Burl Ives' Main TV Roles Show Character(s) Alias Smith and Jones Big Mac McC… The Bold Ones: The Lawyers Walter Nich…

Main Movie Roles 1988 - Two Moon Junction 1979 - Just You and Me, Kid 1976 - Baker's Hawk 1967 - Rocket to the Moon 1964 - Ensign Pulver 1963 - Summer Magic 1959 - Day of the Outlaw 1958 - The Big Country 1958 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1957 - A Face in the Crowd 1955 - East of Eden 1948 - So Dear to My Heart 1948 - Station West 1948 - Green Grass of Wyoming

BIOGRAPHY:

Burl Ives was one of six children born to a Scottish-Irish farming family in Jasper County, Illinois in 1909. He first sang in public for a soldiers' reunion when he was age 4. In high school, he learned the banjo and played fullback, intending to become a football coach when he enrolled at Eastern Illinois State Teacher's College in 1927. He dropped out in 1930 and wandered, hitching rides, doing odd jobs, street singing.

Summer stock in the late 1930s led to a job with CBS radio in 1940; through his "Wayfaring Stranger" he popularized many of the folksongs he had collected in his travels. By the 1960s, he had hits on both popular and country charts. He recorded over 30 albums for Decca and another dozen for Columbia. In 1964 he was singer-narrator of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) (TV), an often-repeated Christmas television special. His Broadway debut was in 1938, though he is best remembered for creating the role of Big Daddy in the 1950's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) when it ran on Broadway through the early 1950s.

His four-decade, 30+ movie career began with Ives playing a singing cowboy in Smoky (1946) and reached its peak with (again) his role as Big Daddy role in the movie version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and winning an Oscar for best supporting actor in The Big Country (1958), both in 1958. Ives officially retired from show business on his 80th birthday in 1989 and settled in Anacortes, Washington, although he continued to do frequent benefit performances at his own request. Burl Ives died in 1995.


TRIVIA:

• Was initiated into DeMolay at the George N. Todd Chapter in Charleston Illinois, in 1927.
• Adopted son Alexander with first wife Helen. When they separated in 1960, she got custody.
• Was a licensed amateur (ham) radio with the call sign KA6HVA. When he passed away, he became, in ham radio parlance, a "silent key."
• During the first season _"The Ren & Stimpy Show" (1991)_ (qv) episode "Stimpy's Invention" featured a record, "Happy Happy Joy Joy," which contained a variety of spoken-word segments meant to parody some of Ives' albums from the 1960s. When Ives saw the episode, he contacted Ren and Stimpy Show creator 'John Kricfalusi' (qv) and said that he would have been willing to do the voice over work for it.
• His wife and three step-children were with him when he died.
• Burl Ives was the voice of Sam the Eagle, the narrator of the classic Disneyland attraction "American Sings" (1974-1988) in Tomorrowland.
• Received the DeMolay Legion of Honor in 1986.
• Frequent benefits for Indian reservations, peace academies, Boy Scouts, environmental groups, arts foundations, children's medicine