The death this week of 2 actors who are fondly remembered from my childhood reminded me once again that I’m getting old. On Monday of this week came news that actor Peter Graves had passed away. While many people remember him as Jim Phelps from the 1960′s series ‘Mission Impossible‘ (and the 1988 revival of the series), and younger people remember him as Captain Clarence Oveur from the ‘Airplane‘ movies, Peter Graves will always be Jim Newton to me. From 1955 through 1960, ‘Fury’ was a Saturday morning staple for all young boys. Fury was the ‘king of the wild stallions’ who listened to and protected young Joey. Peter Graves played Jim Newton, Joey’s wise, kindly uncle. As I remember the series, the story-lines alternated between between Uncle Jim helping Joey save Fury from those dastardly mean cowboys who wanted to tame(or kill) Fury, and Fury saving Joey from some imminent disaster. Watching it today it seems dated and simplistic. But in 1955 TV was still new to most homes and westerns were a staple on TV. Saturday morning was all kids shows, and most young city boys watched Fury and wished we lived on a ranch in the West and had a kindly uncle like Jim Newton. (especially one who didn’t get mad when you did something stupid, as Joey did just about every episode).
Also in the mid 1950′s, Sunday night was the Disney show. For those early days of television, Walt Disney had some of the best production values. In 1954 Disney introduced us to Davy Crockett, ‘King of the Wild Frontier’. Crockett was a real historical character that few people had heard of or remembered. I seem to remember that the original was a three episode(per IMDB: ‘Davy Crockett; Indian Fighter’, ‘Davy Crockett Goes to Congress’ and ‘Davy Crockett at the Alamo’) story that followed Davy on his way to the Alamo. Disney chose a tall lanky actor called Fess Parker to play Davy. That show set off a storm of Davy Crockett mania. Before you new it many kids were wearing (fake) coonskin hats. I am proud to say that I never owned one, or even desired to have one. Disney then re-cut the TV shows and released them as a movie. Despite the fact that Crockett died at the Alamo (in fact and on the show), he was too popular to ignore, so Disney made 4 more TV movies with Davy Crockett including the popular ‘Davy Crockett and the River Pirates’. Parker also played the (mostly absent) father in the classic Disney movie ‘Old Yeller‘.
I don’t remember it in color, but then when I was a kid we only had a black and white TV. Parker went on to star in a 1 season TV show ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’ based on the Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart film of the same name. He then put the coonskin cap back on and starred in the ‘Daniel Boone’ TV series that ran for 6 years . After the Boone series ended, Parker left acting and started the Fess Parker Winery in the Santa Ynez region of California. His wines are well respected and like the many wineries featured in the movie ‘Sideways’, specializes in Pinot Noir. As a little trivia note for those who saw the movie ‘Sideways’, the famous spit-bucket scene that took place at a winery called ‘Frass Canyon’ was actually filmed at the Fess Parker winery. Well, I guess you could say I grew up with Fess Parker, we both went from Davy Crockett to Pinot Noir.
