The Wild Frontier

And so I took my woolen wrappers, and a pair of mockasins, and tied up some dry clothes, and a pair of shoes and stockings ... I had my big butcher in my belt, and I had a pair of dressed buckskin breeches on . . . We shouldered our guns, blankets, and provisions, and trudged merrily on.

--The Autobiography of Davy Crockett

Ever since February U.S. youngsters have swooped down on U.S. stores like marauding Indians, snapping up everything in sight that faintly resembles what Davy Crockett wore. To U.S. retailers, there has been no kiddie craze to match it since Hopalong Cassidy clattered into the corral five years ago. Sales of Davy Crockett coonskin caps, blue jeans, cap pistols, lunch boxes and dozens of other items, have already reached an estimated $100 million. Last week the shooting was just starting for the Davy Crockett cash. Walt Disney, starting the fad with his TV series (TIME, Nov. 8), usually wrings every last penny from his enterprises, but he found that he might be unable to tie up royalties on all Crockett products.

Hitching up his buckskins, and with his big butcher in his belt, Disney charged into Baltimore's Federal Court and brought suit against Davy Crockett Enterprises, run by an oldtime Baltimore garment maker named Morey Schwartz. Disney charged that Schwartz was illegally licensing clothing manufacturers to use the name Davy Crockett, claiming a trademark, and was telling firms, including the more than 50 so far licensed by Disney, that he might prosecute them for using the name without his permission.

Citrus to Whisky. Disney might have a tough time proving his case. For one thing, the U.S. Patent Office has never received an application from Disney to use the name as a trademark. According to the patent office, Schwartz's Davy Crockett Enterprises is the owner of a valid clothing trademark label, "Davy Crockett, Frontiersman." Other companies, some dating back as far as 1849, have used the name Davy Crockett on everything from citrus fruit to chewing tobacco and whisky, and most of them have since either gone out of business or allowed the name to lapse. Schwartz first registered the trademark in 1946 in Texas, and in 1947 at the U.S. Patent Office, and then began putting out clothing under the Davy Crockett label. Though Disney insisted that Schwartz had let the trademark lapse in 1950, Schwartz said no. He and his partner, Henry Kay of Baltimore, split up, but, Schwartz says, Kay kept right on making Crockett clothing under an agreement with Schwartz. Last month, with the current boom well under way, Schwartz bought out Kay and began licensing manufacturers to use his Davy Crockett label, usually at 5% of their net sales.

For U.S. retailers the battle can mean plenty of trouble, whoever wins. Last week retail associations were advising their members to get written guarantees from suppliers absolving them from responsibility in any future lawsuits.

Wolf Roundup. But for most retailers the legal problems were small compared to the pleasurable problem of keeping up with demand. Coonskin hats, the biggest seller next to anachronistic Davy Crockett T shirts, have touched off the biggest run on raccoons since the giddy '205; coon tails once selling for 25-c- a Ib. are now nearly $5 a Ib. Seattle's Arctic Fur Co., which has shrewdly been buying wolf pelts for years, is producing 5,000 ersatz coonskin hats daily. In some stores Davy Crockett accounts for 10% of all children's wear.

"Your Struggles Are Over." Stores in Los Angeles and Dallas have set up Crockett clubs, marked off special Davy Crockett sections where youngsters can find everything from a Davy Crockett peace pipe (98-c-) to a complete Davy Crockett outfit with rifle, powder horn, cap, etc. ($7.98); a Davy Crockett guitar costs $4.98 extra. Denver's May Co. advertises a Davy Crockett bath towel, with this pitch to mothers: "Your bathtime struggles are over . . . They'll run to use Davy Crockett towels." Davy Crock-etteer Fess Parker, who stars in Disney's TV series, has already endorsed and helped sell 450,000 copies of sheet music of The Ballad of Davy Crockett. Advance orders for The Picture Story of Davy Crockett, a 25-c- Wonder Playbook, already total 1,000,000.

U.S. retailers see no reason why the Davy Crockett boom should not keep growing at least until Christmas. Intoned a solemn Detroit buyer: "Why, Davy Crockett is bigger even than Mickey Mouse."

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