What are the Most Famous Bears?
Who was the most famous bear?
Gentle Giants: Famous Bears in Fact & Fiction – from Ben to Bozo Bear
Famous Bears in Fact & Fiction – Gentle Ben to Grizzly Adams
“GRIZZLY BEARS ARE THE TRUE MONARCHS OF THE WILDERNESS.” – Jane Goodall
Famous Bears in Fiction
As I said in my post “Bears in Literature” — bears have appeared in our folk tales since we first told stories. Especially in Northern cultures, where the bear was seen as a fierce and noble animal. Literally, in Northern Europe, the original “King of Beasts.”
Some cultures, especially First Nations and Northern European, believed that Bear was Humankind’s closest blood relative. Many chieftains and war leaders in old Nordic, Celtic, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon clans claimed to have Bear blood in their ancestry.
Famous fictional bears include Rudyard Kipling ‘s Baloo, A A Milne’s Winnie-the Poo, Michael Bond’s Paddington, Walt Morey’s Gentle Ben. As well as favourites Yogi and Boo Boo. [1]
Perhaps the best known Ursine-themed story is “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” which drifted from fiction to real life when the bear who played Gentle Ben on TV once ran into the woodlands around Miami and met a little girl who was all by herself…
Famous Bears in Fact
From ferocious and dangerous attackers — to loving and carefree friends — real life bears have appeared in Hollywood productions from the beginning.
In Canada, movies like Nell Shipman’s silver screen classics of the Silent Era, Back To God’s Country and Trail of the Northwind, were popular. Both were filmed with animals from Nell’s own wildlife rescue sanctuary. They included Brownie, a laid back brown bear Nell had raised from an orphaned cub. [2]
Here are a few of the most famous real bears:
1. Bruno, aka Ben. Bruno, along with his brother Smokey, was rescued as an orphaned black bear. He appeared in a number of Ivan Tors film features, including Daktari and Zebra in the Kitchen. And Gentle Giant.
As a young bear he swam with Suzy the dolphin who played Flipper.
Bruno’s career blossomed when he was cast as the title character in the televised version of Walt Morey’s beloved novel GENTLE BEN.
Author Walt Morey was raised in the Pacific Northwest and set his novels in the cold Northcountry of Alaska and Canada, including his popular and best selling KAVIC THE WOLF DOG and GENTLE BEN.
Found in the Everglades…
When Tors adapted GENTLE BEN for the screen, he changed the locale from Alaska to the Florida Everglades, where the producer had a wildlife sanctuary.
Bruno quickly learned to respond to the name “Ben.” While becoming the most famous bear of them all.
Ricou Browning, who directed many episodes, explained, “Ben was a big puppy dog. He wasn’t well-trained; he was just tame. We had other black bears, some trained better than him, that we used as doubles and backups, and also for stunts and tricks. Gentle Ben’s main capacity in the show was to work with the boy (Clint Howard) and to be friendly and nice.” [3]
A bear named Buck was the most commonly used stand-in for Ben. Other bears used for special action scenes were Smokey, Drum, Hammer, Oscar, Baron, Tudor and Virgil. Hammer was used in swimming and bear-fight scenes. Unknown, but famous bears in their own way.
“The boy,” Mark Wedlow, was expertly played by Clint Howard. Clint had already established a buzz by playing the small alien Balok in Star Trek.
Browning recalled, “A number of times Ben accidently stepped on Clint’s foot, you know, a 650-pound bear stepping on your foot can hurt a little. Tears would come into Clint’s eyes. But he was a rugged little boy. He managed well.”
Clint and Ben were immediate friends: “He’s as gentle as my cat Mitts. It doesn’t matter how big he is, I’m not afraid of him and he’s not afraid of me,” Clint said.
