Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956)

Director:

Norman Foster

Writers:

Thomas W. Blackburn (writer) and
Norman Foster (writer)

Release Date:

18 July 1956 (USA)

Genre:

Family | Adventure | Comedy | Drama | Western

Tagline:

EXCITING NEW ADVENTURES...In The Living Legends Of A Turbulent River Era.

Plot:

Davy Crockett and his sidekick Georgie compete against boastful Mike Fink ("King of the River") in a boat race to New Orleans...

Plot Keywords:

Native American | New Orleans Louisiana | Hiding Under Table | River Pirates | Sharpshooter

Cast

Fess Parker	...	Davy Crockett (archive footage)
Buddy Ebsen	...	George Russel (archive footage)
Jeff York	...	Mike Fink (archive footage)
Kenneth Tobey	...	Jocko (archive footage)
Clem Bevans	...	Cap'n Cobb (archive footage)
Irvin Ashkenazy	...	Moose (archive footage)
Mort Mills	...	Sam Mason (archive footage)
Paul Newlan	...	Big Harpe (archive footage)
Frank Richards	...	Little Harpe (archive footage)
Troy Melton	...	(archive footage)
Hank Worden	...	Fiddler (archive footage)
Dick Crockett	...	(archive footage)
Walter Catlett	...	Col. Plug (archive footage)

Runtime:

81 min | Argentina:85 min | Spain:85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

Australia:G | Iceland:12 | Argentina:Atp | Chile:TE | Finland:K-8 | Spain:T | USA:G (1978) | UK:U | West Germany:6 | Sweden:Btl

Filming Locations:

Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, USA

Company:

Walt Disney Productions

Goofs:

Plot holes: The move is set in 1810. Davy asks Georgie to charge up Old Betsy in the saloon. Davy got his rifle, Old Betsy, in the 1820's.

Quotes:

Mike Fink: I can out-run, out-jump, out-sing, out-swim, out-dance, out-shoot, out-eat, out-drink...
Davy Crockett: Out-talk?
Mike Fink: Out-talk, out-cuss, out-fight anybody in the whole Mississippi and Ohio Rivers put together!

Movie Connections:

Edited from "Disneyland: Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (#2.13)" (1955)

Soundtrack:

King Of The River

Pirates of the Twain

Wow.

Sometimes a film is powerful because it WAS powerful.

This is an amazingly dumb movie but perhaps no dumber in extremes than today's. The reason it might be on your radar is because of how influential it was.

It was the first movie with multimedia tie-ins. You could buy Davey Crockett hats and weapons. And lunchboxes — stuff like that. That wasn't all that extraordinary then. But this was also the first movie that was also a theme park ride. So it is the beginning of a food chain that leads us to the Depp pirate projects. That Davey Crockett ride lasted 40 years! (Incidentally, students of film will see blocking similarities between Depp's boat ride in the bayou and Parker's.)

Its also one of the movies most obviously designed for boys. Here you have guys pretending to be Indians and dying by falling down. You have water play. You have racing. You have tricksters.

And most of all, you have a juvenile version of that John Ford/ John Wayne meme: real men achieve honor through recreational fighting.

Seeing it again fifty years later is very strange. Young people watch movies more closely than adults I think. I remembered the smallest details, like the lettering on barrels, which incidentally was inspired by the Our Gang/Little Rascals cosmology that things become props by labelling them.

There are no "girls;" this is strictly boy's play. The only time girlie stuff appears is when the pirates try to attract Mike Fink's crew to an ambush. They do this by dressing up as floozies, which of course he cannot resist.

And its also an influential film in melding a certain collection of values to a certain collection of cultural carriers.

The values are honesty, plainspokenness, insight outside of book-larnin', loyalty (at least among men). The cultural carriers today are what's been labelled as "country" music (and its advertising affiliate, NASCAR).

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.