“It’s surely the dream of every red-blooded American to be catapulted from obscurity to celebrity, to one day knock on the right door and see it swing ajar to reveal a lifetime’s bounty of riches. ‘Dream on,’ you’re probably scoffing, and with good reason. Yet this is precisely what happened, back in the nascent era of television, to a lanky young actor down on his luck by the name of Fess Parker.”