Gentle Ben

Gentle Ben is a bear character created by author Walt Morey and first introduced in a 1965 children's novel, Gentle Ben. The original novel told the story of the friendship between a large male bear named Ben and a boy named Mark. The story provided the basis for the 1967 film Gentle Giant (1967), the popular late 1960s U.S. television series Gentle Ben, a 1980s animated cartoon and two early 2000s made-for-TV movies.

Walt Morey, a filbert farmer and former boxer, had previously written many pulp fiction stories for adults dealing with subjects such as boxing, the Old West, and outdoor adventures, published in magazines such as Argosy. However, due to the decline in demand for pulp fiction caused by the advent of broadcast television in the 1950s, Morey stopped writing for ten years. His wife, a schoolteacher, challenged him to write adventure stories that would interest young readers, similar to those of Jack London. After several years, Morey took up her challenge with the goal of producing an adventure story for young readers that adults could also enjoy.

The result was Gentle Ben, which was based on Morey's own past experiences working and traveling in Alaska. Morey said that many of the book characters were based on real Alaskan people he had met. According to Morey, the concept of a boy's friendship with an Alaskan brown bear was also taken from real life, and such friendships and interactions between humans and bears were not unusual in Alaska.

Originally published in 1965 by E.P. Dutton, the novel was a success, selling nearly 3 million copies and winning the Dutton Animal Book Award that year. Morey went on to write many more children's novels, often involving themes of nature, animals and survival, but is best known for Gentle Ben.

Mark Andersen is a young teenage boy who lives in Alaska with his fisherman father and mother, Karl and Ellen Andersen. Mark is lonely after the death of his older brother, and befriends an Alaskan brown bear named Ben that was captured as a cub by local drunkard Fog Benson. Ben, now a large adult bear, spends his days chained alone in a shack on Benson's property, and the lonely bear bonds with the lonely boy who secretly visits him. Mark's parents are initially upset that he visits Ben, but eventually see that Mark and Ben have a special friendship and buy Ben from Fog Benson for Mark, on the condition that Mark help his father with the fishing to pay him back.

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