Word: fessing
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...revolves sluggishly around the efforts of a boy (James MacArthur) to resist being taken back to his white parents after having grown up as the adopted son of a Delaware Indian chief. On hand to make sure the boy minds his rail-splitting is a right friendly Army scout (Fess Parker). Actor MacArthur, who is built like a fireplug and is not much more expressive, sets out to make a mess of Fess. He swings at him with a rifle butt, wrestles with him in the muddy Ohio River. But sure 'nuff, he ends up back at the ranch...
Best of the off-lot singers, but still sounding as if he'd rather grip a bar of soap than a microphone: FESS (Davy Crockett) PARKER, who drawls some uncowmanlike mush ("Ah got me a purty woman's love") in Wringle Wrangle (Disneyland), manages to keep face with the kiddies by cracking a whip and hollering every few bars...
...time goes (ever so slowly) by, the rest of the cast seem to relax and act natural-like too. The hero (Fess Parker) gulps and cuts in on the heroine (Kathleen Crowley) at the hoedown. The braves at the war dance start truckin' on down to that red-hot ethnic music. And here they come! "Get 'em movin'," Hero Parker hollers-"Ah'll cover the r'ar!" The race to the pass begins...
...making the film, Disney not only stuck fairly close to the facts but was even courageous enough to dispense with a love story. About the only women in sight are relegated to such menial jobs as waiting on table. Sturdy Fess (Davy Crockett) Parker trades in his coonskin cap for a felt hat as the federal spy; Jeffrey Hunter is the picture of keen-eyed implacability as the pursuing conductor; and a large group of native Georgians adequately re-create their Civil War ancestors. Since the raid involved a minimum of hand-to-hand fighting, Disney partially supplied the lack...
...anticlimax. Technicolor and the wide screen combine to make this classic tale of derring-do bigger and better than ever. The episodic story has been shortened by 40 minutes but not changed: Davy still fights the Creek War, gets elected to Congress, dies gloriously in the Alamo. Newcomer Fess Parker plays the famed frontiersman with just the right blend of John Wayne and Herb Shriner. And Writer Tom Blackburn has invented a Crockett filled with engaging crotchets: when first encountered, Davy is deep in the piney woods taking time off from Indian-fighting to try to "grin" a bear into...