Burl Ives

Overview

Born
June 14, 1909 · Hunt City, Illinois, USA
Died
April 14, 1995 · Anacortes, Washington, USA (complications from mouth cancer)
Birth name
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives
Height
6′ (1.83 m)

Biography

Burl Ives was one of six children born to a farming family in Hunt City, Jasper, Illinois, the son of Cordellia "Dellie" (White) and Levi Franklin Ives. 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 folk songs 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), 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 1950s 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.
- IMDb mini biography by: Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

Family

Spouses
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

His singing voice
His goatee
His role as Sam the Snowman in Rankin/Bass' Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Trivia

Frequent benefits for Indian reservations, peace academies, Boy Scouts, environmental groups, arts foundations, children's medicine
During the first season The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991) 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 and said that he would have been willing to do the voice over work for it.
He was a 33rd Degree Mason.
He strongly opposed the United States entering World War II until the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, after which he avidly campaigned for the US to declare war on Germany and Italy.
He died from complications of mouth cancer at his home in Anacortes, WA. His wife and three step-children were with him when he died.

Quotes

I was fortunate to be born into a family of Masons. Indeed, my older sister Audrey was Grand Matron of the Order of Eastern Star in Illinois. My DeMolay experience came very naturally because of my father and brothers. Thus was my youth enhanced.
[on the Spanish Civil War] To me, the Republican elected government stood for freedom and the people, democratic ideals and just the common decencies I'd learned from my father years before. I felt that the Spanish war was a moral fight and I was part of it. Every man would feel its effects.