Burl Ives
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995) was an American musician, singer and actor with a career that spanned more than six decades.
Burl Ives
April 14, 1995 (aged 85)
Mound Cemetery, Hunt City Township, Jasper County, Illinois
- Musician
- singer
- actor
- author
1929–1993
-
Helen Peck Ehrlich(m. 1945; div. 1971)
-
Dorothy Koster Paul(m. 1971)
1
- Vocals
- guitar
- banjo
1942–1943
Ives began his career as an itinerant singer and guitarist, eventually launching his own radio show, The Wayfaring Stranger, which popularized traditional folk songs. In 1942, he appeared in Irving Berlin's This Is the Army and became a major star of CBS Radio. In the 1960s, he successfully crossed over into country music, recording hits such as "A Little Bitty Tear" and "Funny Way of Laughin'". Ives was also a popular film actor through the late 1940s and '50s. His film roles included parts in So Dear to My Heart (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), as well as the role of Rufus Hannassey in The Big Country (1958), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Ives is often associated with the Christmas season. He did voice-over work as Sam the Snowman, narrator of the classic 1964 Christmas television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ives also 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.[1]
Early life[edit]
Ives was born in Hunt City, an unincorporated town in Jasper County, Illinois, near Newton, to Levi "Frank" Ives (1880–1947) and Cordelia "Dellie" (née White; 1882–1954). He had six siblings: Audry, Artie, Clarence, Argola, Lillburn, and Norma. His father was first a farmer and then a contractor for the county and others. One day, Ives was singing in the garden with his mother, and his uncle overheard them. He invited his nephew to sing at the old soldiers' reunion in Hunt City. The boy performed a rendition of the folk ballad "Barbara Allen" and impressed both his uncle and the audience.[2]
From 1927 to 1929, Ives attended Eastern Illinois State Teachers College (now Eastern Illinois University) in Charleston, Illinois, where he played football.[3] During his junior year, he was sitting in English class, listening to a lecture on Beowulf, when he suddenly realized he was wasting his time. As he walked out of the door, the professor made a snide remark and Ives slammed the door behind him, shattering the window in the door.[4] Sixty years later, the school named a building after its most famous dropout.[5] Ives was a member of the Charleston Chapter of The Order of DeMolay and is listed in the DeMolay Hall of Fame. He was also initiated into Scottish Rite Freemasonry in 1927.[6] He was elevated to the 33rd and highest degree[7][8] in 1987, and was later elected the Grand Cross.[9]
On July 23, 1929, in Richmond, Indiana, 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. In later years Ives did not recall having made the record.[10]
Other engagements[edit]
Broadway roles[edit]
Ives's Broadway career included appearances in The Boys from Syracuse (1938–39), Heavenly Express (1940), This Is the Army (1942), Sing Out, Sweet Land (1944), Paint Your Wagon (1951–52), and Dr. Cook's Garden (1967). His most notable Broadway performance (later reprised in a 1958 movie) was as "Big Daddy" Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955–56).
Boy Scouts[edit]
Ives had a long-standing relationship with the Boy Scouts of America. He was a Lone Scout before that group merged with the Boy Scouts of America in 1924.[29] The organization "inducted" Ives in 1966.[30] He received the Boy Scouts' Silver Buffalo Award, its highest honor. The certificate for the award is on display at the Scouting Museum in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.[31]
Ives often performed at the quadrennial Boy Scouts of America jamboree, including the 1981 jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, where he shared the stage with the Oak Ridge Boys.[32] There is a 1977 sound recording of Ives being interviewed by Boy Scouts at the National Jamboree at Moraine State Park, Pennsylvania.[33] Ives was also the narrator of a 28-minute film about the 1977 National Jamboree. In the film, which was produced by the Boy Scouts of America, Ives "shows the many ways in which Scouting provides opportunities for young people to develop character and expand their horizons."[34]
Civic awards[edit]
Ives was inducted as a laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1976 in the area of the performing arts.[35]
Ives was inducted into the DeMolay International Hall of Fame in June 1994.[36]
Personal life[edit]
On December 6, 1945, Ives, then 36, married 29-year-old script writer Helen Peck Ehrlich.[37] Their son Alexander was born in 1949.[38]
Ives and Helen Peck Ehrlich were divorced in February 1971.[39] Ives married Dorothy Koster Paul in London two months later.[40] In their later years, Ives and Paul lived in a waterfront home in Anacortes, Washington, in the Puget Sound area, and in Galisteo, New Mexico, near the Turquoise Trail. In the 1960s, he had another home just south of Hope Town on Elbow Cay, a barrier island of the Abacos in the Bahamas.[41]
Ives, a longtime smoker of pipes and cigars, was diagnosed with oral cancer in the summer of 1994. After several unsuccessful operations, he decided against further surgery. He fell into a coma and died from the disease on April 14, 1995, at his home in Anacortes, Washington, at age 85.[42] He was buried at Mound Cemetery in Hunt City Township, Jasper County, Illinois.[43]