American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett

by Buddy Levy

  There were also the theatrical renditions and images of Crockett which created clear and identifiable images of the mythological figure. James Hackett had portrayed Nimrod Wildfire beginning in 1831, and by 1837, a woodcut made from a portrait by Ambrose Andrews, depicting Hackett as Wildfire, appeared on the cover of that year’s Davy Crockett Almanack of Wild Sports in the West. The image shows Wildfire wearing the wildcat-skin hat we all associate with his image, complete with the tail on7 (what appears to be a bobcat would eventually change, thanks to Disney, into a raccoon).

  The Crockett Almanacs, first published in 1834, contributed significantly to the Crockett legend and mythology for many decades. (DAVID CROCKETT, FRONTIERSMAN. Unidentified artist, woodcut, 1837. Published in Davy Crockett’s Almanack for 1837, Nashville, 1837. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.)

  In 1872, another significant play appeared, this one called Davy Crockett; Or, Be Sure You’re Right, Then Go Ahead. Written by Frank Murdock expressly for the actor Frank Mayo, the play became “probably the best known of the American frontier melodramas,”8 and enjoyed a stupendous twenty-four-year run of more than 2,000 performances, including stints in New York, England, and as far west as Denver, where it finished in 1896, closing only when its lead actor died.9

  For the next sixty years or so “Davy,” both man and myth, hibernated, though the advent of motion pictures offered a new medium in which the legendary figure could appear. In 1909, a silent film entitled Davy Crockett—in Hearts United was released, starring Charles K. French as “Davy Crockett.” A year later, Selig Polyscope brought out a film called Davy Crockett, and from 1911 to 1953 another half-dozen films were produced depicting Crockett as a hero of the Alamo or as an Indian fighter/ scout.10

  In 1934 Constance Rourke wrote Davy Crockett, a clever and fascinating biography of Crockett that incorporated old yarns, folklore, and essentials of the fictitious almanacs into the historical facts of his life. One result of her book was to propel “Davy” into even greater “mythic status,” 11 further blurring the distinctions between the real man and the legendary character he was becoming.

  The real paradigm shift arrived in 1954, however, when the profound medium of television ensured that lasting, even indelible images of Crockett would be forever branded into the American consciousness. Needing a heroic American character for initial episodes of the Frontierland series, executive producer and entrepreneurial visionary Walt Disney turned to screenwriter Tom Blackburn and ABC network producer Bill Walsh to fashion a three-episode life of their chosen vehicle—Crockett. The trilogy would take the form of “Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter,” “Davy Crockett Goes to Congress,” and “Davy Crockett at the Alamo.” Fess Parker, a relatively unknown but handsome, clean-cut, and affable actor, took the role of Crockett, and on three otherwise obscure Wednesday evenings, December 15, 1954, January 26, 1955, and February 23, 1955, Davy Crockett strode into living rooms across America and neither he, nor the audiences who viewed him, would ever be the same.12 Had Disney possessed even the vaguest notion of the phenomenon he was about to create, he certainly would never have killed off his hero in only the third episode.

  Fess Parker became an instantaneous star (as well as the most enduring Crockett image—for millions of people, Fess Parker’s face is the face of Davy Crockett), and by the end of the third show, Crockett was easily the most famous and recognizable pioneer in the annals of American history, eclipsing even his great frontier predecessor, Daniel Boone.13 The unexpected success of the show created a windfall for Walt Disney and his new concept company and theme park, for in Crockett he had his first marketable, merchandisable, buckskin-wearing and tomahawk-toting action figure, and his marketing folks worked themselves, and the American public, into a frenzy that came to be called the Davy Crockett Craze. Every red-blooded American boy (and many girls, too) wanted to be Davy Crockett or act out scenes from the shows fighting Indians, and at its height nearly every kind of item imaginable (and some unimaginable) was on sale and associated with Davy Crockett: buckskin-fringed jackets, pants, even Davy Crockett underwear. The tools of Crockett’s hunting trade were available, with wooden “Betsey” replicas, holstered pistols, and the trusty powder horn, and those were just the fashion accessories.14

