You have questions. I have some answers, including several trips in the Wayback Machine.
I have been trying to find out about this TV series that ran in the ’50s or early ’60s. I think it was called “The Swamp Fox,” and starred Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone. I loved the stories when I was a kid. Tell me if you know anything.
When Walt Disney began making his television series in 1954, it was a mix of animation, documentaries, drama and other elements. The earliest big success was a series of stories about frontiersman Davy Crockett (Fess Parker, who would later play Daniel Boone on TV). Hoping to match that, Disney over the next several years tried out other horseback heroes. “Zorro,” with Guy Williams in the title role, was a stand-alone TV series for two seasons and then aired on the Disney show. Within the Disney series were characters such as Elfego Baca (Robert Loggia), Texas John Slaughter (Tom Tryon, who would become a successful novelist) and Francis Marion, a Revolutionary War hero known as the Swamp Fox. Leslie Nielsen, now remembered largely for his comedic work, played Marion. Only a handful of “Swamp Fox” episodes were made, although they and these other series remain vivid for those of us of a certain age; I am now humming themes to all the shows I just mentioned!
There was a TV show around October 1980 or 1981 called “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” starring Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane. Dick Butkus was also in it. Will they show it again or is it available on DVD?
The loose adaptation of Washington Irving’s story originally aired on NBC on Halloween 1980. It indeed starred Goldblum, with Butkus as Brom Bones. I can’t say if it will air on TV again, but you can find it on YouTube in so-so shape.
I have not found an authorized DVD and don’t recommend bootlegs; it was released on VHS, if you still use that format, and is for sale that way on Amazon.
