Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American musician and actor with a career that spanned more than six decades.
54 Facts About Burl Ives
2.
Burl Ives was a popular film actor through the late 1940s and '50s.
3.
Burl Ives did voice-over work as Sam the Snowman, narrator of the classic 1964 Christmas television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
4.
Burl Ives worked on the special's soundtrack, including the songs "A Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", both of which continue to chart annually on the Billboard holiday charts into the 2020s.
5.
Burl Ives was born in Hunt City, an unincorporated town in Jasper County, Illinois, near Newton, to Levi "Frank" Burl Ives and Cordelia "Dellie".
6.
Burl Ives had six siblings: Audry, Artie, Clarence, Argola, Lillburn, and Norma.
7.
Burl Ives's father was first a farmer and then a contractor for the county and others.
8.
One day, Burl Ives was singing in the garden with his mother, and his uncle overheard them.
9.
Burl Ives invited his nephew to sing at the old soldiers' reunion in Hunt City.
10.
From 1927 to 1929, Burl Ives attended Eastern Illinois State Teachers College in Charleston, Illinois, where he played football.
11.
Burl Ives was a member of the Charleston Chapter of The Order of DeMolay and is listed in the DeMolay Hall of Fame.
12.
Burl Ives was initiated into Scottish Rite Freemasonry in 1927.
13.
Burl Ives was elevated to the 33rd and highest degree in 1987, and was later elected the Grand Cross.
14.
On July 23,1929, in Richmond, Indiana, Burl Ives made a trial recording of "Behind the Clouds" for the Starr Piano Company's Gennett label, but the recording was rejected and destroyed a few weeks later.
15.
In later years Burl Ives did not recall having made the record.
16.
Burl Ives traveled about the US as an itinerant singer during the early 1930s, earning his way by doing odd jobs and playing his banjo.
17.
Burl Ives was jailed in Mona, Utah, for vagrancy and for singing "Foggy Dew", which the authorities decided was a bawdy song.
18.
Burl Ives went back to school, attending classes at Indiana State Teachers College.
19.
In 1933, Burl Ives attended the Juilliard School in New York.
20.
Burl Ives made his Broadway debut in 1938 with a small role in Rodgers and Hart's hit musical, The Boys from Syracuse.
21.
In 1940, Burl Ives named his own radio show, The Wayfaring Stranger, after one of his ballads.
22.
Burl Ives was associated with the Almanacs, a folk-singing group which at different times included Woody Guthrie, Will Geer, Millard Lampell, and Pete Seeger.
23.
Burl Ives spent time first at Camp Dix, then at Camp Upton, where he joined the cast of Irving Berlin's This Is the Army.
24.
Burl Ives was honorably discharged, apparently for medical reasons, in September 1943.
25.
Between September and December 1943, Burl Ives lived in California with actor Harry Morgan.
26.
In December 1943, Burl Ives went to New York City to work for CBS Radio for $100 a week.
27.
In 1946, Burl Ives was cast as a singing cowboy in the film Smoky.
28.
In 1947, Burl Ives recorded one of many versions of "The Blue Tail Fly", but paired this time with the popular Andrews Sisters.
29.
Burl Ives hoped the trio's success would help the record sell well, which it did, becoming both a best-selling disc and a Billboard hit.
30.
Burl Ives was identified in the 1950 pamphlet Red Channels and blacklisted as an entertainer with supposed Communist ties.
31.
Seeger publicly ridiculed Burl Ives for attempting to distance himself from many of the far left organizations he had supported.
32.
Burl Ives was the Mystery Guest on the August 7,1955 and February 1,1959, episodes of What's My Line.
33.
Burl Ives had several film and television roles during the 1960s and 1970s.
34.
Burl Ives starred in Disney's Summer Magic with Hayley Mills, Dorothy McGuire, and Eddie Hodges, and a score by Robert and Richard Sherman.
35.
Burl Ives voiced Sam the Snowman, the banjo-playing "host" and narrator of the story, explaining how Rudolph used his "nonconformity", as Sam refers to it, to save Christmas from being cancelled due to an impassable blizzard.
36.
Burl Ives released them all as singles for the 1965 holiday season, capitalizing on their previous success.
37.
Burl Ives performed in other television productions, including Pinocchio and Roots.
38.
Burl Ives played Walter Nichols in the drama The Bold Ones: The Lawyers, a segment of the wheel series The Bold Ones.
39.
Burl Ives narrated the 1971 season highlight film for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League produced by NFL Films.
40.
In 1976, Burl Ives was featured as a main character in Little House on the Prairie season 3 episode 10 titled "The Hunters".
41.
Burl Ives played an old fur trapper who was blind and afraid to leave the comfort and safety of his cabin which he shared with his adult son.
42.
Burl Ives was portrayed with the program's fictional spokesman, Johnny Horizon.
43.
Burl Ives was seen regularly in television commercials for Luzianne tea for several years during the 1970s and 1980s, when he was the company's commercial spokesman.
44.
In 1989, Burl Ives officially announced his retirement from show business on his 80th birthday.
45.
Burl Ives wrote or compiled several other books, including Burl Ives' Songbook, Tales of America, Sea Songs of Sailing, Whaling, and Fishing, and The Wayfaring Stranger's Notebook.
46.
Burl Ives had a long-standing relationship with the Boy Scouts of America.
47.
Burl Ives was a Lone Scout before that group merged with the Boy Scouts of America in 1924.
48.
Burl Ives received the Boy Scouts' Silver Buffalo Award, its highest honor.
49.
Burl Ives was the narrator of a 28-minute film about the 1977 National Jamboree.
50.
Burl Ives was inducted as a laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln by the governor of Illinois in 1976 in the area of the performing arts.
51.
Burl Ives was inducted into the DeMolay International Hall of Fame in June 1994.
52.
Burl Ives then married Dorothy Koster Paul in London two months later.
53.
Burl Ives fell into a coma and died from the disease on April 14,1995, at his home in Anacortes, Washington, just two months before his 86th birthday.
54.
Burl Ives was buried at Mound Cemetery in Hunt City Township, Jasper County, Illinois.