Davy Crockett

The Wild West arrives in Hull in 1955 in the figure of the legendary Davy Crockett , on horse-back and clad in coonskin cap and buckskins, to learn some twentieth century road sense.

Hull is indeed “a place of rare splendour” as described in this film, as a police officer playing Davy Crockett rides through the city as if just arriving fresh from the Battle of the Alamo. In this imaginative and humorous film, Humberside Police draw on the recent cinema release starring Fess Parker to get their road safety message across to the children of Hull. He certainly proves a star attraction as he plods along the streets among the classic trucks and cars of the day.

This is one of a number of road safety films made for Humberside Police by Det. Sgt Jacketts in the 1950s. Road safety was a big issue at the time, with 27,000 people injured on the roads every month in 1954, when a greatly expanded Highway Code was introduced. There were ten times as many road fatalities as today, despite only a tenth of the traffic. As well as the Walt Disney film, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (itself a spinoff from the 1955 TV show), the Bill Hayes song, ‘The Ballad Of Davy Crockett’, suitably adapted here, was a hit the same year. Apparently Crockett, the rugged frontiersman turned politician, dressed rather more gentlemanly, though perhaps not when fighting the Mexicans for land.