Lost in Miami…
The biggest scare they got while filming came the day Gentle Ben, alarmed by a sudden noise, “took off into the woods down here south of Miami. We all went after him with lassoes, but nobody could find him — a 650-pound black bear running loose in Miami…”
What followed was a three day bear hunt, with the crew worried that someone else — with a gun — would find him first.
“On the third day,” continued Ricou, “a little girl was riding her bike on one of the bicycle trails and rode up to our bear. She had her lunch basket with her, so she shared her lunch with our bear then let us know that she’d found him. Why the little girl wasn’t frightened to death, I don’t know.”
Producer Ivan Tors wasn’t surprised at the result of this citywide bear hunt, explaining, “Humans have only given Ben good experiences so Ben only gives good experiences in return.”
Memories of Gentle Ben
Although, in his memoir, Ivan Tors admitted to a basic animal training trick: “The room was full of reporters from various magazines and newspapers. They were all elated when they saw me enter with my leading bear. I sat down in a comfortable armchair, and Ben immediately sat down on the carpet right next to me. He did not move or create any disturbance during the interview. This wasn’t really because he was so polite. You see, my pocket was full of lemon drops, and Ben wanted to be close to the origin of this heavenly scent. He also knew that he would, in due time, receive his reward.”
Tors then goes on to warn his readers about meeting (and feeding) bears in the wild — especially in National Parks. [4]
Forever Home on the Ranch…
After the Gentle Ben series was suddenly cancelled as an early victim of the infamous Rural Purge, 0ne of Ben’s trainers, Ron Oxley, moved the amiable bruin back to California. Ben lived a lighthearted life at Oxley’s Action Animals Ranch.
Now called “Bruno” again (at least in the cast credits), he appeared in a number of new productions, including The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean starring Paul Newman. John Huston plays an aging Grizzly Adams in it. And Shadow of the Hawk with Chief Dan George.
Dennis Weaver, by the way, who portrayed the boy’s father (Park ranger Tom Wedloe) used to love to play and roughhouse with Ben the bear between takes. That, and “driving the airboat on the Everglades,” were Weaver’s “fun things to do.”
Weaver, best remembered as Chester Goode on Gunsmoke and Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud, would go on to become a noted vegetarian, environmentalist and animal rights activist.
2. Bozo, aka Ben. Certainly one of the famous bears. Bozo was a female Kodiak bear. She was found working in a travelling circus. Nothing was known about her cubhood.
Though animal trainer Dan Haggerty believed that because of “her amazing affection for humans” she had been raised as a pet and then sold to the circus when she got bigger.
When the independent feature movie The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams was cast, Haggerty was picked as both the bear’s trainer (the bear was supposed to be a male named Ben) and as the actor portraying the title character, James “Grizzly” Adams.
Adams was a real-life independent mountain man who had lived in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California in the 1860’s.
Haggerty had already experienced working with animals in movies and television, including some Disney productions and the live-action Tarzan series. Since “actors didn’t like animals leaping on them,” he easily found work as a stuntman, double and animal handler. “I had lions and chimps and leopards and all kinds of things. So working with the bear and the eagle and all that was a very natural thing for me to do.”
The movie became the surprise international hit of 1974. Consequently leading NBC to make it as a television prime time program. The series was released in 1977. Another bruin added to the Famous Bears!
The series lasted two seasons, with a total of 37 episodes. It’s become a beloved classic. In fact — after constant demands by fans — NBC brought back the cast in 1982 and made a TV movie titled The Capture of Grizzly Adams.
As Dan Haggerty concluded, “I think the response to Grizzly Adams shows something very important. I think it shows that people like blue skies and animals and simple things that are clean and honest.”
When Bozo developed health problems, she was retired to the Folsom Children’s Zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she received care. Bozo the Bear passed in her sleep while hibernating in January, 1990. “She was my girlfriend and my best friend and one of the best animals I ever worked with,” said Haggerty.
