Fess Elisha Parker Jr. (born August 16, 1924) is an American film and television actor best known for his 1950s portrayals of Davy Crockett for Walt Disney, as well as a wine maker and resort owner-operator.
Parker was born in Fort Worth, Texas. Parker is best known for his role playing frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone as well as starting a fad of wearing coonskin caps. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps at the end of World War II. He enlisted to become a pilot but was rejected as an aviator for being too tall (six feet, five inches).
After being discharged, he was stabbed in the neck by a drunken driver during a post-collision argument. Parker required many months of rehabilitation, but he was unable afterwards to participate in collegiate sports as much as he wanted.
At the University of Texas he was initiated into the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity in 1948. Parker graduated from the University in 1950 with a history degree and moved to California, where he studied drama at...
Created by dipity on Feb 7, 2008
Last updated: 03/06/10 at 04:36 PM
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Hell Is for Heroes is a film released by Paramount Pictures in 1962. Directed by Don Siegel, it is a war film set during the Second World War in 1944. Told through a squad of American soldiers, the film focuses on the breach of the Siegfried Line.This gritty 1962 World War II drama, directed by Don Siegel and filmed in black-and-white, brought a stark realism and anti-war sentiment that had rarely been seen in WWII films up to that time. The screenplay by Robert Pirosh and Richard Carr has a basic premise: a platoon of American GI’s must hold off an entire German company for approximately 48 hours along the Siegfried Line in the Fall of 1944 until reinforcements reach them. They will pool together every bit of knowledge and experience each man has to at least survive until help arrives.The film begins when the squad leader, Sergeant Larkin (Harry Guardino), and the remainder of his men are getting ready to take a long deserved R&R after being on the front-line for several weeks...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056062
Alias Jesse James (1959) is a Bob Hope western comedy movie that featured a number of movie and television frontiersmen (James Garner as Bret Maverick, Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers, Hugh O'Brien as Wyatt Earp, James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, etc.) in their most readily recognizable outfits for brief cameo appearances. Many of these cameos are seldom seen today due to myriad legal problems with the rights, but Hope's clout at the time was so great that he managed to gather a dazzling array of screen cowboys for the original theatrical release. The outlaw T.J. 'Jesse' James (Wendell Corey) tries to kill insurance agent Milford Farnsworth (Bob Hope) who has been mistaken for him in order to collect on a big policy. ...,
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier is a 1955 live-action Walt Disney adventure film starring Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. This film is an edited compilation of the first three stories featuring the Davy Crockett from the Disney television series, originally broadcast in the winter of 1954 and 1955.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047977
Them! is a 1954 science fiction film about humanity's battle with a nest of giant mutant ants. One of the first of the "nuclear monster" movies, Them! was the biggest moneymaker for Warner Bros. Pictures in the year of its release. It starred James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon and James Arness.The film was #72 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.The film begins with Peterson (Whitmore) investigating a string of mysterious attacks and killings in the New Mexico desert. The death of a vacationing FBI agent and most of his family (except for a hysterical little girl) brings in Graham (Arness), and the discovery of a strange set of tracks attracts the attention of the Medfords (Gwenn and Weldon), a father/daughter team of entomologists from Washington D.C., who theorize and then prove that the culprits are a nest of ants, mutated to giant size by nearby atomic testing.The authorities attack the nest with poison and kill the inhabitants, but not before two young queens hatch and...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047573
Island in The Sky is a 1953 film released through Warner Brothers. The film starred and was co-produced by John Wayne, directed by William A. Wellman and written by Ernest K. Gann who also wrote the novel on which the film was based.
The film follows a pilot and crew of a World War II-era C-47 Skytrain (the military version of the DC-3) who try to survive after a forced emergency landing in the uncharted wildlands near the Quebec-Labrador border. The pilot, Dooley, is a former airline pilot who like many others was pressed into duty hauling war supplies across the northern route to England. Icy weather forces the plane to land, and with the difficulties of navigating far from settled country, they can provide only an approximate position to rescuers. After finding a frozen lake for a landing field Dooley must keep his men alive in deadly conditions of extreme winter cold while waiting for rescue. Fellow airmen (Lloyd Nolan, James Arness, Andy Devine, Paul Fix) are determined to find...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045919
Fess Parker was born
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