Fess Parker, right, portrayed Daniel Boone in the television series about the frontiersman.
By Ted Franklin Belue
The 1960s remain a Daniel Boone cultural watershed, leading to renewed interest in the woodsman’s life in Kentucky, where 200 years before, America’s original hunter-hero had stepped onto history’s page. This neo-Boone enthusiasm came in irregular torrents of waves and in the most peculiar of ways.
Hollywood was Boone’s biggest boon, thanks to a 6-foot-5-inch Texan named Fess Elisha Parker Jr., who had starred in such notable films as 1957’s Old Yeller (and less notable ones, like Them!, a 1954 science fiction thriller featuring humongous radioactive ants threatening to overrun civilization). Parker attained celebrity staus on ABC in the Walt Disney miniseries Davy Crockett. Even Davy’s theme was epic, needing 20 stanzas to sum up its subject’s mettle.
Verse one will do:
Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
greenest state in the land of the free,
raised in the woods so he knew ev’ry tree,
kilt him a b’ar when he was only three.
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
The “Ballad of Davy Crockett” sold more than 10 million records, ensuring Parker’s voice—naturally, he recorded his own song, as did many artists—was on the radio and his handsome face on prime-time television. Davy-mania swept the land. Trappers reaped a bonanza getting a coonskin cap on every little Boomer’s head. Disney franchised Davy Crockett lunch buckets, toy guns, thermoses, powder horns, fringed jackets, bubblegum, TV trays, drinking glasses, trading cards, comic books, wagons, watches, spoons, guitars, lamps, belt buckles, pocketknives, aprons, moccasins and … one gets the idea. Such canonizing of a dead folk hero had never been seen before—or since. The hubbub—succinctly put, a $300 million hubbub in 1954 bucks!—stunned Parker and grubstaked Uncle Walt’s Disneyland.
It was not the first time Crockett usurped Boone’s heroic mantle. The real Ring-tailed Roarer was an Indian fighter, bodacious yarn spinner, and bear-killing Congressman who once railed at his Tennessee constituents who’d ousted him, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas!” and did, dying at the Alamo (March 6, 1836). The flamboyant Tennessean went out like a Spartan in the midst of his enemies. The reserved Kentuckian went out like a senior citizen at a rest home after overindulging on sweet potatoes (Sept. 26, 1820). Little wonder the Gentleman from the Cane’s (Crockett) meteoric persona eclipsed Sheltowee’s (Boone) quiet stoicism.
Parker with Kentucky’s Corps of Longriflemen.
But in 1964, Boone was reborn. Parker had proposed rekindling sputtering Crockett’s flame (and his career) with his own backwoods serial. When the Lord of Cinderella’s Castle (and copyright holder to Davy’s merchandise) got wind of the Half-Horse/Half-Alligator’s rising phoenix, he threatened to sue. “Disney didn’t want any further Davy Crockett films—especially from me,” Parker recalled. So, obligingly, the star changed his show’s title, thwarting litigation by two words: Daniel Boone.
Dan’l shot sharp, donned a coonskin, and talked like Davy. Parker owned up to the similarities between the two—“Well, if you listened to them in the dark, they weren’t any different”—and, like his fuming ex-boss, branded his own vast mercantile of plastic Boone trade goods and faux fur caps.
I was born the first year of the Davy hullaballoo and missed it. Seeing Dan’l, though, was a different story. The night of Sept. 24, 1964, I solemnly donned my fringed jacket and coonskin cap, grabbed my hunting bag made from Mom’s old purse fitted with a cow horn, and, Tick Licker (rifle) in hand, hauled my Hasbro Johnny Reb cannon beside our black-and-white Motorola, praying its tin-foiled rabbit ears would pick up Boonesborough’s signal and that my grandma wouldn’t switch the channel to The Lawrence Welk Show. Armed and accoutered, eyes skinned for a sign, I was ready. The clock chimed. Distant, soaring horns sounded: Dum-dum-dum-dee-doe-dum. Then,
Daniel Boone was a man.
Yes a big man!
With an eye like an eagle
And as tall as a mountain was he!
Sheltowee’s rifle—an antique Indian trade gun fitted with a 45/70 Springfield ignition system—shot true and on cue. Rebecca (Patricia Blair), coiffed and cosmetically perfect, stood by her woodsman. Israel (Darby Hinton) never faced his fate at Blue Licks. Jemima (Veronica Cartwright), flush with beauty, vanished by the second season. Mingo (Ed Ames), a Harvard grad and Dan’l’s Cherokee companion, spoke better English than anyone I knew, popped a whip with stinging accuracy, and sang like Luciano Pavarotti. War-bonneted Anglos in face-paint hi-yah’d around totem poles. The Red Coats were suitably snobby. Kentucky resembled California and Utah (with powerlines, contrails and an occasional interstate).
Boonesborough life could be a bit of a historical stretch. Daniel and Rebecca went vacationing during the Revolution. Jay Silverheels (The Lone Ranger’s Tonto), a real Mohawk, portrayed George Rogers Clark, a real Indian fighter. Virginia Governor Patrick Henry, blustering like King George III, shuttled through the cane in a fancy coach. L.A. Rams defensive tackle Rosey Grier fought Choctaws during the NFL’s offseason.
