This morning’s paper carried the news of the death of yet another great American icon, Fess Parker. He died March 18, 2010 at the age of 85.
If you’re under 40, you probably have no idea who he is, but if you were a little boy growing up in the 1960’s, you watched him just about every week. He played the great frontiersman Daniel Boone on a weekly television series from 1964 to 1970.
Fess Parker’s career started when Walt Disney picked up the 6’6” actor to play another frontiersman, Davey Crockett, in the 1950’s. Having only five episodes, the show was the first "mini series" in television history, although the term was unknown at the time.
It also caused the first television based marketing trend, causing a run on ‘coonskin caps and “Old Betsy” long rifles. About the same time that it first aired, Charles Schultz came out with the Peanuts comic strips, and there is a story line that emphasizes one of the characters wearing his coonskin cap everywhere.
Being children of the 60’s, my brothers and I missed him the first time around, but we did catch him as Daniel Boone. I can’t remember what night it was on, but I do remember that the three little boys in our house were really upset if they missed “Dannel Boom”.
There was no small amount of confusion when a rerun of a “Davey Crockett” episode happened to occur on the Walt Disney Show in the same week that we saw Daniel Boone. We were convinced that the people on TV made a mistake, since they kept referring to “Daniel Boone” as “Davey Crockett”. It probably didn’t help any that the costumes were similar and both had catchy theme songs that preschoolers could easily remember.
In retrospect, the similarity of the costumes was probably intentional, since Disney could simply remarket the caps and firearms as from Boone rather than Crockett. Then again, that may be the cynicism of a middle aged man who's had the Mouse suck too much money out of his wallet in the past.
We also played “Daniel Boone” with the other neighborhood kids in the back yard, in story lines that were produced and choreographed with enough intensity to put a Broadway Musical to shame. Although none of us had a coonskin cap, someone in the neighborhood had an Old Betsy Rifle. The rest of us had to make due with whatever props we could improvise, including an old blanket thrown over a V in the fence between two yards to make an improvised Teepee for either ambushes or peace conferences, as the script might direct.
Looking back, the story lines were pretty contrived and bore a historical inaccuracy that probably wouldn’t be tolerated today. The portrayal of clear cut good guys and bad guys belies the truth of the actual situations and stereotypes of Native Americans and women, among others, and fails to even come close to current politically correct requirements.
But in a neighborhood full of little boys (and one girl who frequently proved that she could “fight injuns” with the best of them) it provided a foundation for hours of entertainment that didn’t involve video screens or any equipment other than what was scrounged around the house.
Fess Parker didn’t remain in show business. He did a few other movies (Old Yeller probably being the most famous), but felt that Disney Studios did him no favors in promoting his career. After the series ended, he went on to become a successful hotel developer and winery owner. There’s no denying, though, that he had an impact on a generation of kids who stopped their play to go inside and watch his exploits on the flickering black and white screen of the living room television.
Not to mention his impact on more than a few raccoons.
http://www.danielboonetv.com/index.php?page=home
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