Kirsten Casale Ely, the actress’s daughter, posted on Instagram, “I have lost my dad, and the world has lost one of the greatest men it has ever known.”
When Tarzan first appeared on the television network in 1966 and 1968, the actor broke several bones and was reportedly bitten by animals while doing his own stunts.
Ely started writing and published two mystery novels when he retired from performing in 2001.
Ely briefly returned to acting in 2014, playing an Amish character in the television movie Expecting Amish.
He had appearances in other popular television shows in the 1980s, such as Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter and the comedy The Love Boat, which was set on a cruise ship.
Ely, who was born in 1938 in Texas, married his high school love in 1959 and got divorced two years later.
In the early 1980s, he also gained notoriety as the host of the Miss America pageant, when he met Valerie Lundeen, his second wife. Three children were born to the couple.
In 2019, their son Cameron fatally murdered Lundeen, then 62, at their California home. Responding police officers deemed him a threat, and he was subsequently shot and killed.
