The King of the Wild Frontier's immortal sidekick would have been 105 today. The photo at left, according to Wikipedia, shows Buddy Ebsen sometime around 1936.
Ebsen was a candidate to play Davy Crockett in Walt Disney's TV series, but ended up playing Georgie Russel instead. It's a great part, not least because screenwriter Tom Blackburn turned Georgie into Davy's unofficial publicist as a way of showing how frontier legends got created.
My favorite Ebsen story is one that Fess Parker told in an interview for the Archive of American Television. The two were on tour in Texas during the height of the 1955 Crockett craze when they were abruptly whisked away from an appearance and told they were going to address the Texas Legislature. Not knowing quite what to say or do, Parker ended up singing "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" a cappella. When he got to the chorus, he recalled, "Buddy joined in. And if we weren't friends before, we were friends forever after that."
Ebsen was a candidate to play Davy Crockett in Walt Disney's TV series, but ended up playing Georgie Russel instead. It's a great part, not least because screenwriter Tom Blackburn turned Georgie into Davy's unofficial publicist as a way of showing how frontier legends got created.
My favorite Ebsen story is one that Fess Parker told in an interview for the Archive of American Television. The two were on tour in Texas during the height of the 1955 Crockett craze when they were abruptly whisked away from an appearance and told they were going to address the Texas Legislature. Not knowing quite what to say or do, Parker ended up singing "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" a cappella. When he got to the chorus, he recalled, "Buddy joined in. And if we weren't friends before, we were friends forever after that."
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