Bill Bacon

In 1965, Walt Disney was “Filming Minado, the Wolverine” as part of his nature series. But Disney had a problem. The story supposedly took place in the Canadian Rockies where a vengeful wolverine attacks the hunter who shot its mother. The climax of the filming came when the full-grown wolverine jumps onto the back of the hunter and proceeds to shred the man’s jacket and neck. No stuntman out of Los Angeles was willing to be the attacked hunter. So, the Alaskan who was filming the shoot, Bill Bacon, agreed to do it. “You have to know wolverines,” Bacon said. “I just put some raw meat under my back collar and that did the trick.” To this day one would hard pressed to find anyone willing to have a full-grown wolverine jump onto their back for any reason!

That, in a nutshell, was the life of Bill Bacon. He was willing to film anything, anywhere anytime for adventure and humor followed wherever he went. He joined the Navy at 17 in the closing days of WWII and saw combat in the South Pacific. After the war he headed as far north as he could go and still speak English. At that time, it was Fairbanks where he was a photographer from the News Miner. Then it was north to Barrow, now Utqiaġvik, where he oddly – and typical for Bill – came in contact with Disney Studios. Walt Disney was impressed with Bill’s pet wolf and used the animal as a star in Nikki, Wild Dog of the North. Bill worked on the film as a cameraman and animal trainer.

After working for Disney, Bill did freelance projects for the rest of his life. His client list was impressive including BP, ARCO, Shell, Amerada Hess, SOHIO, ABC, NOVA, BBC, AMOCO and Alaskan companies like ERA Aviation and Alyeska. His subjects were eclectic and ranged from the conventional – glacier bears, gold rush trails and whaling – to the unusual: Bigfoot, World War III and pressure core procedures.

By the turn of the century, Bill was making the movies he wanted to make rather than by contract. In 2003, he produced Friendship Village: A Place of Healing, a documentary of American veterans returning to Vietnam as part of their wish for reconciliation and healing for both themselves and the Vietnamese. He produced a film on Tibet focusing on the deepest gorge in the world and a documentary on hunger in Kenya and Ethiopia. One of his more unusual projects was a 12-month look at a national park. The film involved shooting the same scene every day for a year. When shown at high speed, the viewer can see a year of Mother Nature’s work rather than through the snapshot of just the one day someone happened to be in the park. He won three Emmy Awards, one for a documentary on the culture and lifestyle of Tibetan people under domination by China.

Bill passed from the scene at 91. He had outlived all his contemporaries. But he will not be forgotten. For Alaskans, his films provide glimpses of the past – bush, city, business and nature – that are gone forever. For non-Alaskans, he brought the four corners of the world to their couches. He cannot be replaced.