tamed or rescued. His expertise led to roles as an animal trainer and stuntman on TV shows like “Tarzan” and “Daktari,” as well as occasional film roles. He once told People magazine in 1978, “Actors didn’t like animals leaping on them.”
He starred in several outdoor-themed films, including “Where the North Wind Blows” (1974) as a Siberian tiger trapper and “The Adventures of Frontier Fremont” (1976). He played a dog trainer in David Carradine's “Americana” (1983) and portrayed a character reminiscent of Grizzly Adams in “Grizzly Mountain” (1997) and “Escape to Grizzly Mountain” (2000).
As his career declined, Mr. Haggerty appeared in horror films such as “Terror Night” (1987), “Elves” (1989) — where he played an alcoholic mall Santa — and “Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan” (2013). In 1985, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail for selling cocaine to two undercover police officers.
In a 1977 incident, a careless restaurant patron accidentally set fire to Mr. Haggerty’s iconic beard with a flaming cocktail. Attempting to put out the flames, he suffered third-degree burns on his arms and was hospitalized. The treatment was expected to last a month.
He recounted his experience to People, saying, “The first couple of days I just lay in the dark room drinking water, like a wounded wolf trying to heal himself. Nurses tried to give me morphine and encouraged me to open the curtains. But sometimes animals know more than people about healing.” He left the hospital after just 10 days.
Post a Comment