  Literally everything went Crockett—dining sets, lunchboxes, thermoses, and ice cream cartons, pajamas and bear rugs and chairs, puzzles and game boards and tricycles and bicycles, guitars and fiddles and even barbaque grills “for Frontier Living”—there was nothing the merchandisers wouldn’t put the Crockett name or picture on.15 Then came the biggest hit of all, that enduring symbol of the frontier, the coonskin cap. Many frontiersmen, including Daniel Boone, had worn the practical hat, and “in 1776, when Benjamin Franklin had journeyed to France he donned a coonskin cap instead of a powdered wig,”16 presumably to illustrate the significant class distinction between title-conscious Europe and pioneering, up-from-your-bootstraps America. Disney made an excellent choice, and of all the merchandise, the coonskin cap became the biggest-selling item of them all—practically every kid in America wanted one, and a large percentage of them got one.

  The economic tally was even more impressive than the 105 bears the real Crockett said he killed in a single year. By May 1955, the American consumer had dropped more than $100 million on Davy Crockett paraphernalia, and by the end of the initial craze (which was relatively short—not much more than a year) the number surpassed $300 million, a staggering figure equivalent to over $3 billion in today’s dollars).17 During the run, the humble “gentleman from the cane” rose to megastardom, becoming the most commercially lucrative individual figure in history, bigger even than GI Joe, Superman, and Spider-Man.18

  Crockett himself would have chuckled heartily, and with great personal satisfaction, to see what a stir his image created more than a century after his death. But he had already known there was a public yearning for his image back in 1834 when he posed for John Gadsby Chapman. What neither Crockett nor even Disney could ever have predicted was that Davy Crockett himself would become the very vehicle to deliver what has come to be known as the “television generation.”19 It took the media magic of Crockett and everything he represented—duty, patriotism, the hope and desire for freedom, heroism—to usher in the confluence of entertainment, commercial products, advertising, and the selling and buying, whole-hog, of Walt Disney’s version (and vision) of the American dream. So what if Disney blended fact and fiction? This was, after all, just entertainment. It didn’t matter whether Crockett ever actually wore a coonskin cap, whether he went down swinging at the Alamo, taking thirty or so Mexicans with him as he bashed wildly with his rifle butt. What mattered was that America now had a certifiable, clearly identifiable, enduring, and irrefutable symbol of the frontier, of the past, of the quintessential American story.

  Even when alternative “endings” to Crockett ’s life surfaced, through biographies and scholarly research, it was far too late for the mainstream to consider them, much less embrace them. The simultaneous enlarging mythology of the Alamo itself required heroes, brave defenders, and underdogs, dying together for the common cause of freedom.20 And the timing could not have been better to reinforce such patriotic notions; just a decade removed from World War II,21 Americans sought stories and heroic figures that underscored their inherent rightness and gave them a version of America they wanted to believe in while at the same time self-promoting the myth being created.

  In 1960 John Wayne took his shot at Crockett, producing and directing The Alamo, a longtime dream and one that cost over $7 million to make, a gargantuan budget for that time. It was worth every penny, for his three-plus hour epic delivers a much more real and complicated Crockett than Disney managed. In essence, to metamorphose into Crockett all John Wayne needed to do was play himself, for the Duke was “an American legend in his own right.”22 Wayne, a political conservative, saw in the tale of the Alamo the story of America itself, replete with plenty of clichés: good triumphi
ng over evil, the inherent rightness of Manifest Destiny, black-and-white notions of right and wrong, and real men doing manly things. His Crockett is paternal, patriotic, and prudent, possessing a raw wisdom that can only be wrought in a rugged life outdoors, not in a schoolroom. Like Wayne himself, his rendition of Crockett is of a straight-shooter and a no-nonsense straight-talker, brashly independent, even possessing—as Crockett did himself—a sharp sense of humor. In the film, Travis questions Crockett ’s motivations for coming to Texas in the first place, to which Wayne has him reply, “My Tennesseans . . . think they came to Texas to hunt and get drunk.” Of course, Wayne then has Crockett explain that he is at the Alamo to fight for liberty and justice.23 To deal with Crockett’s last minutes on earth, Wayne has the noble patriot, pierced by several Mexican swords, running with an ignited torch and leaping in to detonate the powder supply, gloriously taking a bunch of the enemy with him.

