Dan Haggerty, who played a delicate mountain man with a lush facial hair growth and a bear named Ben in the 1974 film “The Life and Seasons of Grizzly Adams” and the NBC TV series of a similar name, passed on Friday in Burbank, Calif.
The reason was malignant growth of the spine, his companion and chief Terry Bomar said.
Mr. Haggerty was filling in as a double and creature overseer in Hollywood when a maker requested that he act in a few opening scenes he was reshooting for a film about a woodsman and his bear.
In view of the book “The Life and Seasons of Grizzly Adams,” by Charles Sellier Jr., it recounted the narrative of a California man dishonestly blamed for homicide who escapes to the forest, where he fosters a compatibility with the creatures around him and subdues a stranded bear.
Mr. Haggerty concurred, however provided that he could do the whole film. The film was changed for $165,000 and ultimately took in almost $30 million in the cinematic world. It was then adjusted for TV, and in February 1977 Mr. Haggerty continued his eco-accommodating job as watchman of the forest and companion to the creatures.
“It lukewarms the heart,” John Leonard composed a survey of the main episode in The New York Times. “Man and bear conceal out in a log lodge, to which Distraught Jack (Denver Pyle) and the respectable red man Makuma (Wear Knifes) bring flour and exhortation. At the point when they leave the lodge, man traps fur while bear washes his. In the mean time, there are raccoons, owls, deer, bunnies, birds of prey, badgers, cougars, a ton of communing with nature and a major protuberance in the throat.”
Cheerful and nostalgic, the series charmed Mr. Haggerty to watchers and made him the champ of a Group’s Decision Grant in 1978 as the most famous entertainer in another series. “Grizzly Adams” brought forth two codas: “Legend of the Wild,” broadcast in 1978 and delivered dramatically in 1981, and “The Catch of Grizzly Adams,” broadcast as a television film in 1982, in which Adams is returned to town by abundance trackers lastly demonstrates his innocence.
Daniel Francis Haggerty was brought into the world on Nov. 19, 1942, in Los Angeles. His folks isolated when he was 3, and he had a pained youth, getting away from a few times from military school prior to going to live with his dad, an entertainer, in Burbank, Calif.
At 17 he wedded Diane Rooker. The marriage finished in separate. His subsequent spouse, the previous Samantha Hilton, passed on after a bike mishap in 2008. He is made due by his kids, Megan, Tracy, Dylan, Cody and Wear.
His most memorable film was “Muscle Ocean side Party” (1964), in which he played a jock named Biff inverse Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Bit parts in biker and natural life films followed, as characters like “Whiskery Biker” or “Biker With Handkerchief.” He showed up momentarily in “Simple Rider” as an individual from the nonconformist cooperative that Peter Fonda and Dennis Container visit.
In actuality, Mr. Haggerty lived on a little farm in Malibu Gully with a combination of wild animals that he had restrained upon entering the world or saved from injury. His abilities prompted positions as a creature coach and double on the TV series “Tarzan” and “Daktari,” as well as incidental film work. “Entertainers could have done without creatures jumping on them,” he told Individuals magazine in 1978.
He made a few movies with an open air setting, including “Where the North Wind Blows” (1974), in which he played a Siberian tiger catcher, and “The Experiences of Outskirts Fremont” (1976). He showed up as a canine coach in the David Carradine film “Yankee folklore” (1983). In “Grizzly Mountain” (1997) and “Departure to Grizzly Mountain” (2000) he played a person particularly like Grizzly Adams.
As his profession cooled, Mr. Haggerty showed up with sickening dread movies like “Fear Night” (1987), “Mythical people” (1989) — playing a drunkard shopping center St Nick — and “Hatchet Goliath: The Rage of Paul Bunyan” (2013). In 1985 he was condemned to 90 days in prison for offering cocaine to two secret cops.
In 1977, an imprudent café supporter conveying a flaring mixed drink set Mr. Haggerty’s popular facial hair ablaze. Attempting to quench the blazes, he experienced severe singeing on his arms and was taken to an emergency clinic for treatment that was supposed to most recent a month.
“The principal two or three days I just lay in obscurity room drinking water, similar to an injured wolf attempting to mend himself,” he told Individuals. “Attendants attempted to give me morphine and urged me to open the drapes. In any case, some of the time creatures realize more than individuals about recuperating.” He left the emergency clinic following 10 days.