A Game Built on the Frontier Craze
Walt Disney’s Official Davy Crockett Frontierland Game was published by Parker Brothers under a 1955 copyright, arriving at the exact moment two Disney enterprises converged: the opening of Disneyland’s Frontierland and the runaway success of Disney’s Davy Crockett television serial. The game knits the two together directly, carrying the Frontierland name while leaning on the character who had just made frontier America the most popular subject in the country. Its artwork drew on the live-action look of the Disney productions, with character illustrations based on the films – among them Davy Crockett as played by Fess Parker – alongside frontier imagery that included an illustration of the Alamo and a crossed-long-rifle graphic. The result was a tabletop product that placed a brand-new Disneyland land and a brand-new screen hero into the same box.
Disney’s Davy Crockett on Television
The phenomenon the game traded on began on the small screen. Walt Disney produced weekly one-hour programs for ABC as part of the deal that financed Disneyland, and his company developed three episodes built around the historical frontiersman: “Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter,” “Davy Crockett Goes to Congress,” and “Davy Crockett at the Alamo,” broadcast on the Disneyland series between December 1954 and February 1955. Fess Parker starred as Crockett, with Buddy Ebsen as his companion George Russell. The episodes were shot on color film, and their popularity was immediate and enormous; by the end of the run, Fess Parker had become a household name and Davy Crockett one of the best-known frontiersmen in American memory. The first three episodes were later edited together as the 1955 theatrical feature Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
Threaded through the serial was its theme song, “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” written by Thomas W. Blackburn with music by George Bruns. The tune became a hit in its own right, recorded by multiple artists in 1955 and carried along by the same wave of enthusiasm that swept the broadcasts. For a sense of how Disney’s version reshaped the real historical figure into a screen legend, see the magazine’s look at Disney’s natural man, Davy Crockett.
Frontierland and the Merchandise Explosion
The land the game is named for opened with the park itself. Frontierland was among the original lands dedicated on Disneyland’s opening day, July 17, 1955, where Walt Disney’s dedication celebrated “the story of our country’s past” and the “romance and drama of frontier America.” Its riverways and pioneer theming gave the Crockett craze a physical home inside the park, a connection later carried by attractions such as the Mark Twain Riverboat, with its long Frontierland history.
Around all of this came a flood of tie-in products. Crockett merchandise was manufactured en masse, the most iconic item being the imitation coonskin cap, and by the end of 1955 Americans had purchased over $300 million worth of Davy Crockett goods, from caps to bubble-gum cards. Board games were a natural part of that surge, and Parker Brothers was far from the only publisher to chase the theme. The Frontierland Game sits within a small cluster of frontier-and-Disney titles worth seeing together: the Disneyland Electric Tours with Davy Crockett, the Davy Crockett Adventures set in the Creek Indian Territory, the closely related Walt Disney’s Official Frontierland Game, and the kindred Disney frontier-television title Walt Disney’s Swamp Fox. Together they map how thoroughly a single TV serial reached from the broadcast screen onto the family game table.