3. Brutus the Bear. Here’s another member of the Famous Bears Club! Brutus was only a newborn grizzly cub when wildlife enthusiast Casey Anderson found him in an animal preserve. The grizzly would eventually grow to become a 800 pound adult — and a friend.
As Anderson explains, grizzlies raised in captivity can’t be released back into the wilderness. For one thing, it takes a grizzly mama a full two years to teach a cub the necessities of hunting and surviving in the wild. In fact, without its mother to protect and teach it, the cub will lose its life. And bears raised around humans become too trusting of Humankind — not a good survival trait in Hunting Season.
So Anderson raised the cub himself.
He built the Montana Grizzly Encounter, an animal rescue sanctuary, where Brutus can live. And has shown him on TV on programs like National Geographic’s Expedition Wild.
“There is nothing special about me,” says Anderson. “But Brutus is an exceptional grizzly bear, who just happens to have me as his pet. In the beginning there was a lot of roaring, with me lying on top of Brutus, as we rolled around on the ground and I growled in his ear and called him a bad boy. We understand each other now, with the result that we exchange a lot of high fives and I frequently call him a good boy.” [5]
Brutus was Anderson’s Best Man when the naturalist filmmaker married actress Missi Pyle.
4. Blaze the Mama Grizzly. On the very day I’m writing this, the popular Yellowstone Park mother Grizzly Bear Blaze is making news. It’s bad news.
Park workers have hunted down and captured Blaze Bear. A human hiker has apparently been killed by a bear. It’s reported that he accidentally stumbled upon the sleeping mama and her cubs. If it’s determined that the attacking animal was Blaze, she will be slaughtered. No news yet what they will do with her cubs.
There’s online action, including Twitter, saying “DO NOT KILL BLAZE!”
The National Park Service is reported as saying that “the mother bear has been trapped, but not the cubs who they can hear calling for their mother from the surrounding forest. The park service has said the bears will be killed if DNA testing matches them to the evidence around the hiker’s body.”
It’s also reported that the poor hiker wasn’t carrying bear spray.
When I was a much younger man, neither did I. The recklessness of youth. But knowing what I do now, and loving bears as I do, I now carry bear spray when in the woods, as well as my hunting knife and occasional weaponry…
UPDATE: Friday, Aug 14. This morning I had to Tweet: “#RememberBlaze! RT NEWS: THEY KILLED BLAZE & SENT HER ORPHANED CUBS TO A ZOO! REMEMBER BLAZE! HUMAN STUPIDITY…”
A sad day — one battle lost, but the long struggle to save all living creatures we share our Sacred Earth with must never end.
Live Free, Mon Ami! – Brian Alan Burhoe
Also, Did You Like This Famous Bears Post?
If so, you’ve got to read my popular short story “THE BOY WHO WAS RAISED BY BEARS.” A Traditional Native American Animal Story & Folktale Retold. A Story for our New Spirituality.
Talking bears and human children adopted and raised by loving mama bears are common story themes in both Old and New World oral traditions. Even J R R Tolkien wrote about Beowulf and Bear’s Son Tales in European folklore.
“Loved this beautiful Animal Tale. Perfect!” Free to Read ==> CLICK HERE THE BOY WHO WAS RAISED BY BEARS.
Famous Bears Footnotes
[1] To see my complete posting BEARS IN LITERATURE, CLICK HERE NOW!
[2] To learn more about Nell Shipman and her popular Wilderness & Wildlife movies, as well as other WOMEN PIONEERS OF ANIMAL RIGHTS, CLICK HERE NOW!
[3] From THE GREAT SHOW BUSINESS ANIMALS by David Rothel, published 1980, A S Barnes & Company, California. A long-time personal fave — this essential book should be reprinted!
[4] Ivan Tors, MY LIFE IN THE WILD, published 1979, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
[5] Casey Anderson, THE STORY OF BRUTUS: My Life With Brutus The Bear And The Grizzlies Of North America, published 2010, Pegasus Books, New York.
