Westward Ho, the Wagons! *** (1956, Fess Parker, Kathleen Crowley, Jeff York) – Classic Movie Review 7155

Director William Beaudine’s 1956 Westward Ho, the Wagons! is a Walt Disney Wild West adventure for family consumption that lacks both the kind of vim and grit we expect from Westerns but it is entirely pleasant and acceptable.

Based on the novel by Mary Jane Carr, Westward Ho, the Wagons! tells the predictable adventures of a trailblazing wagon convoy, led by Doc Grayson (Fess Parker), as it makes inroads into the Native American homeland uncharted territories of America.

All the expected Wild West adventure scenarios are given a good workout, and in a nice way, in this sweet, simple, straightforward, quintessentially Fifties entertainment, and there are enough thrills ‘n spills, even if you may perhaps have seen it done better and with more thrills many times before.

Fess Parker is a bit of a square-jawed, one-dimensional hero as the wagon-train scout but he is likeable and appealing, giving an attractive, more than adequate performance. Also in the cast are Kathleen Crowley, Jeff York, David Stollery, Sebastian Cabot, George Reeves, Juliette Compton, Iron Eyes Cody and Barbara Woodell.

Thomas W Blackburn adapts his screenplay from Mary Jane Carr’s book Children of the Covered Wagon, the film’s working title.

Fess Parker (1924–2010) is fondly remembered as Davy Crockett in Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, as well as for Old Yeller. Walt Disney cast him as Davy Crockett after seeing him in a scene he liked in Them! (1954).

Parker was named a Disney Legend in 1991. That is right and proper. But Disney refused to allow him to allow him out of his contract to appear in the classic The Searchers (1956) and in the Sixties refused to allow him to make his own TV series of Davy Crockett, so he went ahead and made another frontier hero show instead, Daniel Boone (1964–1970), which was a hit, then retired and lived long and prospered through real estate and hotel investment.

In France they changed his name from Fess Parker into Fier Parker as fesse means buttocks and fier means proud in French!

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7155

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