Dan Haggerty

The Animal Trainer Who Ended Up in Front of the Camera

Dan Haggerty was not a method actor and never aimed to be one. In 1974, he starred in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams almost by accident, because he was already there taking care of the animals on set. The producers were looking for someone who wasn't afraid of a thousand-pound grizzly bear, and he was the only one who could give the beast orders without flinching.

Before that breakthrough, he worked as a stunt performer and animal trainer on smaller productions. In 1969, he had a brief role in Easy Rider and worked on the crew of several biker films. His imposing build, nearly six and a half feet tall, and his thick beard gave him an air of authenticity that Hollywood couldn't manufacture from behind a desk.

And then the bear arrived.

The original 1974 movie cost less than two hundred thousand dollars and grossed more than forty-five million at the U.S. box office. That profitability led NBC to produce a television series in 1977 that lasted two seasons. Haggerty played a man accused of a crime he didn't commit who took refuge in the mountains with only a bear named Ben for company.

The Forest as Office and Prison

In the seventies, Haggerty was one of the most popular faces on American television. Children wrote him letters, and fast-food chains wanted his image to sell hamburgers. But his fame as a tough yet tender man hid a more complicated reality far from the forest sets.

The industry relentlessly typecast him. Away from natural settings, directors didn't know what to do with him or how to fit him into urban dramas. He tried to break out of the mold with roles in low-budget action films, but audiences only wanted to see him in his flannel shirt, surrounded by pine trees.

Television devoured him as quickly as it had raised him to stardom.

In 1984, his career suffered a decisive blow. He was arrested after selling cocaine to two undercover police officers in an operation that destroyed his image as a family hero. He spent ninety days in jail, and the phone stopped ringing as often as it had in the previous decade.

Free Fall and B-Movie Cinema

After leaving prison, Haggerty survived on the fringes of the industry. In 1990, he appeared in the science fiction film Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe and in several horror titles that today are remembered only by VHS collectors. He never regained star status, but he kept a steady flow of work in direct-to-video productions.

Despite legal troubles and motorcycle accidents that nearly cost him his life on several occasions, he always kept the affection of pop culture fans. In 1994, he starred in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams once more, in a TV movie that aimed to close the chapter on the character that gave him everything.

He was a country man on a cardboard set.

In the years that followed, he devoted himself to marketing his own barbecue sauce brand and appearing at collector conventions. In 2013, he took part in Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, proving that his niche was still forest men, even in B-movies. He died on January 15, 2016, in Burbank from spinal cancer, which had been diagnosed a few months earlier. His final wish was for his ashes to rest at his ranch near Malibu.