Grizzly Adams comes to town

COEUR d’ALENE — It’s all coming together under one umbrella, leaving the ’70s television star with quite an itinerary ahead of him.

But if all goes according to plan, and the team spearheading the drive is confident it will, then Grizzly Adams will be traversing Coeur d’Alene’s landscape by the fall in the name of education and television.

After that, there will be a movie to shoot.

But before the silver screen calls, the famous mountain man could wander Tubbs Hill or hike through the Panhandle National Forest for a proposed television show based in Coeur d’Alene.

“What a wonderful treat, what a gift, what an honor,” said Dan Haggerty, the actor who played Grizzly Adams in the 1970s, and who is picking up the role again in North Idaho. “You couldn’t ask for anything more than to wake up every morning in God’s backyard.”

Grizzly Adams LLC., formed by co-managers Tod Swindell of Los Angeles, and Julie Magnuson of Coeur d’Alene, is creating the show. It’s not a remake of the famous series, “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” which earned Haggerty international fame. Instead, it will be a half-hour educational program hosted by Haggerty who will explore the historical and current facets of Coeur d’Alene, North Idaho and the entire Pacific Northwest.

“We think it could take off,” Swindell said.

The timing couldn’t be better, the co-managers said.

Environmental issues, conservation, self-reliance and wildlife are topics gaining more and more headlines, and many people view the Northwest as the last great frontier, which adds an allure. Locally, the wolf and caribou populations are examples of possible topics, as is mining in the Silver Valley.

Haggerty and the team announced the plan Wednesday at The Coeur d’Alene Resort. On hand was Thom Pace, who wrote the television show’s theme song, “Maybe,” and who lives in Coeur d’Alene.

While the Grizzly Adams trademark and film and distribution company have been around for years, the formation of the LLC in 2011 will link the trademark to all components of the mountain man’s likeness, such as the planned feature film.

The LLC puts all branding of Grizzly Adams under one umbrella, which will help as a second career is being launched. Swindell and Magnuson worked together for years through the Grizzly Adams franchise and film production company before teaming up to create the LLC, whose own brand was designed by the Coeur d’Alene company Range.

What’s needed to get filming started on the television show is an affiliate channel and sponsorship support.

The team said those are in the works, with meetings in Los Angeles under way. Remakes of classics are all the trend down there right now, so bringing back the famous bear-trainer has traction.

Grizzly Adams “was so well loved internationally, we felt strongly we could raise the bar on this,” Magnuson said.

The real Grizzly Adams was related to President John Adams, and lived from 1812-1860. Growing up near Boston, he hit the road for the West and lived as a prototype outdoorsman, training grizzly bears and befriending Native Americans. The NBC television show, spun from a earlier movie, captured that man for two seasons in the late 1970s.

The short run wasn’t from waning popularity, but because of internal strife behind the production lines, Haggerty said. The show was wildly popular in Europe, and Grizzly Adams has lunch boxes, dolls and coloring books to prove it.

But it could all be coming back.

And a movie about a Grizzly Adams descendent living in Florida who takes off for Alaska after he discovers his famous family bloodlines is in the works to start filming in 2013. Haggerty, naturally, is slated to play the lead role.

“I didn’t think it was going to be a big, overwhelming success,” he said of the show, geared for a comeback of sorts based in Coeur d’Alene. “We could do this show again but with a little bolder image.”