Bart the Bear
Bart the Bear (born January 19, 1977 in Baltimore , Maryland , USA ; † May 10, 2000 in Park City , Utah , USA) was a male Kodiak bear who appeared in numerous Hollywood films .
Bart was born in 1977 in an American zoo who was unable to raise the animal. When he was five weeks old and weighed about 2.5 kg, animal trainers Doug and Lynne Seus decided to take care of the little bear and bottle him up. After he had reached a weight of around 150 kilograms and was therefore too big to continue living in the house, the Seus built a “bear house” for him on their Wasatch Rocky Mountain Wildlife Ranch. The stuntman and animal trainer Monty Cox eventually discovered the bear and his trainer for use in Hollywood films. He starred alongside actors such as John Candy , Dan Aykroyd , Steven Seagal , Anthony Hopkins andAlec Baldwin . In Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Bear from 1988, he played the lead role alongside the younger Youk the Bear .
He had a head-torso length of about 280 centimeters and weighed as an adult bear about 670 kilograms. Bart died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 23. He reached the average age for a bear in captivity. He died while filming the television documentary Growing Up Grizzly (2001). Brad Pitt shot the movie Legends of Passion with him back in the 90s . His successors, the two grizzly bear orphans Honey-Bump and Little Bart, are also being trained for use in film productions. Little Bart the Bear, who made a brief appearance in the film Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001) and who starred in A Life Untamed (2005) is named after Bart.
Noteworthy was the non-violent and cordial, collegial approach with which Doug Seus brought the giant bears to extraordinary performances. He and his work with Bart were honored in the credits for the recordings in the film Auf Messers Schneide .
Filmography
- 1980: Windwalker
- 1983: Kenny Rogers as The Gambler: The Adventure Continues (TV movie)
- 1986: Ayla and the Clan of the Cave Bear
- 1986: The decision about Long Hill (Louis L'Amour's Down the Long Hills)
- 1988: Great Outdoors (The Great Outdoors)
- 1988: The Bear (L'Ours)
- 1990 Lost in the Barrens (Movie made for TV)
- 1990: The Young Riders (TV series) , episode Decoy
- 1991: Wolfsblut (White Fang)
- 1991: The Giant of Thunder Mountain
- 1994: On Deadly Ground (On Deadly Ground)
- 1994: Legends of the Fall (Legends of the Fall)
- 1996: The Lovers of the Red River (Les Amants de rivière rouge) (TV series)
- 1997: On the trail of the great bear (Walking Thunder)
- 1997: On a knife's edge - rivals on the edge (The Edge)
- 1998: Meet the Deedles