Tender in years, I was rather puzzled. I loved Fess, a handsome oak of a man who towered over settlers like an NBA center while keeping Kentucky safe and offering sage wisdom. But was this the man I’d read about? Dan’l rarely rode a horse and always seemed to be stalking the same bear.
Oh, well. At least his flinter never went off half-cocked.
Daniel Boone’s inaccuracies left historians aghast, but the show fared well, offering an hour of family entertainment. “We had a lot of fine actors,” said Parker. “I wanted to have a good show.”
The soft-spoken Texan, a decent man by any measure, prided himself on his bringing women, American Indians and African Americans to the screen in meaningful roles. “I think it will stand up next to the westerns, which we were not, but we were lumped in that category.”
Dan’l lacked The Duke’s swag and Clint Eastwood’s steely terseness, but he was compassionate, defended Indians from murderous mobs, helped folks in need, willingly turned the other cheek instead of resorting to violence, and treated Rebecca respectfully and as his equal—this as the civil rights movement was beginning. (That the real 5-foot, 4-inch Boone dealt in chattel was not addressed.)
Parker as Boone
As Dan’l fever swept o’er the Bluegrass, Kentuckians greeted this new interest in their hero with mixed feelings. Capitalizing on the publicity, the Commonwealth dedicated Fort Boonesborough State Park in Madison County. The fort—touted as “an exact replica of the original” but built of creosoted pine telephone poles from Alabama, with Plexiglas windows, air-conditioned cabins, vending machines and sidewalks—became the state’s star resort.
Like the show, the replica outpost raised the eyebrows of the historically astute. “Why didn’t they use native material?” asked Dr. Thomas D. Clark, Kentucky’s premier historian and author. Boonesborough’s palisades, he mused, resembled “logs turned on a modern lathe and the corners beveled, like how a city fellow thinks a fort ought to look. There’s nothing authentic about it,” he told reporter Tom Watson. He was equally dismissive of NBC’s offering, warning pupils braving his university classes that he’d fail them for having nothing better to do with their time if they asked “about Daniel Boone on television.”
Fellow luminary J. Winston Coleman disagreed, saying Boone was “number one with young people.” The show couldn’t “beat down his image. If anything, it helped it.” The editor of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Dr. Hambleton Tapp, sided with Coleman. While straining credulity “to the breaking point,” the show created interest, inspiring Kentuckians to study their historic roots.
Clark gave no quarter: “Anybody influenced by that shouldn’t be fooling with history.” For future Daniel Boone episodes, Clark proposed having Katherine the Great tour Kentucky—“that would have made for an exciting visit”—or Moses leading the Hebrews to the Promised Land. “Moses was an explorer. Let him compare notes with Daniel Boone.”
In March 1966, after H.R. 113 passed Kentucky’s House of Representatives denouncing the show as “an inexcusable farce” and “insult to the intelligence,” Parker responded with kindness but firmness, reminding detractors he did inject authentic tidbits into his persona. “We did a lot of episodes that involved Boone’s life. Fighting with the British against the Indians—Indian wars,” he said.
In true Dan’l fashion, Parker gently chided the stuffed shirts, sure “that if Boone were alive today, he would be as astonished as I that an august body of men … has tuned into a passel of television critics.” The controversy faded.
Parker on his 1968 visit to Daniel and Rebecca Boone’s gravesite.
Dan’l Visits Frankfort
Parker’s announcement that he was coming to Frankfort on Sept. 26, 1968, for the 148th anniversary of Boone’s death put folks into a tizzy at the chance of seeing a TV star. Kentuckians prepared a fitting rollout, including spiffing up Daniel and Rebecca’s tomb—“Boone’s Gravesite Ready for Visitors,” The Courier-Journal announced. The Franklin County Homemakers Garden Club, the shrine’s caretakers, had re-sodded and re-planted shrubs and flowers, thwarting souvenir hunters from pickpocketing pebbles, tearing off tree bark, yanking up petunias, and desecrating the holy ground with pop cans, gum wrappers and cigarette butts.
The United States Postal Service made plans to honor the “most famous of American pioneers” with his own six-cent stamp. Actually, it was Boone’s second stamp. His first one—a tiny 3-cent purplish reproduction of Boone and three hunters—commemorated Kentucky’s sesquicentennial. (For his birth bicentennial in 1934, the U.S. Mint issued a silver half-dollar with Daniel and Blackfish the Shawnee sharing sides. Boone’s half-dollar was the first U.S. coin to depict “a real-life Native American.”)
Patty Peavler, a trustee on the Frankfort Cemetery Company’s Board and volunteer at the Capitol City Museum, was there. A Frankfort native, she has a degree in history from Kentucky State College. Her family lived near the Old Capitol when Parker arrived. “I was on my way to the grocery store and wanted to stop and see Fess. I knew he was coming. It was a big deal, the first day of issuing the stamp—I still have the stamp,” she told me.