  The most recent cinematic incarnation is actor Billy Bob Thornton’s 2004 Crockett in the Imagine Entertainment (interestingly, a Disney Company) film The Alamo. Thornton conveys a believable, likable, raw Crockett who is keenly aware of his internal dilemma, that of being trapped within the confines of his own legend. Director John Lee Hancock also intimates that Crockett’s rationale for coming to Texas in the first place has more to do with land-grabbing and a political future than freedom-fighting. An early scene places Crockett with Houston in 1835, where the two men are at a theater with other politicians and society folks to watch a production of The Lion of the West. Crockett toasts Tennessee, and the hard-drinking Houston says, “to hell with Tennessee, here’s to Texas.” He then goes on to urge Crockett to come see for himself, that the new republic of Texas is like Tennessee was before it was settled, that there is more land available than one can possibly imagine. Crockett smiles as Houston leaves, then asks wryly, “Hey Sam—you figure this new republic’s gonna need a president?” The light moment underscores, accurately, that while Tennessee appeared played-out politically for Crockett, Texas was all about opportunity.

  In a poignant scene inside the Alamo, Crockett and the ailing Bowie meet one night, standing by the palisade wall, Crockett staring out at the open land. Bowie teases him about his wildcat-skin hat, asking him why he isn’t wearing it and whether it “crawled off,” to which Crockett admits he only started wearing it when it became popularized by the Nimrod Wildfire character. He then pauses and points out, quite seriously, “The truth is, people expect things.” He’s been giving them what they want for so long that it has begun to weigh on him. Bowie nods, but goads him further, showing that he, too, is familiar with the fictions. “Which was tougher,” he asks, grinning, “jumping the Mississippi or riding that lightning bolt?” Cannon fire startles them both, and they flinch, prompting Bowie to ask, “Can you catch a cannon ball?”

  Billy Bob Thornton’s Crockett pauses beautifully, a man completely aware of his own ironies and paradoxes, of his own mortality, a man who can no longer exist outside his own legend. He looks toward the walls and speaks with moving honesty to Bowie. “If it was just me, simple ol’ David from Tennessee, I might drop over that wall some night and take my chances—But that ‘Davy Crockett’ feller . . . They’re all watching him.”

  The finest Crockett moment of the film comes on the eve of the attack, as the band from the Mexican army continues to torment the besieged men with the incessant playing of Degüello, the “no quarter” death march that signifies the act of beheading or throat-cutting. The dirge is unnerving the defenders, but suddenly David Crockett knows exactly what to do. He grabs his fiddle, ascends the wall, and proceeds to answer the band with a sweetly whimsical harmonizing that is just discordant enough to sound slightly irreverent. It’s a magnificent performance, Crockett alone on the wall, utterly exposed yet unafraid and defiant, keenly aware of his performance yet simultaneously natural, honest, and true to himself. The man and the legend merge into one figure, silhouetted there on the wall, against a fiery Texas sunset, playing his fiddle, entertaining people. All eyes and ears are upon him as he finishes the song, quieting the Mexican band. Columns and columns of orderly soldiers stare back in amazement at the singular man on the wall who has managed to command the attention of all present, each and every defender and the entire Mexican army. Finally, an older soldier knowingly nudges a younger compatriot next to him on the shoulder. He smiles and nods, whispering to him a single word like a gift, telling him who he has just been fortunate enough to witness, as if with the very utterance of his name he will live forever in memory, immortalized:

  “Crockett!”

