Tracking the History of Grizzly Adams in
American Pop Culture
Part Two By Tod Swindell
©2018 The Grizzly Adams® Company
It wasn’t until the motion picture industry caught on to the person Grizzly Adams actually was—likely by way of Dillon’s book and his follow up lectures about him—that the name, ‘Grizzly Adams’ slowly started to enter American pop-culture.
It can be said that Lee Marvin’s character of ‘Ben Rumson’ in the 1969 movie, Paint Your Wagon was partially molded from the likeness of a Grizzly Adams profile. After all, Adams had endured the Gold Rush in a way similar to Marvin’s portrayal of the gruff, wanderin’ star loner, Ben Rumson.
Paint Your Wagon left its Gold Rush mark on American cinema, but it was not until 1972, that the first ‘Grizzly Adams’ homage would land on the motion picture screen by way of, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.
Starring Paul Newman and directed by John Huston, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean depicted ‘Grizzly Adams’ in an authentic manner, minus a slight age difference; Huston—who played the role of Grizzly Adams himself—was in his late sixties while the real Grizzly Adams was in his early forties during the his mountain man years. No matter, Huston pulled off a wonderful portrayal.
The next ‘Grizzly Adams-esque’ motion picture was Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford and directed by Sydney Pollack. Redford played a character derived from the hardened mountain man once known as ‘Liver Eatin’ Johnson’, but the film also featured a wild-and-wooly character named ‘Bear Claw’ portrayed by Will Geer, who, it might be said, reflected the real Grizzly Adams’ mountain-living and grizzly bear lifestyle more authentically than anything ever presented in the visual medium.
This brings us to television and the winding road that led NBC to introduce its viewers to Grizzly Adams in a TV series.
The spine of Lee Marvin’s ‘Ben Rumson’ character as depicted in the Great California Gold Rush movie, Paint Your Wagon, resembled the likes of the real ‘Grizzly Adams’ who originally came out west as a 49er.
“The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” Official Trailer
First Photo: John Huston as ‘Grizzly Adams’ in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Second Photo: Will Geer as ‘Bear Claw’ in Jeremiah Johnson. Third and fourth photos: Above, Robert Redford and Will Geer ‘get their Grizzly Adams on’ in, Jeremiah Johnson.
In the wake of the success of Jeremiah Johnson, an animal trainer by the name of Dick Robinson, who happened to have a pet grizzly bear and had devoured Richard Dillon’s book about Grizzly Adams, came up with a notion to ride the mountain-man wave by making his own movie about the guy. He intended to portray Grizzly Adams and to have his bear play Ben, Adams’ favorite grizzly bear from the 1850s. Dick Robinson’s humble enterprise raised a little money from investors aligned with the Sun Classic independent film company and soon his production effort was underway.
Filmed in wilderness settings northeast of Salt Lake City, Robinson adorned himself in buckskins to look like Grizzly Adams. while his trained bear ambled at his side. Days went by and thousands of feet of film were shot, but when the Sun Classic executives began to preview the footage they quickly realized it wasn’t working. Robinson had never made a movie before and his early results raised serious concerns, so the company ceased production.
Above, Dick Robinson’s later release of ‘The Rogue and Grizzly’
Attempting to salvage what it could, Sun Classic Pictures partnered with Schick Razor Company owner, Patrick Frawley, and it became Schick Sunn Classic Pictures, with an extra ‘n’ in ‘Sunn’.
Remaining intent on doing a movie about Grizzly Adams, they endeavored to see if any of Robinson’s footage could still be used. The company tapped its lead producer, Charles Sellier Jr. to try and save whatever he could. But after screening hours of footage, the Schick-Sunn team ultimately determined the wisest thing would be to start over from scratch.
Fortunately, Patrick Frawley knew of an animal trainer in the movie industry by the name of Dan Haggerty, who he felt would make a much better Grizzly Adams than Dick Robinson did. Sellier then hired Richard Friedenberg, a talented young filmmaker to direct the film and George Stapleford as cinematographer, and in quick order Sunn began shooting its new Grizzly Adams movie on a shoestring budget of $165,000.
Dick Robinson wasn’t forgotten, though. After a court case he was ultimately compensated for his co-origination of the Sunn Classic Picture effort, and ten years later he was able to stitch together enough of his old footage to release a VHS version of the movie he once set out to make. A trailer for his production, The Rogue and Grizzly, even popped up on YouTube a few years ago. Below is the video cover showing Dick Robinson as Grizzly Adams and his bear as Ben from Robinson’s 1984 European release of The Rogue and Grizzly.
“I have attended preaching every day; sometimes on old grizzly gave me the sermon, sometimes it was a panther. Often it was the lightning and thunder, on the peaks of the Sierra Nevada or in the gorges of the Rocky Mountains.”
– Grizzly Adams
The term GRIZZLY ADAMS is a registered trademark of The Grizzly Adams® Company.
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