Parker puts his cards on the table

Wines & Vines, May, 2004 by Anne Louise Bannon

Imagine a game of stud poker. The other players have folded, except for the man across from you. He's Fess Parker. You probably grew up with him on your TV set, either as Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone. In real life, he's a great guy, with genuine, folksy charm and courtly manners.

He's got a pair of eights showing and all of a sudden, he starts betting as though his hole card is a third eight, which will beat the pair of aces you've got showing. Assuming you don't have the other two eights (making it impossible for him to have three of a kind), or a third ace yourself, do you want to bet that he's bluffing?

While the odds are even that Parker is bluffing, you're only going to lose money betting on that. Why? Because while Parker is, indeed, charming and welcoming, he's also prone to playing his cards extremely close to his chest.

In short, he's an exceptionally astute businessman, and at an age when most people have been retired for a number of years, Parker's still actively overseeing his two hotels, his ranch, a third property currently being developed, and the Santa Barbara County winery that bears his name.

"I certainly don't want to go play shuffleboard," Parker said in response to a question about why he's still planning new ventures on the eve of his 80th birthday in August, 2004.

While Fess Parker Winery isn't the oldest or the largest winery in the Santa Ynez Valley, about an hour's drive north of Santa Barbara, it is among the better known, simply because of the name and the two roles that Parker made famous on TV.

"That's our trademark," Parker said. "I've traveled all over the world, literally selling hundreds of products that other people have profited from." So it only makes sense for him to use his name to sell his businesses, even though the winery is actually run by his son Eli Parker, whose title is president and director of winemaking and vineyard operations. Fess' daughter, Ashley Parker-Snider, is executive vice president, and her husband, Tim Snider, is vice president, marketing and sales.

Just how astute is Parker as a businessman? He's pretty self-effacing about his own ability. "I'm drawn to businesses that are somewhat impractical," he said, glossing over the multiple properties in Santa Barbara that he's developed, including his current project, which is located on prime beachfront.

Still, way back in the 1950s, when he was a mostly unknown actor, and Walt Disney first signed him to play Davy Crockett, Parker convinced Disney to give him (Parker) 10% of the Crockett merchandise sales. As Parker tells it, he asked and Disney gave it to him.

Even more interesting is that Parker even thought to ask for a cut of the merchandise rights, when you consider that at the time, merchandise was an afterthought for most studios and a pleasant surprise if it paid off.

Parker said that he didn't start out as a businessman, but became one as an offshoot of his acting career, something else he hadn't originally planned on. He was born and raised in Texas, near Fort Worth. "I grew up on a farm and a ranch," he said.

He shuffled back and forth between his parents' spread and his grandparents' place. He played football in high school, then went into the Navy. When he got out of the service, he went back to playing football, this time for Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. He won't discuss the circumstances that led to him getting stabbed in the neck, only that it ended his football career. He was eventually admitted to law school at the University of Texas, Austin, but after studying with the two top guys in his class, he realized that he wasn't interested in law. He eventually graduated with a degree in history.

Somewhere in that time before graduation, Parker became interested in acting, attracting the interest of actor Adolph Menjou, who introduced him to an agent and others when Parker finally moved out to Hollywood in 1950. He made his debut as Davy Crockett in 1954, and while it made quite a splash, it didn't last long. Parker worked fairly steadily for the next 10 years, including an appearance in Disney's "Old Yeller." He married his wife, Marcella, in 1960. Then in 1964, he took on the title role in "Daniel Boone," which ran on NBC for six years.

Parker said he began to get interested in wine during this period, even though the options for wine lovers were not that varied. "There was not much offered, even in the top restaurants," he said.

But he was able to get some good stuff. Somewhere in 1964 or '65, his wife bought 20 cases of 1961 Bordeaux from Greenblatt's Deli, in Los Angeles. "I saw the bill," Parker said, chuckling as he remembered his shock at the cost: $6 a bottle. "How could it go so high?"

The prices went considerably higher, but Parker conceded he wasn't as interested in the business aspects of the wine. "We drank it," he said.

It was also around this time that Parker began investing his money in real estate development. That led to the purchase of the Fess Parker Doubletree Hotel, in Santa Barbara, which he still owns.