One of TVs early heroes passes away at 85

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett

Who didn’t wear a coonskin cap and talk like Davy Crockett? Everyone remembers the genial remake of history by Walt Disney in the 1950’s. As a Tennessean Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett killed a “bar”, chased Indians and showed bravery at the Alamo, the American Waterloo.

Disney was a master at creating the American myth and then capitalizing on it. The merchandising of Davy Crockett hats, coats, guns and other memorabilia became a marketing legend. Kids begged, including this one, their parents to but them Davy Crockett gear. My mother was a pacifist so I had to get my own coonskin cap and gun. I hide it from her.

Buddy Ebsen (Wizard of Oz, Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones) was Davy Crockett’s sidekick in the TV series. Fess Parker went on to play the role of Abraham Lincoln.

From The Telegraph.co.uk Fess Parker, who died on March 18, aged 85, made his name playing the American pioneers Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone in the 1950s, when the appetite of film and television audiences was large for stories of the old frontiersmen who conquered America’s untamed West; in the process he generated a bonanza for the manufacturers of coonskin hats.

The television series Davy Crockett was made by Disney and was first screened in 1954. Parker got the part after Walt Disney had seen him earlier that year in the science fiction film Them!, in which he played a pilot who was sectioned after claiming that his aircraft had been attacked by giant flying ants. As Crockett, the 6ft 6in tall Parker was immediately idolised by young American boys, who rampaged around their gardens in fur hats and buckskin jackets, toting replicas of the great man’s rifle, “Old Betsy”.

Meanwhile, the title song – The Ballad of Davy Crockett – went to No 1 in the charts for Bill Hayes, and a version by Parker himself reached No 5. In 1955 the three television episodes were melded into a film, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, and a second movie, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, came out the following year. In Britain, the television episodes were screened by ITV.

Although Disney stuck to the historical facts by allowing Crockett (in the third episode) to be killed at the battle of the Alamo (1836), such was the public outcry that the TV show was resurrected, with further Davy Crockett exploits, in 1955-56.

After this success, Parker might well have sunk without trace, were it not for his portrayal in another television series – between 1964 and 1970 – of the other great folk hero of the American frontier, Daniel Boone. He then abandoned his acting career to go into the property business, and later became one of California’s best-known wine makers.

Fess Elisha Parker was born into a farming family on August 16 1924 at Fort Worth, Texas. (Davy Crockett had been born a day later, on August 17, in 1786). In the Second World War he served with the US Marines, then studied History at Texas University. His life nearly ended prematurely in 1946, when he was stabbed by a drunk driver after a traffic accident.

After deciding on a future in acting, Parker took a drama course at the University of Southern California, and in 1952 made his debut on the big screen in Springfield Rifle, an American Civil War drama starring Gary Cooper.

Among Parker’s other films were The Kid From Left Field (1953); The Great Locomotive Chase (1956); Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956); Old Yeller (1957); The Light in the Forest (1958); and Hell for Heroes (1962), with Steve McQueen and James Coburn.

In the late 1980s Parker established a 2,200-acre vineyard at Los Olivos, California, and went on to win many awards for his wine. At the vineyard’s gift shop he sold Davy Crockett memorabilia.

A close friend of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, in 1985 he was sent to Australia to represent the President at a ceremony. He was subsequently asked by the White House if he would like to serve as American ambassador in Canberra, but declined.

Fess Parker is survived by his wife, Marcella, whom he married in 1960, and by their son and daughter.