The Bear who Stole the Spotlight

Bart the Bear was nine feet tall and could steal a scene just by lumbering into frame. He shared the screen with Oscar winners and captivated millions of viewers. But before he was a star, he was a 5-week-old cub arriving at the Seus ranch in Heber.

It started with a hardware store and a basket of baby skunks.

In 1975, Lynne Seus brought her skunks along on errands to socialize them. While she stood in line, a man noticed the shiny black noses poking from the basket. He was the prop master for Baker’s Hawk, a film with Burl Ives and Clint Walker shooting in Provo Canyon.

The production needed animal actors. Lynne and her husband Doug had skunks, a raccoon, wolves – and a hawk. Overnight, they had a new line of work.

What started as an offbeat side gig soon grew into one of Hollywood’s most unlikely success stories. From their Heber City ranch, Doug and Lynne trained iconic animal actors – most famously Bart the Bear, a towering Kodiak later paired with Anthony Hopkins. Their story is one of grit, intuition – and trust.

Even before the skunk incident, Doug had begun assembling a menagerie. Near Lehi, he met a government trapper who quietly kept many of the animals he was meant to destroy. Doug already owned a female wolf; when the trapper gave him a male, Doug started breeding a pack.

But what could they do with a wolf pack? An answer appeared when Lynne worked as script coordinator on a Noah’s Ark film in Park City. A Los Angeles firm supplied the movie’s beasts, and Lynne thought, If only we could ever do that.

That notion was the spark; the hardware-store moment was the kindling. Their first real test came fast.

Supplying skunks, wolves, raccoons and a hawk for Baker’s Hawk (1976) was a breakthrough, though not without drama. On set, Mizzer the raccoon ran up a tree and refused to come down for two days. “The tree was too tall and skinny to climb, or I would have grabbed him by his neck,” Lynne later wrote in her memoir, The Grizzlies and Us.

The couple nevertheless impressed the crew. They bought a run-down farmhouse on 75 acres outside Heber and secured a USDA license to operate an animal-training facility.

During the 1970s and ‘80s wilderness adventure films were hot, and studios needed bears. The Seuses realized that to turn their venture into a career, they needed a bear with genuine screen presence.

That bear was Bart.

Born in 1977 at the Baltimore Zoo, Bart arrived at five weeks old with litter-mate Zack. Doug had never trained a bear before, yet remained unfazed. “I’m a believer in experience as the indelible force,” he said.

Bart grew to nine feet tall and 1,500 pounds, yet to Doug, he was a student and friend. Training, Doug said, was about building trust and establishing dominance.

“You apply common sense, and you teach each other. I believe there’s nothing greater than trust,” he said.

Doug knew one swipe could kill him. “You’ve got to remember, if you’re gonna work with a big bear, you better hold sway. But sway must be held with honesty and dignity,” Doug said. “To have a relationship, you have to dominate. Bart was a kingpin – but I was the king.”

That partnership held; Bart never injured Doug.

The bear brothers, Bart and Zack, had their theatrical debut in 1977’s Once Upon a Starry Night, the Grizzly Adams Christmas special. Wolves howled. A fox, badger and coyote bounded through snow. Merlin the owl swiveled on a spruce.

Bart and Zach were supposed to chase Mizzer the raccoon up a tree, then play in the snow. Once again, Mizzer had other ideas. He launched from the tree onto Bart’s head. Zack bolted; Bart spun like a rodeo bull trying to shake off the raccoon. Actor Dan Haggerty doubled over laughing. Bart would prove to be an actor who loved to ham it up on screen, but Zack was a shy and nervous bear.

Lynne said, “For Zack, life was a drama. And for Bart, life was a situation comedy.” Zack, more sensitive, retired to the Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Nebraska. Bart forged ahead.

In 1981 Bart appeared in Windwalker, with Doug doubling for the lead. Months of play-based rehearsal taught Bart to accept a retractable knife as though it really pierced him. The routine became Bart’s favorite game.

As they worked together, Doug began to appreciate wide shots where human actors could share the frame with giant Bart. In The Edge (1997), Anthony Hopkins stood beside him on a log while Doug crouched just out of view with a hand on Bart’s paw for safety. Hopkins later complimented Bart as a true actor who was emotionally expressive on screen.

Bart’s most public stage came at the 70th Academy Awards in 1998. Under Doug’s silent supervision, Bart presented the Oscar alongside Mike Meyers for Best Sound Effects Editing. Calm and camera-ready, he charmed Hollywood’s elite and sealed his reputation not just as an animal actor, but as a performer in his own right.

A decade earlier The Bear (1988) had inspired a grassroots push to nominate him for Best Actor – unheard of for wildlife. The Academy declined, but the effort underscored the respect Bart had earned as a serious screen presence.

More than a performer, Bart was family. Lynne had rocked him in one arm while cradling her own baby in the other. “I’ll use the word love,” she said. “I loved that bear, and I think that bear loved me.”

In 1990, the Seuses founded the Vital Ground Foundation to protect grizzly corridors across the Northern Rockies. The nonprofit now safeguards more than one million acres.

By 1998, the mighty Bart began to slow. While working on Disney’s Meet the Deedles, he struggled to stand on his hind legs. Soon after, Doug found a lump on Bart’s
wrist – cancer.

While ill, Bart served as the official spokesbear for Colorado State University’s Animal Cancer Center, promoting awareness and fundraising for cancer treatment in animals. His example demonstrated how close bonds with wild creatures can inspire scientific progress and a commitment to their care. Despite treatment, the disease advanced.

When the time came to say goodbye, Lynne called their vet. On May 10, 2000, at age 23, Bart was euthanized on the Heber ranch where he’d lived nearly his entire life.

Moments after making the call to Bart’s vet, Lynn picked up the phone to answer a call from Alaska Fish and Game: two orphaned grizzly cubs needed a home. “It was a little miracle for us,” Lynne said.

The cubs – later named Bart 2 and Honey Bump – were three months old and had known the wild. Doug returned to what he knew best: building trust moment
by moment.

Bart 2 followed his namesake onto set, traveling to New Zealand for The Lord of the Rings (2001), Alaska for Into the Wild (2007) and Canada for An Unfinished Life (2005). When shipping him to Ireland for Game of Thrones proved impossible, producers instead flew the cast to Los Angeles.

Today the Seuses still train animals at Wasatch Rocky Mountain Wildlife Ranch, blending film, television and conservation outreach. Until his death in 2021, Bart 2 was both actor and ambassador, championing the habitat Vital Ground fights
to protect.

Doug values that connection above any credit roll. “If you want a relationship that nobody else in the world has,” Doug said, “you must be willing to sacrifice your own life and your own limb to achieve that.”

For Doug and Bart, that bond is the lasting legacy – larger than any bear and bigger than the big screen.