The Best of Shelley Duvall’s Tall Tales & Legends

This is a post I wish I’d thought of doing before for the United States of America’s two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Actually, I had thought of doing it before. After all, I’ve done three blog posts about Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre. Why not one about Tall Tales & Legends, her very similar show about American folk heroes? It’s true that Tall Tales & Legends was a less famous series than Faerie Tale Theatre but to my way of thinking, that just makes a blog post about it more potentially interesting. However, I felt like I wouldn’t be as qualified to write a blog post about adaptations of American tall tales as I was about adaptations of (mostly) European fairy tales. Still, with the big anniversary of my country, I feel compelled to write about something distinctly American which isn’t easy for me as my tastes tend towards English literature. I do have a soft spot in my heart for this show though. Hopefully, this post will be better late than never.

Tall Tales & Legends, which ran from 1985 to 1987, followed closely in Faerie Tale Theatre‘s footsteps with famous actors, obviously fake scenery and special effects and surprisingly great music. Besides Duvall herself, production overlap between the two series included production designer Michael Erler, producers Bridget and Fredric S. Fuchs and writers Rod Ash and Mark Curtiss. If there’s a major difference between the shows, besides choice of subject matter, I’d say it’s that Tall Tales & Legends might be even more consistently goofy in tone than Faerie Tale Theatre. For one thing, the acting is hammier-and I mean that as a compliment. You really get the feeling that the actors on this show were having a wonderful time, playing their parts as broadly as possible. For another thing, Faerie Tale Theatre tried to do some serious adaptations of fairy tales alongside the more parodic ones. Maybe if Tall Tales had run longer than nine episodes, it would have dipped its toes more into drama. As it is, the show’s tongue stays pretty firmly in its cheek-except for a few memorable moments.^[1]The story that the episode Darlin’ Clementine tells is a tragedy though not a particularly effective one.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I’m going to give a rundown of my four favorite episodes.^[2]That’s not to say these are the only good episodes. Casey at the Bat and Ponce de Leon are fun too, just not my favorites. I don’t recommend The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Darlin’ … Continue reading

Pecos Bill

This episode takes many things from the traditional Pecos Bill mythos. Bill (Steve Guttenberg) is still raised by coyotes until discovered by a cowboy (Dick Schaal) near the Pecos River. He goes on to revolutionize cattle herding by inventing the lasso (though he doesn’t use a rattlesnake in this version) and the branding iron. The adaptation even goes further than that and has him be responsible for the first bandanna, the first saloon brawl, the first stagecoach stickup and the first wanted poster. His horse, Widowmaker, is included in the episode and so is his love interest, Slew Foot Sue (Rebecca De Mornay) and her giant catfish though her tragic death is averted. And Pecos does indeed lasso and ride a tornado. All of those things however are given a new context by the episode’s original storyline which pits Pecos Bill against the antagonistic but not villainous governor Ambrose Peasley (Martin Mull) who wants to keep the state of Texas quiet and tidy. Speaking of Texas, if you hail from there, you may be offended all the cartoony stereotypes about the state which this episode perpetuates. But you may also be highly amused by this entertaining farce.

Johnny Appleseed

Whereas the Pecos Bill episode kept many incidents from the traditional tall tale while putting them in the context of a new story, this episode is pretty much an entirely original story. The only details from either the real John Chapman’s life or the legends of Johnny Appleseed are the basic idea of a man (Martin Short) traveling across America by foot, wearing a potato sack shirt and a pot for a hat, planting apple seeds. Funnily enough, the last time I blogged about a cinematic take on Johnny Appleseed, I wrote that it suffered from a lack of conflict. Even pacifist heroes need obstacles to nonviolently overcome. This episode answers that criticism by pitting Johnny against Jack Smith (Rob Reiner), a mustachioed, black hat-wearing town leader who is threatened by the new ideas that Johnny brings with him. Smith is such an obvious villain that you’ll laugh at the sight of him. That may not sound like a compliment but I mean it as one. The unsubtlety is clearly supposed to be funny. I’m not always a fan of Martin Short but he’s perfectly cast here too.

I suppose some may criticize this episode for being a “white savior narrative.” The Native Americans are portrayed as eating nothing but corn until Johnny introduces them to the apple and becomes their hero. Ridiculous? Of course, but to take offense is to miss that the white settlers are also portrayed as equally clueless until Johnny comes along and are, if anything, given less dignity than the native characters. The residents of Smithville are portrayed as only knowing how to hunt. Farming never even occurs to them until Johnny suggests it. It’s all part of the show’s tall tale spirit. You might as well complain that the Pecos Bill episode wrongly attributes the composition of the song, Yellow Rose of Texas, to its hero or that the Casey at the Bat episode wrongly attributes everything we associate with baseball to its hero or that the Ponce de Leon episode gets the etymology of the word alligator completely wrong.^[3]Ponce dubs the beasts “ugly gaters” because they’re ugly and their jaws are like the gates of Hell. Of course, there are, no doubt, legitimate reasons to be offended by the Native Americans in Johnny Appleseed, like their costumes being stereotypical and inaccurate to the area, but stereotypes and inaccuracies are sort of this show’s Rason Detre. Either it works for you or it doesn’t.

