Buddy Levy American Legend

American Legend

Buddy Levy

Putnam, Jan 2006, $25.95

ISBN: 0399152784

For us boomers raised on the remarkable 1950's Disney productions, AMERICAN LEGEND substantiates much of the Davy Crocket TV shows, but also augments it with insight into how much more complex a person the frontier legend was, regardless of Buddy Ebson's summarizing ballad. Buddy Levy fills much of the gaps, including mildly negative commentary. For instance, there is insight into Crockett's two wives, five children and four step-children, in which the hero's itchy feet kept him on the road a lot; both his strong spouses took care of the home front with iron wills, but the hero was not home that often (regardless of offspring count). Interesting to this reviewers memory of the Disney show has Mr. Crocket going to Washington as a success story, but the biographer paints a more balanced picture of a somewhat failed politician. However, the most interesting new items (at least to me) is that Crockett wrote a bestselling autobiography in which he barnstormed the country selling it, and his dispute with his former Commander in the Creek War, President Jackson, over the abusive Indian Removal Act of 1830. This is an intriguing look at an individual who in the first half of the nineteenth century was a living legend that authenticates how accurate the Disney portrayal was; one worth reading and the other worth watching.