  NO DOUBT THORNTON’S CROCKETT WILL NOT BE THE LAST. Such is the nature of men who become legends, and especially the nature of David Crockett of the state of Tennessee, who wrestled bears, spun yarns, managed to get himself elected to offices for which he was only dubiously qualified, and perished, achieving martyrdom and immortality. His is an image and a story that refuses to die. Crockett, in the end, transcends the facts of his own mortal life to become an enduring symbol of possibility, remembered not for his deeds or his greatness as a head of state but for the sheer tenacity of his spirit, for what he came to represent. Benjamin Franklin became a model of the self-made man, his life the “classic American success story—the story of a man rising from the most obscure of origins to wealth and international preeminence.”24 Crockett knew the story well (among the few personal possessions he took to Texas is thought to have been Franklin’s Autobiography),25 and he attempted to live it himself and very nearly did, and one can only speculate on what he might have achieved had things turned out differently that cold morning of March 6, 1836. He never achieved the wealth, and in that respect he failed, but he managed the international prominence, at least in name and in memory. In the end David Crockett’s importance lives on, not in what he achieved but because he never stopped trying, he never quit and he never lost hope. He kept his eye on that western horizon, pulled his hat down tight, gritted his teeth, and rode on into the blazing sunset, come what may.

  Frank Mayo starred as Crockett in an amazing twenty-four-year run of the play Davy Crockett; Or, Be Sure You’re Right, Then Go Ahead, by Frank Murdock and Frank Mayo. (Score from “Davy Crockett March.” Rose Music Collection, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.)

  NOTES

  Prologue

  1 David Crockett, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee: A Facsimile Edition with Annotations and an Introduction by James A. Shackford and Stanley J. Folmsbee (Knoxville, 1973), 11.

  Chapter 1: Origins

  Direct Crockett quotes in this chapter are taken from his Narrative, unless otherwise noted.

  1 There remains ongoing discussion regarding Crockett’s heritage, including the possibility that he is the descendant of a French Huguenot named Antoine de Crocketagne, who immigrated to England, then Ireland, in the seventeenth century. For a detailed discussion of this uncertain lineage, see James A. Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend (Chapel Hill, NC, 1956), 293n. Also see Crockett, Narrative, 14; Stanley J. Folmsbee and Anna Grace Catron, “The Early Career of David Crockett,” East Tennessee Historical Society’s Publications 28 (1956): 59-60; William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo (New York, 1998), 9; and Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (New York, 2001), 11.

  2 Quoted in Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 59.

  3 Richard Boyd Hauck, Crockett: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT, 1982), 9.

  4 Ibid, 9. Shackford, Man and Legend, 3-5.

  5 Davis, Three Roads, 10. Hauck, Bio-Bibliography, 9. Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 59-60.

  6 Shackford, Man and Legend, 4.

  7 Hauck, Bio-Bibliography, 9. Shackford, Man and Legend, 5.

  8 Davis, Three Roads, 12. Mark Derr, The Frontiersman: The Real Life and the Many Legends of Davy Crockett (New York, 1993), 40. Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 60.

  9 Derr, Frontiersman, 40-41.

  10
Shackford, Man and Legend, 7.

  11 Ibid, 5.

  12 Derr, Frontiersman, 41.

  13 Ibid. Shackford, Man and Legend, 6.

  14 Davis, Three Roads, 13.

  15 Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 61-62. Hauck, Bio-Bibliography, 11.

  16 Crockett, Narrative, 22.

  17 Shackford, Man and Legend, 6.

  18 Hauck, Bio-Bibliography, 12. H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2000), 20.

  19 Crockett, Narrative, 23.

  20 Shackford, Man and Legend, 8-9. Davis, Three Roads, 16.

  21 Crockett, Narrative, 24.

  22 Davis, Three Roads, 16-17. Joseph J. Arpad, David Crockett: An Original Legendary Eccentricity and Early American Character (Duke University, 1968), 171-72. Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 62.

  23 Derr, Frontiersman, 46. Davis, Three Roads, 17.

  24 Crockett, Narrative, 29.

  25 Ibid, 31.