Walt Disney and American History
Walt Disney's Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier was my introduction to History, a subject I still read a lot. It was on my sixth birthday that I caught the first installment, Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter . Here was a story about people from East Tennessee, barely one hundred miles from my home. Let's face it. Tennessee just was not the setting for much of anything on TV at the time. What's more some of the episode was filmed in my home state, something else that was almost unheard of. Walt Disney turned to American History for subjects to film, either for the theaters or for the Disneyland television series. Fess Parker appeared in a total of five episodes about Crockett. Fess Parker played another historical character, Union spy James Andrews in The Great Locomotive Chase . This was based on a incident from 1862 when Yankee spies stole a train and attempted to sabotage the rail line between Atlanta, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Walt also filmed incidents fr