Davy Crockett

Something I haven’t mentioned about Tall Tales & Legends yet is that the episodes typically use a framing device, something Faerie Tale Theatre seldom did. They typically begin in modern day with two characters, one of whom (typically, the younger one) will ask a question which the older one will answer by the telling the episode’s story. In this episode about Davy Crockett, the framing device is actually so elaborate that it becomes the main story. It begins in a classroom where a mysterious substitute teacher (Michael McKean) gives a rebellious young student named Ben Parker (Adam Carl)^[4]His name is probably as a shoutout to actor Fess Parker who portrayed Davy Crockett on the Wonderful World of Disney. a biography of the famous frontiersman to read. Ben finds that whenever he reads the book, he is magically transported back into past where he meets Crockett (Mac Davis) and learns about courage and responsibility from him. (Amusingly, Ben becomes so invested in the book that his mother (Mimi Kennedy) is implied to suspect it may be pornographic in nature.)

Don’t let the fact that this episode starts out in a history class or involves time travel give you the impression it’s historically accurate. According to the biography Ben reads, “as stories about Davy become more plentiful, it became more difficult to tell truth from legend.” But you don’t have to be an expert on American history to guess that the talking raccoon, the bear who is defeated by Davy grinning at him, the other bear who is his pet and the scene of Davy hurling an approaching comet back into space belong to the legendary category. The hero’s squeaky clean, fatherly persona also owes more to the Disney version than to the real person. This is the third time in this blog post I find I’ve written something that sounds like a criticism and now have to hastily backtrack and clarify that I mean it as praise. Well, maybe “praise” is too strong a word. I wouldn’t recommend something so hagiographic be used in the classroom. But outside of the classroom, I find it charming. There’s plenty of the same enjoyable silliness that characterizes Tall Tales & Legends in general but there’s also a certain earnestness to this particular episode’s silliness. That scene with the comet may sound ridiculous but the music by Stephen Barber actually invests it with a kind of mythic power unusual for this show. Also unusual is the surprisingly emotional ending in which Ben has to bid farewell to Davy as he heads off to the Alamo. It’s one of the series’ biggest attempts to be dramatic, as opposed to comedic, and for me, it elevates the episode to my favorite.^[5]If you’re confused why I didn’t save it for last, I’m writing about these in the order that Wikipedia lists them, not ranking them from least favorite to favorite.

Annie Oakley

We’ve seen this isn’t the only episode to be based on a real historical figure but it’s the one that could pass as a real biopic. “Everything I’m going to tell you in this tale is true and actually did happen-one way or another,” Shelley Duvall says cheekily in her intro. All of the major characters are based on real people including Phoebe Ann Mosey AKA Annie Oakley herself (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband, Frank Butler (Cliff De Young), her boss, Buffalo Bill Cody (Brian Dennehy) and her coworker Chief Sitting Bull (Nick Ramus.) And, compared to the characters in other episodes anyway, they feel like real people. There’s still plenty of the show’s trademark wackiness in evidence though. Not only is Annie portrayed as an amazing markswoman but as having great aim in general even as a baby. When she congratulates Queen Victoria (Lu Leonard) on her fiftieth jubilee, the monarch confides that she prefers “rustic simplicity. Windsor Castle. Now that’s simple living!” Still, this story does stay grounded in real history to an unusual extent for Tall Tales & Legends. And you know what? The combination of a relatively grounded story with the show’s signature style actually works, making something more fun than a serious biopic and more relatable than an average episode.

This series isn’t for everyone, but I do think it captures something of the American spirit. That can even be said of things it adds to the traditional folklore, such as Johnny Appleseed teaching the settlers to be self-sufficient, getting them out from under Jack Smith’s thumb or Pecos Bill’s wild and wooly ways inspiring the Texans to rebel against Governor Peasley. It’s all part of the American theme of the little guy going up against the big guy.^[6]The show also touches on less admirable parts of United States’ legacy, mainly its treatment of Native Americans, though it probably doesn’t focus on it enough to make a modern liberal … Continue reading Of course, the larger-than-life heroes of these episodes aren’t entirely underdogs. With true American exaggeration and no apologies, they’re depicted doing things like lassoing cyclones and hurling comets back into the sky. Tall Tales & Legends may be even goofier than Faerie Tale Theatre, but it still has a real affection for its material. Americans watching just might feel a surge of patriotic pride or wipe a tear from their eyes as each episode ends.

OK, not really but, like I said, this show is all about the joys of hyperbole. Happy birthday, America.