Hundreds of fans, spanning both the Davy and Dan’l generations judging from the coonskin caps adorning heads young and old, gathered downtown. Crews hauling television cameras over the railroad tracks dividing West Broadway shouldered their gear up the Capitol’s steps, sidestepping Bill May, president of Brighton Engineering, and Chamber of Commerce leaders. Mayor Frank Sower and Lyle Cobb, community services director and Democratic Party man-about-town were ensconced by the Capitol’s pillars near Old Glory. Ken Hart, WLAP’s general manager (the station’s motto: “We Dig Coal”), was hoping for a radio interview with the star. Parker obliged.
A cadre of black powder shooters—flintlocks in hand and in buckskins, calico shirts, butternut frock, and slouch hats—came from as far away as Pennsylvania to add local color. Kentucky’s Corps of Longriflemen, naturally, was represented, and members milled about posing for photos. Ralph “Two Shoots” Marcum, a Corps member, presented Parker with a tomahawk he had forged and exhibited his fancy double-barreled flintlock. Parker was impressed. A McKee, Kentucky Renaissance man, Marcum later showed up in a Boone episode filmed at Cumberland Falls.
Thunderous applause welcomed Daniel’s lanky Hollywood alter-ego to the Bluegrass State as he ascended the speaker’s platform in full TV Dan’l garb minus his bushy, ring-tailed cap (which pleased the womenfolk as the raccoon’s bandit face detracted from his chiseled features). “They introduced him, and he gave a rousing talk,” recalled Ms. Peavler. “He was handsome and tall.”
After a sort of Make Kentucky Great Again stem-winder, Parker signed autographs on the Old Capitol’s lawn. As cameras snapped, Parker, towering like Apollo over the buckskinners, shouldered the revered “Daniel Boone rifle”—based on “DB” gouged on the rifle’s butt’s front and on the reverse, “BOoNs best FREN.” Fifteen notches cut in the stock marked Dan’l’s grim tally—this from a modest ex-Quaker who shot only in self-defense. To celebrate Parker’s arrival, curators had taken the absurdly embellished long rifle from its display. Upon scrutiny of it by expert John Bivins, he refused to believe that “Boone would have so wretchedly defaced the stock of a rifle in such a manner. To be as succinct as possible,” he concluded, “I believe that it is generally understood among students of the American long rifle who are familiar with this particular weapon that the piece is exceedingly unlikely to have enjoyed actual ownership by Daniel Boone. That is certainly my opinion … It could not have been made earlier than the year of Boone’s death.”
Clearly, Bivins did not think much of BOoNs best FREN.
No matter. One need only look at the picture capturing the moment to sense that the fake Boone gun seems transformed into the real thing. The frontier entourage motored up the hill to Frankfort’s garden cemetery to pay their respects to Daniel and Rebecca; Parker’s pose with BOoNs best FREN in the monument’s shadow, the Kentucky River winding away 300 feet below, is pop culture at its most iconic.
During his barnstorming Dark and Bloody Ground tour, Parker proposed building his theme park, Frontier Land, and, endorsed Daniel Boone Fried Chicken—seasoned with Dan’l’s own secret blend of herbs and spices—to compete with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ex-governor, ex-senator and ex-national baseball commissioner A.B. “Happy” Chandler became DBFC’s good-ole-boy version of KFC’s Col. Harland Sanders.
Parker made endorsement appearances and invested in the fast-food chain, as did DBFC board member and fellow fried chicken fan Sammy Davis Jr.—a duly appointed Kentucky Colonel. Col. Sammy Davis’ efforts notwithstanding, DBFC soon lost $2 million and went bankrupt. Fowl language ensued, darn tootin’.
Parker didn’t break stride. He’d scouted out a 1,500-acre tract in, fittingly, Boone County, to break ground for his Frontier World—“a $100 million amusement park” featuring thrill rides, showboat musicals and “key periods of American history. Visitors would enter the Mayflower, roam through Colonial life, the frontier, the Old West and the Industrial Revolution.” Parker couldn’t raise the $13.5 million down payment due to King’s Island Park being built in southern Ohio. Soon, his proposed financiers, who had backed Disneyland, were energetically despoiling Central Florida to pave the way for Walt Disney World.
So it was then that Uncle Walt Disney not only reigned victorious in the theme park wars but also in the Boone vs. Crockett TV dustup: Though NBC’s Dan’l lasted six years and ran 165 episodes, ABC’s Davy was the greater pop culture phenomenon and moneymaker.
Parker went on to become a savvy Santa Barbara real estate investor and award-winning vintner and hotelier who never got above his raising. Loved, literally, by countless millions, he received fan mail from all over the world, and he always replied with a personal note. He died in 2010 at 85, the same age as the real Daniel Boone when he passed. Fess’ bronze marker is simple and honest, and, like his wine bottles, emblazoned with a coonskin cap.
And though, in the end, Kentucky was about as lucrative for him as it was for Boone, and as Tennessee was for Crockett, folks still talk about that September day when Dan’l and Davy paid a visit to Daniel and Rebecca’s grave. In the Bluegrass State, as in the Volunteer State, there will always be a place in the sun for Fess Parker.
Ted Franklin Belue
Murray, Kentucky
tbelue@murraystate.edu