Top rifle was used in Davy Crockett and bottom gun is from the Boone series. The rifle Fess used in the Daniel Boone series was for many years owned by Walter O'Connor.
Copy by Robert Weil and photo from early CLA Show.
Showing posts with label Davy Crockett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Davy Crockett. Show all posts
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Thursday, April 17, 2008
How I Acquired the Fess Parker Davy Crockett Rifle
Having been a member of the motion picture industry for over 35 years, specializing in researching and painting historical conceptual scenes, I was well aware of the many firearm treasures housed at Stembridge gun rentals. The Stembridge arms collection was started around 1916 by Cecil B. DeMille and James Stembridge to supply the motion picture industry with period and modern firearms.
Stembridge sold the bulk of its inventory to the Peterson Museum. The museum, in turn decided to let go of 200 items that it couldn’t identify to an individual star or film. On January 16 and 17 of 2000 the world had the opportunity to bid on a potential relic from Hollywood’s Golden Era. Among the items auctioned were several original Kentucky rifles. One only had to have the knowledge of the types of period films they would have been used in, to start researching. With a little luck, a photo existed of a well known actor holding one of the rifles. Such was the case with Auction Item 607.
Item 607 was an original circa 1820-30 Kentucky flintlock rifle, in 40 caliber, stocked in curly maple in the Reading style. It had the original lock and was mounted in brass and German silver.
I recognized it immediately as the same one Fess Parker used in Walt Disney’s “Davy Crokett.”
I hoped no one else would be as astute. Over 500 people competed, but when the bidding stopped, the rifle was mine.
Joseph Musso
This article originally appeared in Flintlock, a publication of the CLA.
Stembridge sold the bulk of its inventory to the Peterson Museum. The museum, in turn decided to let go of 200 items that it couldn’t identify to an individual star or film. On January 16 and 17 of 2000 the world had the opportunity to bid on a potential relic from Hollywood’s Golden Era. Among the items auctioned were several original Kentucky rifles. One only had to have the knowledge of the types of period films they would have been used in, to start researching. With a little luck, a photo existed of a well known actor holding one of the rifles. Such was the case with Auction Item 607.
Item 607 was an original circa 1820-30 Kentucky flintlock rifle, in 40 caliber, stocked in curly maple in the Reading style. It had the original lock and was mounted in brass and German silver.
I recognized it immediately as the same one Fess Parker used in Walt Disney’s “Davy Crokett.”
I hoped no one else would be as astute. Over 500 people competed, but when the bidding stopped, the rifle was mine.
Joseph Musso
This article originally appeared in Flintlock, a publication of the CLA.
“Lookie here!”
Most of you are probably familiar with the book I published in 1980, Contemporary Makers of Muzzle-Loading Firearms. In the preface I mentioned my interest in flintlocks began while watching the original 1955 t.v. version of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
It was the shooting match that did it. The scene where Fess Parker out-shoots Big-Foot Mason by putting two balls in the same hole. Man, what a gun! That rifle with its click-ka-boom, the Disney “fantasy sound” of a flintlock, followed by the words, “Lookie here!.”
Fast forward to 2000. Low and behold, a good California friend who collects, among other things, frontier movie memorabilia, uncovers THE rifle at auction. I mean THE flintlock that Davey used to out-shoot Big-Foot – that gun!
The same gun that helped to ruin my concentration in school and left me roaming the country for more flintlocks.
Well, who would have thought this piece would ever surface? I mean where does all this stuff go? A garage in Buffalo maybe?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been waiting forty-five years for the chance to get a good, long, STILL look at this one.
Robert Weil
This article originally appeared in Flintlock, a publication of the CLA.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Davy Crockett
THE flintlock rifle that started it all for Robert Weil. This is the actual rifle that Fess Parker used to out shoot Big Foot Mason in Walt Disney's "Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier"Antique Reading rifle, Collection of Joseph Musso.
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