Walt Disney only agreed to do his first television show for ABC as a means to advertising and raising money for the theme park he was building in California. Disneyland was too itself be divided into four themed "lands", Frontier Land, Tomorrow Land, Adventure Land, and Fantasy Land, and likewise the Disneyland TV show was to be divided into these four lands, each week featuring a story the corresponded to one of them. Early on the Disney people realized they didn't have a lot of existing product that corresponded with there Frontier Land theme, so they set about making more. Walt wanted to capitalize on existing American folk heroes and Davy Crocket was an obvious choice. So a script was written, the story cast, and a crew sent out to the American south east to film it. What resulted was an astoundingly popular song 'The Balled of Day Crocket', three very popular episodes for Walt's TV program, and a bona fide pop culture phenomenon. So popular in fact was Disney's Crocket that the company had the TV episodes reedited and released as a theatrical film, additionally too prequel episodes of Crocket's story were later made for television, and those were also re-edited and released in theaters. It really worked out that while these shows were originally filmed for television Walt had them all shot in color, which doubtless helped add value for fans who paid to see in theaters what they had already seen for free on TV.
Disney's Davy Crockett is based more on the legend then the real man, and made for a short time the largely unknown actor Fess Parker into a real star, at least to the younger set. Today we don't so much think of Davy when we think of Crockett as much as we think of Parker in that role. The movie is kinder to Indians then one might expect, and Crockett while lionized, is still shown as a flawed, not particularly bright person, so there is at least some nuance in this larger then life adventure story. The movie is very much an artifact of its time, but even today still quite likable. You will recognize the unmistakable voice Hans Conried, the gambler Thimbelrig who dies with Crockett at the Alamo, as he was the voice of Captain Hook in the 1953 Disney movie Peter Pan. ***
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