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To see Fess Parker or historian Bill Cotter about the Bill Cotter Craze, visit the Film Theater.

For most creative men, a phenomenal success like the television show, Davy Crockett, would be a career-crowning achievement. For Walt Disney, about a half century later, it's possible to overlook this phenomenon. But if you lived anyplace in the United States in the mid-1950s, the show would have been impossible to ignore. With stars Fess Parker and Buddy Ebson (click here for an interview with Fess), Davy Crockett achieved the kind of national visibility rivaled by few in the history of the little glowing box.

Davy Crockett

Of course, as time went on, Walt became deeply involved in the Davy Crockett programs - later turning them into feature length films for movie theaters. But who would have guessed that Walt was hesitant to do the show at first?

Yet that's exactly the case, as you'll see in the following excerpt from the first chapter of "The Davy Crockett Craze," published by Paul F. Anderson in 1996.

Paul has spent most of his life digging into the history of Walt Disney and his creations. And Paul doesn't dig with a spade, shovel of pickax. He uses a bulldozer approach, turning over incredible quantities of information in his quest for context and truth. Much of his work is published through Persistence of Vision, a historical journal, which comes out on an irregular basis. The next issue of POV - based on years of research into Walt Disney and World War II - will be coming out by early fall. Both this publication - and the book, The Davy Crockett Craze can be ordered by contacting Paul at 801-523-0888 or e-mailing him at POV@AROS.net.

 

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN: ORIGINS OF THE DAVY CROCKETT CRAZE

Oddly enough, the first mention of Davy Crockett at the Disney Studios may have been overlooked. Folklorist Richard Dorson claims to have approached Disney in 1939 about utilizing his book Davy Crockett, Americana Comic Legend, for an animated feature. While in California on vacation, Dorson stopped into the Disney Studios, where he was met by a "cold-eyed secretary," Dorson wrote in a 1955 letter to the Saturday Review, [she] invited me to fill out forms and come back in two weeks. I assured here that I was in town only for the day and possessed material that Mr. Disney would find of utmost interest. She made a half-hearted effort to contact someone in an inner office, but failed. I left town the next day. . . "

Almost two decades after this close encounter," the Davy Crockett legend would again find its way to Disney - only this time with more successful results. This new beginning for Crockett came with Walt Disney's entrance into television. Following Disney's first two successful television programs One Hour in Wonderland (1950) and The Walt Disney Christmas Show (1951), the networks continually tried to persuade Walt to commit to a weekly series.

[Walt didn't follow through immediately, but when he needed cash to help build Disneyland, he entered into an agreement with ABC for a weekly TV show.] First and foremost in the plans for Disney's TV show was the need to define a format. The two most popular formats on television during the Fifties were the anthology and the situation comedy. Walt adopted the anthology format for his show for the simple reason that it offered the freedom to switch themes each week. The anthology format would also allow him to promote Disneyland and upcoming films. Disneyland's design called for different lands; and so would the new series. Consequently, the new program, now called Disneyland, was divided up into four themed segments; Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Adventure-land and Frontierland. It was the perfect blend of format and promotion.

The 1954 Walt Disney Productions annual Report described Frontierland the place and the show: "A log fort stage coaches, mule-pack trains and a stern-wheeler docked at the end of a pioneer street help make Frontierland a living re-creation of America's past, from which Walt presents stories of fabled folk heroes. . . [As the show's creative team searched for potential stories about famous history-making Americans to feature, two were particularly compelling: Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone.]

It appears that Daniel Boone almost got the nod over Crockett, but after continued discussion Davy was chosen. Margaret J. King, in her fascinating PhD dissertation on the Crockett craze for the University of Hawaii, suggests several reasons why Crockett was eventually selected over Boone: 1) Crockett's relative anonymity made him easier to mold into a hero; 2) "Crockett's martyrdom at the Alamo. . . clearly made him a candidate for the patriot role, along with his service under Jackson in the Creek Indian Wars and his Congressional career." Boone's peaceful civilian death would have made it tough to capitalize on the sense of patriotism that was rampant in the 1950s; 3) Boone's adventures happened before Nationhood and his wilderness was "too early, too arcane, too mysterious; too unrooted in any pre-existing popular format to be readily understood and appreciated, especially by child viewers. Crockett's historical setting, however, was more in tune with the "time-tested formula of the Western in novel, film and television."

Walt had reservations about the choice of Crockett, claiming in one interview that, "All he did was fight Indians. How can you say anything new about that?" Walt's feelings were further evidenced in this amusing anecdote by Bill Walsh. . . . "So, we did some [story] boards on Davy Crockett - and may I tell you we put everything but the kitchen sink in those boards. Like there was fighting the Indians, Seminoles down in Florida, fighting tomahawk duels with Red Stick. Then he went to Congress and raised hell, then he fought Andy Jackson who was doing something bad to the Indians and Davy stalked out of Congress because Andy Jackson was stealing from the Indians and didn't wanted to hear about it. In fact, he fought Andy tooth and nail. Then he went out west and had a lot of adventures going out west and he had a lot more Indian fights there. Then he got into trouble with the cowboys - early Texans - and then got to the Alamo and then he lasted through the Alamo for 14 days - and the last day of the Alamo they broke the joint wide open.

"He died as he had lived, swinging his rifle around, and there was this pile of 17 dead Mexicans piling up in front of him. Walt looked at all of this and he said - I'll never forget his classic line - 'Yeah, but what else did he do?' That's when Norman Foster [the director] fainted dead away."

The staff persisted in their argument to Disney about the merits of the coonskin-capped frontiersman. It finally had the result they were hoping for; Walt accepted Crockett as the first American hero to grace his Disneyland TV show. Also in discussions at this time, was how exactly to portray the frontiersman for the show. According to Buddy Ebsen. "He [Walt] wanted to do it as a cartoon. Then I think he found out that it was cheaper to do it with live actors." With everybody behind Crockett now and the decision to produce it in live-action, work began immediately on story and production.

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