Grizzly Adams, a peaceful mountain man with a luxurious beard and a bear named Ben, was portrayed by Dan Haggerty in the 1974 film “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams” and the NBC television series of the same name. Haggerty passed away on Friday in Burbank, California.
Mr. Haggerty was working in Hollywood as a stuntman and animal handler when he received a request from a producer to perform in some opening sequences that he was reshooting for a movie about a woodsman and his bear.
It told the story of a man from California who was wrongfully convicted of murder and fled to the woods, where he developed a relationship with the creatures around him and tamed an orphaned bear. The story was based on the novel “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” which was written by Charles Sellier Jr.
His friend and manager, Terry Bomar, informed him that the cause of death was cancer of the spine.