Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9411050028
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SUSAN KING LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Thanks to video, a new generation has embraced the ``King of the Wild Frontier.'' The first three original Crockett episodes, which aired on ``Disneyland'' in 1954-55, currently are on Walt Disney Home Video under the title ``Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.'' Two more episodes, which aired in 1956, have just been released on Walt Disney Home Video as ``Davy Crockett and the River Pirates'' ($20). In this outing, Crockett and his sidekick George Russell (Buddy Ebsen) team up with burly Mike Fink (Jeff York), the egotistical captain of a Mississippi keel boat.
The Texas native has fond memories of playing Davy. ``Those are special times to think back on,'' says Parker, who keeps busy these days as owner of Fess Parker's Red Lion Inn Resort in Santa Barbara, Calif., and the Fess Parker Winery, 40 miles north of the resort.
``I think it was a different world. It was a little easier to live in than the one we are in today. I think there was a very innocently injected sense of values [in the movies]. I spend a lot of time at my winery on Saturdays and Sundays meeting the public, signing the bottles and reminiscing about different things and those days. I hear people say, `You gave me a value system or the show did' and lots of positive comments. It's remarkable that it's four decades since we did that.''
Parker, now 70, was an up-and-coming actor when Walt Disney cast him in the role of the stalwart frontier hero. Disney caught Parker's small role in ``Them!,'' the classic 1954 horror film about giant ants on the rampage in Los Angeles.
``It's really interesting,'' recalls Parker, who played a young man who had witnessed the ants. ``I had friends who were in the screening room when [Disney] noticed my scene. They all pretty much said the same thing that he said, `Who's that?' No one knew. I was real new to the business.''
A Disney executive at the screening knew the producer of ``Them!'' and asked him about Parker. The Disney exec, Parker recalls, ``got my name and I guess he said, `Have casting get in touch' with me. That's what happened.''
Parker says he had no idea ``Davy Crockett'' would take the country by storm. Kids went crazy buying Davy Crockett coonskin caps, outfits and muskets. ``The Ballad of Davy Crockett,'' sung by Bill Hays, was a huge hit.
``I was so tickled to have a job and thrilled to be with Walt Disney,'' Parker says. ``It was just a magic time. Disney sent me to 42 cities in America. Buddy joined me in June when they joined the three television shows together.''
The first three episodes of ``Davy Crockett,'' Parker explains, were filmed in Technicolor but aired on TV in black and white. ``They repeated them three times in one TV year and then released them seven months later as a first-run Technicolor motion picture. It was one of the first miniseries, I suppose, and then they turned it into a movie. That was novel.''
Besides playing Davy, Parker appeared in several Disney feature films, including ``The Great Locomotive Chase,'' ``Westward Ho! The Wagons,'' ``The Light in the Forest'' and ``Old Yeller.''
``I was under personal contract to Walt Disney himself for the first two years,'' Parker says. ``At the end of the two years my contract was renegotiated. I was then with the [Walt Disney] studio and not Walt. I think those additional dollars may have cost me a little bit of Walt's personal attention, which was awfully good. He got busy with the theme park. The people running the studio and studio productions were less experienced in dealing with someone they had under contract.
``They didn't understand what [studio heads] Louis B. Mayer and [Darryl] Zanuck knew about building people. They were people, of course, but they were properties. They were valuable to the studio. The people who represented Walt didn't have that background. That didn't work out too well and I went on my way shortly.''
And into the very popular NBC series ``Daniel Boone,'' as the title character. When the series left the airwaves in 1970 after six seasons, Parker turned his attention to real estate.
``At the end of `Daniel Boone,' my children were growing up. My son was 9 when I got off the treadmill of making 165 hours of film. My little girl was 6. ... I could have done another series or two. I just thought it was time for me to concentrate on other interests. I just kind of drifted away. It wasn't like I said, `I'm never going to do that again.' ''
In fact, Parker says, he just received a script. ``I don't know if there is a part in it for me. I'm not sure if there is that I would want it. A producer of quite a bit of success sent it to me just this week and basically said, `Read this and tell me what you think.' It would be fun with the right part. I haven't been competing for parts. If you are not in the competition, you don't come to mind [to producers]. The people who are making films today may not even know who the heck I am and probably would say, `Would you mind reading?' I can understand that. That's the way the world is.''
by CNB