Tarzan Actor for Television Was 86

Ron Ely, the hunky and handsome Texas native who portrayed the Lord of the Jungle on the first Tarzan series for television, has died, his daughter Kirsten told Fox News Digital. He was 86.

He died Sept. 29 at the home of one of his daughters near Santa Barbara, The New York Times reported.

Ely also hosted the Miss America pageant in 1980 and 1981, stepping in for longtime emcee Bert Parks, and presided over a syndicated game show called Face the Music around that time.

The 6-foot-4, blue-eyed Ely had appeared opposite Clint Walker in The Night of the Grizzly and with Ursula Andress in Once Before I Die in films released in 1966 when he was hired to don the loincloth in a new NBC series executive produced by Sy Weintraub.

Ely was offered the Tarzan gig after former NFL linebacker Mike Henry, who had played the Edgar Rice Burroughs creation in three ’60s films, abruptly quit after he was bitten in the jaw by a chimp. (He would go on to sue over unsafe working conditions.)

“I met with [producers] on a Monday, and when they offered me the role, I thought, ‘No way do I want to step into that bear trap. You do Tarzan and you are stamped for life.’ Was I ever right!” he recalled in a 2013 interview. “But my agent convinced me it was a quality show and was going to work. So on the [next] Friday I was on a plane to Brazil to shoot the first episode.”

The show, which also filmed in Central America and Mexico, premiered in September 1966, and Ely had to perform his own stunts during the two-season, 57-episode run. (Since he was wearing hardly any clothing, it was hard to find a look-alike stunt double, he said.)

Ely was not unhappy when the series ended in March 1968. “Quite frankly, I don’t know that I could have even done anymore,” he said. “I was mentally and physically worn out. At the very least I would have needed a few months to recover. My body was a wreck. I had so many muscle pulls and tears and busted shoulders, wrists and bones. Every part of me had been hurt.”

Ely portrayed another legendary hero when he starred in the Warner Bros. film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), produced and co-written by George Pal. He had high hopes for that, but a regime change at the studio torpedoed any chance the movie had for success, he said.

Ronald Pierce Ely was born on June 21, 1938, in Hereford, Texas. He graduated from Amarillo (Texas) High School in 1956 and then attended the University of Texas at Austin for a year before heading to California.

“I felt like a fish out of water in college. I felt like I was spinning my wheels,” he said. “Actually, I had a fraternity brother who asked me if I ever had any inclination to go to Los Angeles and act. I told him, ‘Yes, I’d thought about it.’ So we began to talk about it. … I ended up driving a car to San Jose and hitchhiking back to L.A.” 

He made his screen debut playing a pilot in the 1958 film adaptation of South Pacific, then signed a contract with 20th Century Fox.

A year later, he tried to smooch Betty Anderson (Elinor Donahue) on an episode of Father Knows Best, played the older brother of Dwayne Hickman‘s character in the pilot for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and appeared with Barbara Eden on the syndicated TV version of How to Marry a Millionaire.

He then starred on The Aquanauts, a 1960-61 CBS adventure series about deep-sea divers salvaging sunken wrecks off the coast of Southern California.

After Tarzan, he did several films in Europe, portrayed Mike Nelson (Lloyd Bridges’ character) on a 1987 syndicated revival of Sea Hunt and worked on other TV shows like The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Wonder Woman, L.A. Law and Sheena.

In the 1990s, he played a retired Superman on Superboy and a big-game hunter in the syndicated Tarzan the Hunted and had published two novels that featured private eye Jake Sands.

“My father was someone that people called a hero,” his daughter Kirsten said. “He was an actor, writer, coach, mentor, family man and leader. He created a powerful wave of positive influence wherever he went. The impact he had on others is something that I have never witnessed in any other person — there was something truly magical about him.” 

On Oct. 15, 2019, his second wife, former Miss Florida Valerie Lundeen Ely, 62, was stabbed to death in their Santa Barbara-area home by their son, Cameron, 30, who deputies found outside the house and fatally shot.

Survivors include his other daughter, Kaitland.