“WHO’s this tall, ganglin’ hombre breezing into the big city this mornin’?” the Evening Times asked its readers on April 4, 1956. “Why, if it ain’t that rootin’, tootin’, quick-shootin’ son-of-a-gun from ‘way out West …”
The hombre playacting with the Bissell brothers from Auchinairn, Wilson (eight) and Stewart (four), was none other than Fess Parker, the actor who had made his name by portraying the rugged frontiersman, Davy Crockett. As his Los Angeles Times obituary in 2010 noted, the role - on TV and in the cinema - made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps. “It was an explosion beyond anyone’s comprehension,” Parker recalled in 1994 of the first Disney TV adventure, half a century earlier.”The power of television, which was still new, was demonstrated for the first time.”
During his long career he played Daniel Boone on TV and also appeared in such films as Old Yeller.
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