Dennis Haskins, TV's Principal Belding on 'Saved by the Bell,' Dies at 75

Dennis Haskins, the actor who spent more than a decade as Principal Richard Belding on "Saved by the Bell" and its successor series, has died at 75, his longtime representative confirmed Monday. The announcement, made through agent Jay Schachter, did not disclose a cause of death or the date on which Haskins died.

Haskins was born November 18, 1950, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is survived by his son, Dustin, according to Fox News Digital's report on his death. He played the exasperated, catchphrase-prone high school administrator for four seasons on NBC's original "Saved by the Bell" from 1989 to 1993, then carried the role through seven more seasons of the spinoff "Saved by the Bell: The New Class," which ran until 2000. Combined with an earlier version of the character on the short-lived Disney Channel series "Good Morning, Miss Bliss," Haskins played Belding on screen for the better part of 15 years.

Eleven years as Mr. Belding

Before he was cast as Bayside High's beleaguered principal, Haskins worked for years in the music business as a manager, agent and promoter. His first credited acting role came on the debut episode of "The Dukes of Hazzard" in 1979, a decade before "Saved by the Bell" made him one of the most recognizable authority figures in American children's television. The character's bellowing catchphrase, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! What's going on here?", followed Haskins for the rest of his career, resurfacing in later guest appearances on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," "Mad Men," "New Girl," "How I Met Your Mother," "Hot in Cleveland," "Men of a Certain Age," "Victorious," "The Bold and the Beautiful," "The West Wing" and "7th Heaven."

His most visible return to the role came in February 2015, when he joined Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Tiffani Thiessen, Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley for a "Saved by the Bell" reunion sketch on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," an appearance that turned out to be his last major on-screen outing as Belding.

A degree deferred, then earned

Haskins had attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the early 1970s but left before finishing his degree to chase the music-industry career that eventually led him into acting. As a student there, he served as the student government association's entertainment chairman and, according to a university library account of his campus years, was responsible for booking Ike and Tina Turner for a campus concert in April 1973. He also founded a community theater troupe, the Harlequins, while at the school.

He returned to campus decades later. In 2000, UTC named him a Distinguished Alumnus, and on December 12, 2015, at 65 years old, he walked at the university's fall commencement to collect the bachelor's degree in theater he had set aside forty years earlier. "For reasons long past, I left just short of my liberal arts degree in theater," Haskins said at the time, in a university news release marking the milestone. He later donated his personal collection of working scripts from every episode of "Saved by the Bell," which the school's Special Collections put on public display in an exhibition the following spring, a chapter of his life recounted in a university profile of Haskins published two years later.

Tributes from Bayside

Word of Haskins' death drew tributes from several of his "Saved by the Bell" co-stars, relayed through the celebrity's representative and picked up across entertainment outlets on Monday. Thiessen, who played Kelly Kapowski, wrote that Haskins "was a steady presence during my teenage years" and that she would "always remember his kindness." Lark Voorhies, who played Lisa Turtle, said that "knowing Haskins for nearly four decades has been one of the truest blessings of my life," while Lopez, who played A.C. Slater, said he was "grateful for the laughs, the memories, and the friendship we shared," adding that Haskins would "always be part of our Bayside family," per ABC News' account of the cast's reaction.

"It's a tragic loss. Everyone loved Mr. Belding and those of us who got to know Dennis, loved him even more. He was a great person, and he loved, I mean absolutely LOVED his fans." — Jay Schachter, Dennis Haskins' agent

The scale of the response reflects how thoroughly the character became embedded in American television of the era. "Saved by the Bell" aired as part of NBC's Saturday morning lineup for four seasons before "The New Class" extended Bayside High's run through the rest of the 1990s, meaning two overlapping generations of viewers grew up watching Haskins play the only adult regularly present in the show's teenage world. Reporting on his death Monday was carried, among others, by the Associated Press wire, as syndicated by WRAL, underscoring how widely the news traveled within hours of the initial announcement.

What comes next

No funeral or memorial arrangements had been announced publicly as of Monday afternoon. Haskins' death leaves Gosselaar, Thiessen, Lopez, Berkley and Voorhies as the surviving core cast of the original series; co-star Dustin Diamond, who played Screech Powers, died in 2021. "Saved by the Bell" and "Saved by the Bell: The New Class" remain widely available in syndication and on streaming, and the character of Belding was carried forward, without Haskins, into NBCUniversal's 2020 Peacock revival of the franchise. For now, tributes are continuing to circulate among the cast and among the generation of viewers who first encountered Haskins on Saturday mornings more than three decades ago.