According to Parker family lore, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wife Eleanor Roosevelt heard of Parker's actions and convinced the president to grant permission to bring Bess home.[2]
After the war, Parker was approached by MGM to film several movies with Bess. Gallant Bess was the first to be filmed and was to be a true account of Bess' rescue, but the first half of the script, up to the point at which Tex joins the Navy, was purely fictional. The rest of the film closely resembled the true account, but still with much artistic license.
The Navy would not allow Parker's name to be credited to the film as he was still on active duty, so the film is fictitiously credited as "Based on a true story as told by Lt. Marvin Park, U.S.N.R." Bess stars as herself, and Parker has a cameo in a scene depicting a violent thunderstorm in which he calms Bess.
Because MGM did not follow the true account as closely as Parker believed that they would, the series of films featuring Bess that had been planned were never filmed. Celebrities such as Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor and Charles Lindbergh would occasionally visit Bess.
Bess foaled Gallant Pat in the 1950s and lived the rest of her life with Parker on a ranch in Grass Valley, California. She was euthanized in the late 1960s after a brain tumor was diagnosed. She still bore the scars from her World War II injuries.
The rights to Gallant Bess are now owned by Warner Bros.,[5] and the film is occasionally shown on the Turner Classic Movies channel.
Producer Harry Rapf's son Matthew produced Adventures of Gallant Bess for Eagle-Lion Films, but the film did not star the original Bess and is unrelated to Gallant Bess.
