David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [3]
My first exposure to this inimitable American icon came, and I can vividly recall the date, on the frosty night of December 15, 1954, in my hometown of St. Louis. The ABC television network had just aired Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter, the first of three episodes produced by Walt Disney for his studio’s then new series, which had premiered two months earlier. Called simply Disneyland during its first four years, this anthology series, under a variety of other names, including, most commonly, The Wonderful World of Disney, was to become one of the longest-running prime-time programs on American television.
I was just nine years old that December evening, but I could have predicted the show’s success. I was hooked moments after hearing the theme music, “When You Wish upon a Star,” sung by cartoon insect Jiminy Cricket from the soundtrack of the movie Pinocchio. Longtime Disney announcer Dick Wesson introduced host Walt Disney and, with some visual assistance from a flittering Tinkerbell, Uncle Walt unleashed the legendary frontier character Davy Crockett from the twelve-inch screen of our 1950 table model RCA Victor television set into our living room, as if from a runaway train.
I was a goner. Within only minutes the larger-than-life Crockett, clad in buckskin and wearing a coonskin cap, had won me over. My fickle nine-year-old heart pounded. The previous summer, at two separate events in a department store parking lot, I had shaken the hand of Hopalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid, but now they were instantly demoted to lesser status on my list of heroes. Even Stan Musial—“swinging Stan the Man,” the legendary St. Louis Cardinal All-Star slugger, whose name was etched in granite at the top of that list—was in jeopardy of being topped.
By the time that first episode ended, the image of Crockett, as portrayed by twenty-nine-year-old Fess Parker, was firmly ensconced in my psyche. I did not even consider staying up for Strike It Rich and I Got a Secret. I forgot about the promise of fresh snow and the good sledding sure to follow. Instead I headed straight to my room, where I pored over the World Book Encyclopedia entry for Crockett, dreaming of the swash-buckler with a proclivity for dangerous behavior, a most commendable quality for any red-blooded American kid.
As I would quickly learn, I was not alone. More than forty million others tuned in to Disneyland that Wednesday night. By the time the next episode, Davy Crockett Goes to Congress, aired (on January 16, 1955), followed, on February 23, by Davy Crockett at the Alamo, I, along with much of the nation—especially the growing ranks of what would later be called the baby boom generation—was swept up by the Crockett frenzy. We wanted more.
And more came in the form of an unprecedented merchandising whirlwind, in which Crockett was commercialized in ways that would have been unthinkable to the man himself. Every kid had to have a coonskin cap like Davy’s, and almost overnight the wholesale prices of raccoon pelts soared from twenty-five cents a pound to six dollars, with the sale of at least ten million furry caps. Within only months of the series premiere, more than $100 million was spent on at least three thousand different Crockett items, including pajamas, lunch boxes, underwear, comics, books, moccasins, toothbrushes, games, clothing, toy rifles, sleds, and curtains. The catchy theme song “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” sold more than four million copies and remained No. 1 on the Top Ten list for thirteen weeks. On May 7, 1955, I proudly wore my coonskin hat when Gisèle MacKenzie sang the top tune of the week on Your Hit Parade. Like every one of my pals, I knew the words were true. We sang Crockett’s ballad at the top of our lungs as we built forts from old Christmas trees and cardboard boxes, transforming the neighborhood into our own version of Crockett