There’s a character in Terry Pratchett’s Thud! named Mr. A. E. Pessimal. That’s his birth name; the initials don’t stand for anything. Vimes says that he was not named; he was initialed. If Wikipedia is to be trusted, the same was true for one F. E. Parker. He’s a junior, but that’s what Wikipedia says. Now, I love you people, but not enough to sign up for a genealogy website to be able to see the birth certificate. An interesting possibility to me is that his parents gave him initials and called him Fess but agreed that they’d let him decide when he was older what he wanted to be called. I mean, there’s also the possibility that Wikipedia is full of crap on this one; that does happen, after all.

He wasn’t even Walt’s first choice to be Davy Crockett. James Arness was. When Walt was still considering the issue, he saw the giant bug movie Them! Which I have seen. Arness is fine in it, as acting in giant bug movies go. But Walt was struck by the man playing a pilot (which Parker had hoped to actually be in World War II, but at nearly 6’6″, he was too tall), a man who is locked up because he won’t deny what he’s seen. He knew that was his Davy.

And, yes, there’s more to Parker’s career than Davy Crockett. And probably without Crockett, there would have been a steady career as a character actor. With Davy Crockett, he became an American icon. He also had considerable freedom, especially given that Walt “gave him” ten percent of the Crockett merchandising rights. I only know about all of this because of an interview he gave, so I don’t know the specifics, but consider—his last acting credit is 1974, and he lived to 2010, being peaceful in the countryside and making wine.

Davy Crockett was a phenomenon of my mother’s childhood, and I will still always see him as Davy Crockett. What’s more, that probably would have been true if he’d kept acting after that. There are a few roles that you just can’t get away from, and I think 1974 was late enough to know that he’d hit on one of those, no matter how long he spent as Daniel Boone in the meantime—and after all, what was Daniel Boone for him but an attempt to cash in on that sweet Davy Crockett success? Some actors continue in the face of that; some even succeed in ways they hadn’t expected. Look at Mark Hamill and his second career using just his voice. But some people, like Parker, decide to just walk away.

I’ve seen some of his non-Crockett work, but not much of it. There’s not much of it to see, honestly, and even a lot of what there is consists of bit parts. He’s on the commentary track of Old Yeller from the Vault Disney edition, but he explains that he doesn’t understand why, as he’s missing for most of the picture and only spent a few days on set. The whole point of the movie is that he isn’t there. There’s something to be said about how our American icons have to do with the idea that men leave their families and go off to have adventures, hoping to settle down in a quiet life once the adventuring is done, I guess.

We’re never going to have a vineyard, but it sure would be nice if you’d support my Patreon!