As a kid, I seldom saw Fess Parker in the two roles he is most identified with, Davy Crockett (in seven episodes of what was then called Disneyland, and later The Wonderful World of Disney; a skein that some argue constituted TV’s first mini-series) and subsequent ongoing series Daniel Boone. At the time, though, the shows were huge, and Davy Crockett became one of TV’s earliest and biggest mass fads.
For me, though, Fess Parker was up to now one of the sole actors (other than neophyte thespian Leonard Nimoy, who has but a very brief appearance and who remains almost unrecognizable) left from my all-time favorite monster movie, Them!
Parker briefly appeared as a pilot locked up in a loony bin after claiming he’d seen giant ants. It’s a good bit, though, as he shares it with both the film’s leads, James Arness and Joan Weldon. It’s only rivaled by the later scene where Arness and James Whitmore interrogate a comical drunk, who was played by the same old geezer who was the first guy eaten by the Blob. These comic vignettes always reminded me of the Kolchak series, and how that show alternated spooky monster acting with often hilarious scenes of Kolchak interviewing kooky witnesses.
A memorable climax to the scene has Arness telling Parker’s doctor, who thinks the whole thing is a publicity stunt and is about to release the patient, that the government would prefer he be kept under wraps. “We’ll let you know when he’s ‘well’ again,” Arness ominously informs him. I always hoped that they didn’t forget once the whole ant business was concluded.
Parker might have had but a short appearance in Them!, but he made the most of it, and in a way, it made the most of him. The story has it that Walt Disney was considering casting James Arness to play Crockett, and thus screening the film, which Arness starred in. However, he was so taken by Parker in his sole scene that the actor was called in for an audition and won the part. Thus fame and fortune. Of course, Arness went on to do OK, too.
The other men associated with Them! are all gone now–Arness, James Whitmore (who passed just last year), Edmund Gwenn, William Schallert.* The ladies have fared better. Female lead Joan Weldon is still around, as is Sandy Descher, the little girl found wandering in the desert in the film’s opening. Even she is 65 years old now, though.
[*Boy, was I off! Arness and Schallert, despite being nearly 90, were both still extant as of the time this was written. Thanks for the corrections, everybody.]Them! might have seen Parker on to bigger and better things, but even if it hadn’t, some of us would have always remembered him for this scene alone. Thus is the strange, inexplicable alchemy of cinema. Sometimes, one small appearance can make you immortal.
Mr. Parker was 86.
