Davy Crockett and the River Pirates ** (1956, Fess Parker, Buddy Ebsen, Jeff York) – Classic Movie Review 6486

Director Norman Foster’s 1956 cinema feature is the second, less inspiring, of the two Walt Disney films stitched together from hour-long episodes of Fess Parker’s TV series of wholesome children’s outdoor Western adventures.

This time it is two episodes of Disney’s TV show spliced together, and the film runs only 81 minutes. The first yarn is Davy Crockett’s riverboat race with boastful Mike Fink (Jeff York) and the second Crockett’s and Fink’s clash with Indians, who turn out to be river pirates .

As before, in Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (1955), it is much enlivened by the jolly, eager-beaver performances from Parker as the real-life early 19th-century Indian scout frontiersman Crockett and Buddy Ebsen as his ever-faithful buddy George Russel. Hugely popular in America and Britain in the mid-Fifties, the films made a star of Parker, or at least of his coonskin cap.

Also in the cast are Kenneth Tobey, Clem Bevans, Walter Catlett, Douglass Dumbrille, Irvin Ashkenazy, Mort Mills, Paul Newlan, Frank Richards and Hank Worden.

It is written by Tom Blackburn, shot by Bert Glennon, produced by Bill Walsh and scored by George Bruns.

Parker and York went to appear in Disney’s Old Yeller (1957) and in the TV series Daniel Boone in 1966.

Fess Parker (1924–2010).

Buddy Ebsen (1908–2003).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6486

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com