SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Miklos "Miki" Dora, the legendary "Black Knight" of surfing who spurned contests and railed at Hollywood's glamorization of the sport while influencing generations of other riders, has died of cancer. He was 67.

Dora, who had recently been living in France, died Jan. 3 at his father's Montecito home. He had returned after learning he had terminal pancreatic cancer, friends told the Santa Barbara News-Press.

A fixture at Malibu's beaches in the 1950s and '60s, Dora's calculatedly arrogant personality and unmatched talent for wave riding was widely credited with helping to popularize the sport with young beach-goers while giving it an outlaw image among outsiders.

The stepson of Grad Chapin, a legendary surfer of the 1930s and '40s, he honed his skills surfing the long point break waves at Malibu long before others knew the place existed.

As those others began arriving in the 1960s, they quickly began to adopt his stance -- upright with a slight bend in the knees. Many of them also drew his ire.

"I remember riding this one wave and someone pushing me off my board from behind, screaming, 'Go home you little creep,"' recalled Santa Barbara Surfing Museum curator Jim O'Mahoney. "As a little kid it was like getting yanked from your board by God. It was a badge of honor."

Also known as "Da Cat" for his smooth moves, Dora held contests in equal contempt, denouncing them as "fascistic" efforts to control surfers.

He did enter the 1967 Malibu Invitational, however, dropping his swimming trunks to moon the judges on his final pass.

He also expressed disdain for Hollywood's interest in surfing, although he accepted bit parts in such movies as "Bikini Beach," "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" and "Beach Blanket Bingo." He also had a popular line of Da Cat surfboards.

"He was absolutely comfortable with that apparent contradiction," said surf historian Matt Warshaw. "He was criticizing the system while he exploited it."

What he really wanted to do, Dora indicated in a 1976 interview with the News-Press, was be left alone on his waves. He waxed nostalgic as he recalled learning to surf in Southern California during World War II, a time when the beaches were empty and the water was clean.

"I grew up under this wonderful freedom," he said. "But it went so quickly."