Ron Ely, television's 'Tarzan' during the 1960s, passes on at 86

Print Date: Jun 16, 2026 ||Release Date: Oct 25, 2024

Ron Ely, television's 'Tarzan' during the 1960s, passes on at 86

Ron Ely, the tall, musclebound entertainer who played the title character during the 1960s NBC series "Tarzan," has kicked the bucket at age 86.

Ely's little girl, Kirsten Casale Ely, told The Related Press on Wednesday that her dad passed on Sept. 29 at his home in Los Alamos, California, a unincorporated local area in St Nick Barbara Province.

While Ron Ely was not exactly too known as Johnny Weismuller, the Olympic swimmer who played Tarzan in films during the 1930s and 1940s, Ely helped structure the picture of the shirtless, undergarment wearing person further deified by Disney.

"He was an entertainer, author, mentor, guide, family man and pioneer," Kirsten Ely said in an Instagram post. "He made a strong flood of positive impact any place he went. The effect he had on others is something that I have never seen in some other individual - there was something genuinely mysterious about him."

In 2019, the entertainer unfortunately got back to the news when his 62-year-old spouse, Valerie Lundeen Ely, was wounded to death at their St Nick Barbara home by their 30-year-old child, Cameron Ely, who was consequently shot and killed by police. Ron Ely, who was home during the cutting, tested the investigator's report that his child's shooting was legitimate.

"In the event that he didn't have a firearm or he didn't have a weapon, what was the premise of shooting him?" the senior Ely's lawyer John Burris said in 2020. "They might have all around thought he was engaged with some other movement including the mother. However, that is not a premise to shoot and kill him. You must have a legitimate premise to do that."

In the mid 1980s, Ely was host of the Miss America exhibition and met Valerie, a Miss Florida, there. They wedded in 1984. The couple had three kids, and Ely resigned from acting to zero in on his family in 2001.

"Late in life I had a youthful family. I chose to quit acting and work at home, as a creator, that way I could be with the children generally through school and have the option to go to their sporting events and things," he told London's Day to day Express in 2013, communicating interest in the time at reappearing acting. He would return momentarily in the 2014 television film "Anticipating Amish."

Ely's Tarzan didn't talk in the monosyllabic snorts frequently connected with the person, initially made by author Edgar Rice Burroughs. He was rather an informed single guy who had developed tired of human progress and had gotten back to African wilderness where he was raised.

Ely said in interviews that he did his own tricks on the show, working straightforwardly and problematically with the tigers, chimpanzees and other wild creatures that were Tarzan's companions and workers.

"They previously attempted to project a previous American football player called Mike Henry however he could have done without chimpanzees and from the second he got on set, things went south in a rush," Ely told the Everyday Express.

A chimp went after Henry and harmed his jaw when the show's pilot was being recorded, and Ely was projected in his place without a second to spare.

"I met with them on a Monday and when they offered me the job I thought: 'Absolutely not a chance would I like to step into that bear trap. You do Tarzan and you are stepped forever'," Ely told the Day to day Express. "Was I at any point right! However, my representative persuaded me it was a quality show and planned to work. So on the Friday I was on a plane to Brazil to shoot the primary episode."

Ely additionally played the title character in the 1975 activity film "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze," however in any case played for the most part little parts in television and movies, including the 1958 film melodic "South Pacific."

He likewise composed a couple of secret books highlighting an investigator named Jake Sands, 1994's "Night Shadows" and 1995's "East Ocean side."

Brought into the world in Hereford, Texas, and brought up in Amarillo, he wedded his secondary school darling in 1959, yet separated from two years after the fact.

Alongside Kirsten Casale Ely, he is made due by girl Kaitland Ely Sweet.