A Fond Farewell to ‘Grizzly Adams’ Actor, Dan Haggerty [Video]

By Steel Trap on January 15, 2016

In what is proving to be a tough week for fans of vintage music, film and television, yet another 70s/80s icon leaves us this week after a fatal bout with cancer—only this one isn’t British. Actor Dan Haggerty, who, to younger Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers is best known as frontier woodsman Grizzly Adams in a film and TV series in the 1970s, has died at age 74.

Haggerty died after battling cancer for the last few months. Sources close to Dan’s family tell us doctors discovered the cancer after he had surgery for back pain. Haggerty was getting treatment in a hospital until recently when doctors told him the end was near and his son told close friends and family to come visit over the last few days before he passed.

Before starring as the nature-loving Adams, Haggerty worked as a stuntman and an animal handler in Hollywood. He also guest starred in numerous TV shows such as “CHiPs,”“Charlie’s Angels” and “The Love Boat.”

The “Life and Times of Grizzly Adams” tells the story of a mountain man who is forced to live in the wilderness after being wrongly accused of murder. While on the run, he adopts an orphaned grizzly bear and names him Ben. The film became the seventh highest grossing film of 1974 and the NBC network aired a TV series of the same name, which ran from 1977 to 1978. The film and the TV series were loosely based on the life of James Capen Adams who trained bears in California in the mid-19th Century. To give you an idea of Haggarty’s popularity in the late 70s/early 80s, the Grizzly Adams poster rivaled the famed Farrah Fawcett one in sales. In the video below, Dan describes how he came to be known to all of us as Grizzly Adams…

Dan was also a big biker, and owned several chopper motorcycles, as evidenced in his appearance in the “California Kustom” episode popular TV show, “American Pickers” in season five. Bunny Ranch owner and friend of Haggertys Dennis Hof says, “Grizzly Adams was my friend for 20 years, the Bunnys loved him, he loved to drink with the Bunnys and told amazing jokes.”