Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier
*A Walt Disney Picture, 1955, starring Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen,
made out of clips from the slightly longer Davy Crockett television
series. At the time, it was one of the biggest merchandising
vehicles in history, and every little boy in the 1950s had to have a
coonskin cap, a toy rifle, and a Davy Crockett lunch box.
*The movie may seem corny or cheesy to modern eyes, and it is more
entertainment than history, but it does show, more or less, the legend
of Davy Crockett, a man who was at least half legend and fiction during
his own lifetime. It is an extremely idealized picture of
Crockett and his times, and often fails to be politically correct by
to-day standards, but it does convey a sense of Davy Crockett, a man
whose motto was ‘Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.’
*The action opens with the burning of Fort Mims and the start of the
Creek War in 1813 and continues to Davy Crockett’s death at the Alamo
in 1836.
*Very broadly the film gets things right:
*Davy Crockett (although in real life he preferred David) was not born
on a mountaintop in Tennessee (he was born on fairly flat ground in
Greene County),
*but he was a Tennessee Volunteer under Andrew Jackson in the Creek War
(although the movie doesn’t show it, he fought at Horseshoe Bend) and
he was ignored and scorned by less capable but more socially respected
officers.
*He did go on to chase the Creek in Florida (so he was not at New
Orleans, and either here or later he fell sick with malaria in the
swamps and was saved by Indians).
*He did reputedly kill 105 bears in one hunting season (although not by
grinning them to death, although that was a legend about him, even in
his own time).
*He did move to the western part of the state, where he became a
magistrate, then a militia colonel, then a justice of the peace.
*Following a flood that destroyed his grist mill and ruined his fortune
(not shown in the movie), he did go on to become a state legislator and
later a US Congressman, both times representing West Tennessee, and
typically standing up for the rights of the poor against the big land
speculators.
*Although initially a Jacksonian, Crockett opposed Indian Removal and other bills of the Jackson administration.
*He was a legend in his own time (so much so that both his own
autobiography and many fictional stories either written about him by
name, like the Crockett Almanacs, or obviously based on him became
best-sellers of fiction and fantasy).
*His opposition to Jackson really did lead to his defeat in re-election
(although he did not just walk out of Congress as shown in the movie).
*Following his defeat, he went to Texas to try to revive his political
career (and take advantage of the large land bounties offered to people
who would help in Texas’ war for independence), and joined up with the
Texas army in January 1836, where he is ultimately under the command of
former Tennessee governor Samuel Houston. Although Disney does
not report this, he supposedly told his constituents who did not
re-elect him, "You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
*In Texas, Crockett was among the defenders of the Alamo, and did die
there, along with everyone else, in broadly the way the movie shows it.
*Although broadly correct, the movie has any number of
inaccuracies. Most obvious is that the Creek Indians are
portrayed in the costumes of Great Plains Indians, which is almost as
absurd as if Crocket & company had been dressed as Vikings, on the
ground that they were also Europeans. The name Red Stick is also
given to a particular Creek chief, which is not correct. The
students will recall that the Red Sticks were a faction of the Creek
Nation that fought the more accommodating, modernizing Creek as well as
white Americans.
*Many other small details are wrong, too, but much of the overall sense is right, and, one way or another, it is a fun movie.
***
*After showing the movie, discuss possible other theories if Crockett’s
death, including that he was one of a few prisoners taken but executed
by Santa Anna, who had ordered that no prisoners be taken.