Ron Ely, Who Played an Updated Tarzan in the 1960s, Dies at 86

He later built a career as a reliable TV guest star. His life turned tragic in 2019 when his son killed Mr. Ely’s wife and was then shot to death by the police.

Ron Ely, a veteran television actor best known for his role as an educated, urbane vine-swinger on the 1960s show “Tarzan,” died on Sept. 29 at the home of one of his daughters near Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 86.

That daughter, Kirsten Ely, announced the death on Wednesday on social media. It had not been previously reported.

A tall, muscled Texas native, Mr. Ely (pronounced “EE-lee”) had made his name by the early 1960s as a reliable supporting actor on popular TV shows like the sitcoms “Father Knows Best,” “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” before landing the lead role on “Tarzan” in 1966.

The show, which ran on NBC for 57 episodes across two seasons, featured a Tarzan updated for a modern audience. Gone were the semi-verbal grunts of previous iterations; in this version, Tarzan had left the jungle and learned the ways of modern civilization before deciding to return to the creature comforts of his former home.

Gone, too, was Jane, Tarzan’s traditional love interest, though Cheetah, his chimpanzee sidekick, remained.

Mr. Ely performed almost all his own stunts, which left him with two broken shoulders, a torn back muscle and two lion bites.

“I had so many muscle pulls and tears and busted shoulders, wrists and bones,” he said in a 2013 interview with Alan Mercer for his website, Profile. “Every part of me had been hurt. I pay for it today when I get out of bed in stages.”

Still, “Tarzan” made Mr. Ely famous — too famous, he later said.

“That character is such a trap, nobody gets out alive,” he told The Fresno Bee in 2014. “I became so associated with the role, I had to go to Europe to get work.”

He came back to the United States in 1975 to play another pulp hero in the movie “Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze.”

He then returned to television, with guest appearances on a long list of shows from the 1970s through the ’90s, including “The Love Boat,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” “Fantasy Island” and “Hawkeye.” And he played Mike Nelson, the role originally played by Lloyd Bridges, on a revival of “Sea Hunt” in the late 1980s.

Mr. Ely hosted the Miss America pageant in 1980 and 1981 and dabbled in game shows, hosting “Face the Music” for two seasons starting in 1980.

He took a break from acting in the 1990s to raise his three children, Kirsten, Kaitland and Cameron. He also wrote two detective novels, “Night Shadows” (1994) and East Beach” (1995).

Once his children were grown, he returned to the screen in 2014 with a role in the television movie “Expecting Amish,” about a young Amish woman whose life changes when she visits Hollywood.

“I stepped out of acting to raise a family and be able to spend more time with them here in Santa Barbara,” Mr. Ely told The Fresno Bee in 2014. “Now, all the kids are through college with advance degrees. My family asked me, ‘What are you hanging around for?’”

In October 2019, Mr. Ely’s wife, Valerie Lundeen Ely, was found stabbed to death at their home in Santa Barbara. Responding to calls reporting a “family disturbance,” the police arrived and shot and killed Cameron, whom they said had killed his mother and “posed a threat.”

A year later, Mr. Ely and his family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Santa Barbara sheriff’s office, claiming that Cameron had been unarmed and that officers had shot him without warning.

“The shooting occurred less than 20 seconds after defendant deputies saw decedent Cameron walk around the corner with his hands up, the universal act of surrender,” the lawsuit said.

The sheriff’s office said that Cameron had told them that he had a gun as he continued to walk toward them, despite their warnings to halt.

A jury ruled in 2022 that the police had acted in self-defense.

Ronald Pierce Ely was born on June 2, 1938, in Amarillo, Texas. His father, Vernon, was a farmer and volunteer sheriff, and his mother, Sybil, was a typist and recorder for the local government.

In high school, Ron gravitated toward speech and acting classes and won a statewide poetry-reading competition, which led to a scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin.

He considered studying petroleum engineering, but his curiosity about acting pulled him toward Hollywood. Near the end of his freshman year, he and a friend drove to California. He never returned.

“It was in April, with all the night blossoms making the air smell like perfume,” he told Alan Mercer. “When that hit me, I was a goner.”

He signed a contract with 20th Century Fox and soon landed a small role in the 1958 film version of the musical “South Pacific.”

That led to increasingly larger roles, including Jill St. John’s love interest in “The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker” (1959).

But he always went back to TV work, which he felt was steadier and more interesting. His roles ranged widely, though he was best known for action-adventure shows, including a lead part in “The Aquanauts,” about a team of divers, which ran on CBS in the 1960-61 season.

His first marriage, to Helen Jane Triplett, his high school girlfriend, ended in divorce. He married Ms. Lundeen in 1984.

In addition to his daughter Kirsten, he is survived by his other daughter, Kaitland Sweet, and two grandchildren.

A deeply private man, Mr. Ely kept his distance from his many “Tarzan” fans, even decades later. But he eventually grew to accept their admiration and even made an appearance at Comic-Con in 2012, to mark 100 years since Edgar Rice Burroughs published the original novel “Tarzan of the Apes.”

“I came to realize that there were people that connected me so totally with the character that if I rejected it, it meant I would be abandoning them,” he told NJ.com that year. “I eventually re-embraced it. I came around.”