Truth, Lies, Parson Weems, and Walt Disney

It is a fun, though misleading byproduct of the way history is written that legends and myths appear. Did Lady Godiva ride naked on horseback through the streets of Coventry? Was the impetus for Isaac Newton’s formulation of the laws of gravity an apple falling on his head? Did Betsy Ross truly sew the first American flag? 

The following is a well-known excerpt from the circa 1800 story of George Washington (1732–1799) by Parson Mason Locke Weems (pictured above):

“George,” said his father, “do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden?” This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself: and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all- conquering truth, he bravely cried out, “ I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.”—”Run to my arms, you dearest boy,” cried his father in transports, “run to my arms; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son is more worth than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold.”

Did Washington chop down his father’s cherry tree? Probably not, but it is a great story that lends some nice definition of character to the lad who would grow up to become the father of our country.

Like George Washington, Francis Marion (above, c. 1732–1795) was a patriot who was also the subject of a Parson Weems history. Weems writes that as a child, Marion was “puny” and “not larger than a New England lobster.” He also writes that after a shipwreck brought on by a “thorn-back whale,” young Marion was bobbing around in the ocean until discovered by a friendly ship whose captain nursed him back to health “by means of chocolate and turtle broth.”

Later, Marion’s battles with the British in the American Revolution would earn him a place in the first tier of American fighting legends. Given the nickname “The Swamp Fox” by British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, Marion and his men fought more in a skirmishing, guerrilla manner than in the traditional battlefield style. Weems writes of a British officer who became fed up with Marion’s non-traditional tactics:

The next morning colonel Watson sent a flag over to Marion, whom he charged with carrying on war in a manner entirely different from all civilized nations. “Why sir,” said he to Marion, “you must certainly command a horde of savages, who delight in nothing but murder. I can’t cross a swamp or a bridge, but I am waylaid and shot at as if I were a mad dog. Even my sentries are fired at and killed on their posts. Why, my God, sir! This is not the way that Christians ought to fight!”

One of the next incarnations of American folksiness is Davy Crockett (above,1786–1836), whose bravery, frontier lifestyle, and martyrdom at the Alamo certainly overshadow his time as a congressman from Tennessee. Crockett’s almost mythic status in his own lifetime made him the subject of ballads and stories that perpetuated his myth into the twentieth century. Even greater legend-making vehicles in the forms of cinema and television further propelled Crockett into American legend.

Television was in its early years when Walt Disney and his crew determined that such American backwoods heroes were great subject matter for film and television. In her essay “The Recycled Hero: Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett,” Margaret J. King attests that the Disney folks had no inkling of the mighty coonskin-cap-wearing specter they were raising:

The modern Crockett craze, appearing in early 1955, is now considered to be one of the great popular culture events of that decade. It was catapulted into existence by two of America’s most formidable media forces—Walt Disney and television—and ignited by the catalyst of a new consumer audience: the baby boom generation. . . . Walt Disney himself was unaware of and completely at a loss to explain the mechanisms involved in the $300 million industry that grew up around the symbol of Davy Crockett. After gaining momentum through the winter and spring of 1955, it died as quickly and unexpectedly as it had begun, not only leaving Crockett as an oversized figure in popular history, but also creating a sizeable academic controversy about Crockett’s true nature and his meaning for American history, and resulting in a general public inability, even now, to think of Davy Crockett without simultaneously calling up the Disney name.

Capitalizing on its successes with the Davy Crockett features (1954–55) starring the late Fess Parker, Disney (above) took a lesson from Parson Weems and returned to the American Revolution to stir up the spirit of the Swamp Fox. From 1959 to 1961, decades before he ever made Lieutenant Frank Drebin a living legend on Police Squad, Leslie Nielson portrayed Francis Marion as The Swamp Fox in much the same spirit as Parker had portrayed Davy Crockett.

More recently, The Patriot (2000), featuring Mel Gibson in the title role, also riffs on the exploits of a Marion-like character, as partisan guerillas fighting from the swamps in colonial America momentarily appear, torment the British, and then disappear again into the swamps.

 

Referenced:
Mason Locke Weems, A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1918). Found on http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/gw/weems.html

Mason Locke Weems, The Life of General Francis Marion (1809). Found on http://kciway3.net/proctor/revwar/swampfox.html

Margaret J. King, “The Recycled Hero: Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett” in Davy Crockett: The Man, The Legend, The Legacy, 1786–1986, ed. Michael A. Lofaro (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985).