Davy Crockett Goes to Congress Film Review

This was part of a series of films about Davy Crocket, King of the Wild Frontier, produced by Disney back in the 1950s. It is only an hour long but covers a few years in his life. Nicely shot in glorious color and directed by Norman Foster, a fairly solid B director with a number of the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films on his resume; now stuck in the land of TV.

Crocket (Fess Parker) and his sidekick Barnaby Jones aka Buddy Ebsen go west looking for new land to settle on and to bring Crocket's family out to later. While he is gone, his wife Polly dies - but the film skips over the fact that he married again in the same year. In his new land he has a shooting match and fisticuffs with the wonderful tough guy Mike Mazurki. For all the legends that surround him, he spent much of his life in politics. First in the Tennessee Legislature and then the US Congress. When he lost his seat, he decided to move to Texas and fight for their independence. Leading of course to the Alamo. The great thing about Crockett was how woke he was. He fought for the small farms, against the wealthy, against the land grabbers and opposed President Jackson on the Indian Removal Act better known now as the Trail of Tears - now likely taught in Florida as the Indian Volunteer to Move Act - 60,000 Indians were removed from the east of the Mississippi to the west of it. In the movie he stops it from passing but not in real life. Damn, Walt Disney for propagandizing children. Maybe I am a bleeding heart liberal because of Walt!