Fess Parker, RIP

Fess Parker, star of the Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone television series, has died:

Fess Parker, forever a frontiersman

By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY

In his day, Fess Parker was king of the wild frontier.

Parker, who died Thursday at 85 of natural causes at his home in California, turned the coonskin cap into a must-have accessory playing Alamo icon Davy Crockett in a series of Disneyland TV productions in the mid-1950s.

He cemented his position as TV’s top frontiersman playing another historical figure, Daniel Boone, in an NBC series of the same name from 1964 to 1970.

Boone was one of Parker’s final TV roles. He turned his attention to real estate and building a successful vineyard and winery in California’s Santa Ynez Valley.

The 6-foot-6 Texas native’s other roles included the 1954 horror film Them!, in which atomically mutated ants turned into monsters, and the 1957 classic Old Yeller.

But it the role as Crockett, the “king of the wild frontier” in the theme song, that became a phenomenon for Parker. At one point, 5,000 coonskin caps were sold a day, raising the price of the fur from 25 cents a pound to $8.

Decades after Davy Crockett, Baby Boomers still approached him to talk about growing up with the character, he said in a 2004 USA TODAY interview. “I try not to let them know I know what they will say,” he said.

Parker acknowledged in the interview that the real Crockett and Boone were distinct personalities, “but not as I played them.”

In 1989, Parker and his family moved to a Santa Ynez Valley property next to Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. He operated an inn on the Santa Barbara beachfront and became a vintner.

His Fess Parker Winery drew acclaim for its varieties — and in a sense returned him to the screen, when it was featured in the 2004 wine-celebrating film, Sideways, as the Frass Canyon winery.

Parker’s big break was in Them! in which he played a GA pilot who was put in a mental hospital after he reported that giant flying ants caused his plane to crash land. Walt Disney screened the film because he was thinking of casting its star as Crockett, but was so impressed with Parker that he cast him in the role instead.

The next year, the star who was passed over got his shot at TV stardom. He was James Arness and the TV show was the Western Gunsmoke. It would run for 20 years in prime time, 1955-75.