

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.

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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