Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 15, 1993 TAG: 9301150137
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GIL ASAKAWA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
STILL `KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER'
Ask anyone in their 40s about Davy Crockett, and chances are you'll get a litany of childhood memories, each gilded by nostalgia.That's because in 1955, as American kids were playing with Slinkys, Betsy Wetsy dolls and Tinkertoys, the country was grabbed by the first full-fledged fad fueled by post-World War II buying power.
All things Davy Crockett were clamored for until more than $100 million of merchandise was bought by befuddled parents. Before it was all over, Crockett-mania goods included toy rifles emblazoned "Betsy" like Davy's, rubber knives, tomahawks, bows and arrows, 16 versions of the theme song (including a mambo), lunch boxes, moccasins, fringed costumes, comic books and - most coveted of all - coonskin caps.
Now that the original owners of those goods are parents themselves, they can re-live the mania: Buena Vista Home has just released four titles in the Walt Disney Studio Film Collection, including "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier." (The others are "Pollyanna," "The Sword and the Rose" and The Absent-Minded Professor.")
For most fans, the memories of Crockett as played by the ruggedly handsome Fess Parker are vivid - and in color. Yet, the character was introduced to America via the flickering black-and-white tubes of early TV consoles. "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" was originally told as three separate hourlong segments of a new weekly program, "Disneyland," which debuted in October 1954.
Crockett and his trusty sidekick Georgie Russel (played with bumpkin-like bravado by Buddy Ebsen) battled the Creek Indians in the Dec. 15 broadcast, which was followed by Davy's adventures as a judge and congressman in January '55, and by Crockett's (and everyone else's) death at the battle of the Alamo the next month.
By then, Bill Hayes' version of the Crockett theme song was No. 1 on the charts, and within a few more months, the price of raccoon tails had gone from 25 cents to $8 a pound. By the summer, Disney had cashed in on the mania by assembling the three programs into a 93-minute theatrical release (which is the version you'll see on video). The movie version explains why many boomers remember Crockett's adventures in color.
The fad caught the Disney studio off-guard, and in the embarrassing position of having killed off their very bankable hero.
So in November and December '55, two more segments were produced, flashbacks to Crockett's adventures fighting riverboat gamblers, and were released to theaters in '56. By then, however, the fad had faded.
The baby boomer's first merchandising bonanza lasted less than a year, to be replaced by an entire lifetime of fads: rock 'n' roll music, hula hoops, the Beatles, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., slot cars, Twister, and Batman circa 1965 to Batman today.
The video brings back all the memories, including Davy's new-agey, non-violent attempt to grin a "b'ahr" to death, his sensitive anti-racist attitude toward American Indians (despite the '50s stereotypes), his folksy political campaign (shades of Ross Perot), and his valiant end at the hands of Santa Ana's Mexican troops (Disney showed Georgie Russel getting killed, but the movie fades with Davy still standing by his cannon). And it brings back a corny version of American heroism that, after four decades of cultural cynicism, still is thrilling.
Fess Parker and Walt Disney couldn't have known that Davy Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier, would touch such a deep nerve in the boomers' consciousness. The video will touch it again, and remind you that in many ways, Crockett became the King of the New Frontier.