In the 1974 film “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams” and the NBC television series of the same name, Dan Haggerty portrayed a kind mountain man with a lush beard and a bear named Ben. Haggerty passed away on Friday in Burbank, California.
He was seventy-three.
According to his buddy and manager Terry Bomar, the cause was spine cancer.
Mr. Haggerty was employed in Hollywood as an animal trainer and stuntman when a producer asked him to reprise portions of the film’s opening sequences, which were about a woodsman and his bear.
Based on Charles Sellier Jr.’s novel “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” it narrated the tale of a man from California who runs away from the woods after being wrongfully convicted of murder. There, he befriends the local wildlife and tames an abandoned bear.
Mr. Haggerty consented, provided that he may do the full film. After being remade for $165,000, the movie finally brought in close to $30 million from ticket sales. After that, it was made into a television series, and in February 1977, Mr. Haggerty returned to his environmentally conscious duty as the forest’s defender and animal buddy.
John Leonard described the first episode in The New York Times as “lukewarm to the heart.” Mad Jack (Denver Pyle) and the honorable red man Makuma (Don Shanks) bring bread and advise to the man and bear who have taken up residence in a log cabin. Bear washes his fur while the man traps his as they depart the cabin. There’s also a lot of connecting with nature, raccoons, owls, deer, bunnies, hawks, badgers, cougars, and a lump in the throat.
Warm and nostalgic, the show won over fans to Mr. Haggerty, who went on to win the 1978 People’s Choice Award for best new series actor. “Grizzly Adams” gave rise to two sequels: “Legend of the Wild,” which aired in 1978 and was eventually released in theaters in 1981; and “The Capture of Grizzly Adams,” which aired as a TV movie in 1982 and saw Adams being brought back to his hometown by bounty hunters in order to clear his record.
On November 19, 1942, Daniel Francis Haggerty was born in Los Angeles. After his parents divorced when he was three years old, he had a difficult upbringing and repeatedly escaped from military school. Eventually, he moved in with his actor father in Burbank, California.
He wed Diane Rooker at the age of 17. The union broke down in divorce. In 2008, he lost his second wife, Samantha Hilton, in a motorbike accident. His children, Don, Megan, Tracy, Dylan, and Cody, survive him.
In his debut movie, “Muscle Beach Party” (1964), he starred with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as physique builder Biff. Then came came cameos in nature and motorcycle movies, such as “Biker With Bandana” and “Bearded Biker.” In “Easy Rider,” he made a fleeting appearance as a visitor to the hippie commune visited by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.
In reality, Mr. Haggerty kept a variety of wild animals that he had either tamed from birth or rescued from harm on his tiny ranch in Malibu Canyon. His abilities brought him work as a stuntman and animal trainer on the television shows “Daktari” and “Tarzan,” in addition to sporadic roles in movies. “People magazine didn’t like actors jumping on them,” he said in 1978.
He acted as a Siberian tiger trapper in “Where the North Wind Blows” (1974), one of his outdoor-themed flicks, and in “The Adventures of Frontier Fremont” (1976). In the David Carradine movie “Americana,” he had an appearance as a dog trainer (1983). He portrayed a figure who was strikingly similar to Grizzly Adams in the movies “Grizzly Mountain” (1997) and “Escape to Grizzly Mountain” (2000).
As his career faded, Mr. Haggerty starred in horror movies such as “Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan” (2013), “Terror Night” (1987), and “Elves” (1989), in which he played an inebriated mall Santa. He was given a 90-day jail sentence in 1985 for supplying cocaine to two police agents who were undercover.
A negligent diner carrying a flaming cocktail ignited Mr. Haggerty’s well-known beard in 1977. He attempted to put out the fire, but instead burned his arms in the third degree. He was sent to a hospital where he would have therapy that would likely take a month.
“For the first few days, I was like a wounded wolf trying to heal myself—I just laid in the dark room drinking water,” he said to People. “Nurses urged me to open the curtains and attempted to give me morphine.” But occasionally, animals have better medical knowledge than humans. After ten days, he left the hospital on foot.
A month after the Tom Cruise rumors, Katie Holmes has confirmed the truth about their daughter in a rare interview.
In an uncommon interview, Katie Holmes revealed that she wants to “protect” the daughter she had with Tom Cruise.
After six years of marriage, Holmes and Cruise, the star of Mission Impossible, called it quits in 2012. Their split was widely publicized.
Holmes kept custody of the couple’s daughter, Suri, following their divorce, the circumstances of which were the subject of widespread rumors. Holmes has been open about the fact that not much has been seen of the now sixteen-year-old throughout the years.
At the age of 19, Holmes rose to fame when she was cast in the teen drama Dawson’s Creek.
“I remember really wanting to grow as an actor and not just do things to capitalize on the moment when we were doing Dawson’s Creek and it was successful,” Holmes said in an interview with Glamour Magazine. “I desired to pick up knowledge from others.”
However, the Batman Begins actress reached new heights after she started dating Tom Cruise, a Hollywood A-lister. Following the couple’s daughter Suri’s birth, media interest in their family reached a fever pitch.
As a result of the intense scrutiny, fresh paparazzi photos of Tom and Kate’s little daughter began to appear practically every day. In reaction, Katie decided to stay away from the spotlight in an effort to preserve the integrity of her little daughter. This led to a career hiatus that ended in 2011.
As previously mentioned, five years after being married in an Italian wedding, Tom and Katie parted ways in 2012.
It might not be all that surprising that the rumors went crazy since they were among the most well-known couples on the planet. There was much conjecture on the reason behind their breakup, with Holmes being regarded as being suspicious of the Church of Scientology.
In fact, Katie filed for Tom’s divorce in New York. This was allegedly done to increase her chances of receiving full custody of Suri—the law is against awarding shared custody to parents who are at odds with one another.
Holmes was able to make sure Suri was kept away from Scientology once she was granted sole custody of the youngster. Tom was not able to control the narrative, as he was accused of doing during his break with Nicole Kidman, because it was claimed that he did not see the divorce coming.
Either way, Holmes still feels the same intense need to keep her child safe.
Prior to the premiere of Rare Objects, her latest movie, the 44-year-old stated:
“I really prefer to protect my kid, which has been incredibly essential to me because she was so visible at a young age. I’m so appreciative to be her mom. She is a truly amazing person.
It was just revealed last month that Tom Cruise and his daughter had almost no interaction. The 60-year-old Top Gun actor reportedly hasn’t seen Suri in years and is no longer involved in her life, according to Page Six.
Do you like Katie Holmes or Tom Cruise? Do you believe that Katie is doing the right thing by keeping Suri private from the media?
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