Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Hey Boomers. Seems like many of our childhood icons are movin' on. The Swamp Fox was a television series produced by Walt Disney and starring Leslie Nielsen as American Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion. How could the first wave of Boomers forget. We all wanted to put on the buckskins and fight the Redcoats. The theme song ("Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, tail on his hat... nobody knows where the Swamp Fox is at...") was sung by Nielsen as well. One of the Swamp Fox's adversaries was Colonel Banastre Tarleton, played by John Sutton. Patrick Macnee played a British captain, Tim Considine played Marion's nephew Gabe Marion and Slim Pickens played Plunkett, one of the Swamp Fox's men. Disney may have hoped for a commercial success on a par with Davy Crockett, but this was not to be. The series encompassed eight episodes, running as part of the Disney anthology television series. Episodes were presented on Sundays on ABC from 6:30-7:30 p.m. and were also broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The Disney Channel reran Swamp Fox episodes in the 1980s and 1990s, while Nielsen was at the height of a second career as a white-haired comedy movie star. Be well Swamp Fox, many new battles to fight for preserving Freedom! Denny
