Dennis Haskins, who played Principal Richard Belding on the teen sitcom “Saved by the Bell,” his most memorable role in an acting career that spanned four decades, died on Sunday in Burbank, Calif. He was 75.
His friend and caretaker, Kimberly Snow, confirmed the death. Mr. Haskins had been in an assisted living facility since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease eight years ago, she said.
Mr. Haskins played the exasperated but well-meaning principal of Bayside High School throughout the show’s four-season run, from 1989 to 1992. The show followed a group of California high school students.
Mr. Belding served as a foil and a mentor to the show’s lead character, Zack Morris, and his friends Screech, Slater, Lisa, Jessie and Kelly. Dustin Diamond, who played Screech, died in 2021.
Mr. Haskins’s character often announced his entrance into a scene with the catchphrase: “Hey, hey hey, what is going on here?”
He played Mr. Belding in two movies, “Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style” in 1992 and “Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas” in 1994, and appeared in “Saved by the Bell: The College Years,” which ran for one season from 1993 to 1994.
Mr. Haskins and Mr. Diamond reprised their roles in a spinoff, “Saved by the Bell: The New Class,” which ran from 1993 to 2000.
After hanging up his tie as Mr. Belding, Mr. Haskins made guest appearances on several TV shows in the 2000s and 2010s, including “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Mad Men” and “How I Met Your Mother.” He also appeared in a handful of television movies, including his final role as the grandfather of 14 adopted children in the 2020 Christmas film “A Bennett Song Holiday.”
Dennis Button Haskins IV was born on Nov. 18, 1950, in Chattanooga, Tenn., to Dennis Button Haskins III and Veneta Marilyn Yarbrough. He had one brother. He attended high school in Chattanooga and went on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Mr. Haskins wrote for the university’s student paper, acted in the drama club and served in student government, according to the university. He was a founding member of the Harlequins, a community theater group in Chattanooga, where he performed in plays and worked as a stage manager.
He left the university in the 1970s, before graduating, to pursue a career in entertainment in California. He worked in the music business before receiving his first acting credit on “The Dukes of Hazzard” in 1979. He played minor roles in several TV shows, including “Archie Bunker’s Place” and “Magnum, P.I.,” before he was cast as Mr. Belding.
In 2015, he returned to the university to complete his degree in theater and speech. “I always felt bad that I didn’t stick it out,” he said in a 2017 video posted by the university, adding that he had been just short of graduating when he dropped out. “It was something that was missing from me.”
He credited the university with helping to launch his acting career and donated his scripts from “Saved by the Bell” to its library. In the finale of “Saved by the Bell: The New Class,” Mr. Belding leaves Bayside High to become a dean at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Mr. Haskins’s marriage to Sarah Dianne Goins ended in divorce. No information about survivors was immediately available.
In his later years, Mr. Haskins was a regular at Dimples Karaoke, a bar in Burbank, where he befriended its owner, Sal Ferraro, who died in 2022. Ms. Snow, his caretaker, worked as a bartender at the bar until it closed in 2014.
“A lot of people thought he owned it, but he didn’t. He just loved the place and its people,” Ms. Snow wrote about Mr. Haskins in a social media post on Monday. “He enjoyed singing for people, meeting them, and taking selfies with his fans.”
Mr. Haskins wrapped filming on the original “Saved by the Bell” series in 1991, almost a year before the final season aired. Afterward, he was interviewed on “Live at Noon,” a local talk show in Chattanooga.
“Somebody told me the other day, they said, ‘You are going to be Mr. Belding to a whole generation of kids,’” he said. “I was just happy to have a job.”
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