Fess Parker, TV's Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, has died

Fess Parker, 85, who died yesterday of old age, was a struggling 29-year-old actor when he won the role that would define him for decades. And he beat out James Arness. Parker, an ex-Navy man who was born in Fort Worth, Texas and raised in San Angelo, Texas, just had the right look that caught Disney's eye. And at 6'6" he had the perfect stature to play a frontier legend.

Before his first appearance on television, December 15, 1954, Davy Crockett was a folkloric character of the Johnny Appleseed variety. But after "Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter" aired, the Tennessee pioneer became as well known as his trademark coonskin cap. Four episodes followed. Actor Fess Parker became a household name, and Crockett mania turned into a marketing bonanza estimated at $300 million. Later, the craze would be analyzed in dissertations, because, as Margaret J. King pointed out in her 1976 study at the University of Hawaii, it demonstrated the power of a medium still in its infancy to shape generational behavior and values. Parker as Crockett said things like "Be sure you're right, then go ahead," and because he never got angry and was a soft-spoken force of nature, children believed him . . . and made it their creed as well.

Although sidekick Buddy Ebsen (Georgie Russel in "Davy Crockett") went on to play Beverly Hillbilly Jed Clampett and private investigator Barnaby Jones, Parker, under contract for longer and defined by the frontiersman role, continued to work in the Disney "stable" and Western mode. He appeared in such films as "Westward Ho! the Wagons" (1956), "The Great Locomotive Chase" (1956), and "Old Yeller" (1957). Between 1964-70, Parker donned the buckskins again to play Daniel Boone in the highly successful NBC series, where he reinvented the frontier hero for a new generation playing off of sidekicks Yadkin (Albert Salmi) and Mingo (Ed Ames).

In the '70s, Parker became a businessman in California. But his third major identity came in 1987 when he bought a 714-acre ranch in Santa Ynez Valley and started The Fess Parker Winery & Vineyards. Sporting a label with a coonskin cap, vintages produced by Parker's vineyards won more than 30 medals.

But for most people Parker will always be inextricably tied to those two beloved frontiersmen: Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. In that respect, Parker will always be with us. Here's the link to an interview DVD Town posted in 2004, in which Parker talks about his iconic roles.