Burl Ives

"Ives's voice&hellip; had the sheen and finesse of opera without its latter-day Puccinian vulgarities and without the pretensions of operatic ritual. It was genteel in expressive impact without being genteel in social conformity. And it moved people."

- John Rockwell

Burl Ives (June 14, 1909–April 14, 1995) was an Academy Award winning actor, author, and a renowned folk singer. After dropping out of school at an early age, he roamed the countryside looking for work as a singer. He eventually found work in New York City, both as a singer and an actor. After missing out on most of World War II, Ives began his career in film.

However, in the 1950s, Ives was branded as a communist. To avoid blacklisting, and in an attempt to return to work, Ives named names to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which earned him the ire of his colleagues. Nevertheless, the rotund Ives established a strong presence for himself on the screen, and was the eleventh actor to be directed to an Academy Award by William Wyler, for his work in The Big Country.

Ives was also known for his voice work. In 1964, he voiced the snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and in 1984, he narrated John Korty's Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. On passing in 1995 due to oral cancer, Ives was survived by his second wife, Dorothy, and his children.

Early life
"There wasn't any beginning."

- Burl Ives on when he first started singing

Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was born in Hunt City Township in Jasper County, Illinois, in 1909, the youngest of six children. His father was a tenant farmer and the family moved often during his childhood. Ives and his siblings were introduced to music early in life. As a child, his mother loved to sing, and Ives was taught a myriad of songs by his grandmother. He began performing these songs in public for twenty-five cents to help support his family, starting at age four with a performance for a reunion of veterans. He soon learned how to play guitar and banjo to accompany his vocals. Ives was a member of the Lone Scouts of America, an organization that aimed to teach self-reliance and respect through the study of American Indian tradition. That organization was incorporated into the Boy Scouts of America in 1924 and Ives would later spend a great deal of time supporting the Boy Scouts.

Ives attended school in Hunt City, Illinois. In high school, he played football and when he went on to Eastern Illinois State Teacher's College in 1927, joining that school's team, he planned to become a coach. While listening to a lecture on Beowulf one day in his junior year, he came to the conclusion that he was not learning anything of value, and left the class then and there. He then roamed the country to pursue a musical career, earning the nickname "The Wayfaring Stranger," which would be used for his future shows, albums and autobiographies.

Early career
Ives traveled the county and performed songs wherever possible, supporting himself by working on riverboats and other odd jobs. In his travels, during which he called himself "Burl Ives, the Vagabond Lover," he endured many hardships. In Mona, Utah, he was jailed for singing a banned song: "Foggy Foggy Dew." In 1931, he took up residence in Indiana, where he not only got a job at WBOW radio, but returned to school, at Indiana State Teachers College. Ives took voice lessons from Madame Clara Lyon in Terra Haute, Indiana. In 1937, he took up residence in New York, where he attended the Juilliard School and the New York University School of Music. He sang in Greenwich Village cafes and performed in stock acting companies while simultaneously continuing his voice training with Ella Toedt and took acting lessons from Benno Schneider.

In 1938, Ives appeared in the Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse. Making a living by singing in clubs, Ives performed on the CBS radio show Forecast, which led to the network granting him his own radio program, The Wayfaring Stranger, which commenced in 1940. He was able to popularize several songs during this period, notably "Lavender Blue", "Foggy Foggy Dew", "Blue Tail Fly", and "Big Rock Candy Mountain". During this time he also continued his Broadway career with Heavenly Express in 1940, and performed at the well-regarded Village Vanguard club in Greenwich Village. Ives was drafted into the army for World War II in 1942 and, in 1943, he appeared in Irving Berlin's This is the Army, a musical motion picture aimed at raising troop morale. He also made recordings for the United States Office of War Information and briefly hosted a radio show called G.I. Jive, which played at military outposts overseas. Later in 1943, he was discharged due to medical concerns, after which he continued his entertainer career by hosting another CBS radio from from 1943 to 1944. He also appeared in the Broadway folk music revue Sing Out, Sweet Land! in 1944, which earned him a Donaldson Award. During this time he also to recorded a handful of songs for minor commercial label companies such as "Mule Train" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky". In 1945, he married a scriptwriter, Helen Peck Ehrich, with whom he adopted a son named Alexander.

McCarthy era
"You know who my friends are; you will have to ask them if they are Communists."

- Burl Ives

Following the war's conclusion in 1945, Ives was signed to a minor label, Stinson, before moving to Decca, which was familiar with Ives from producing the Sing Out, Sweet Land! soundtrack. He made his screen debut as "Willie" in Louis King's Smoky, the second film adaptation of Will James' horse story, which was released in 1946. From 1946 to 1948 he again hosted another radio show, called The Burl Ives Show, for the Mutual Broadcasting System. Ives continued to regular perform in nightclubs during this time. In 1948 he appeared in two Western films, Green Grass of Wyoming and Station West, and the Walt Disney Pictures family film So Dear to My Heart, in which he sang the songs "Billy Boy" and "Lavender Blue." So Deart to My Heard proved to be Ives' breakthrough film performance, and "Lavender Blue" became his first chart hit. Ives wrote his first book in 1948, an autobiography called The Wayfaring Stranger. In 1949, he appeared in the Broadway comedy She Stoops to Conquer, Following that success, he would move to Columbia Records, where he would continue to flourish in the industry. Despite his success at Columbia, Ives eventually returned to Decca, where he would continue to have successive hits.

Ives initially displayed liberal political convictions and was a member of Hollywood Fights Back, a movement by entertainers in the late 1940s to counter the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee in identifying Communists in the entertainment industry. Ives was listed as being a member of a left-wing group in the Red Channels pamphlet, and was blacklisted by the government until he stood before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and convinced them otherwise. In the process, he named names and labeled several of his colleagues as Communists. This act allowed Ives to continue his work in the industry, and he would go on to work in both the music industry and the film industry. He was, however, accused of betraying his colleagues and political beliefs to save his career.

Ives' popularity as a singer grew with that of the rising popularity of folk music following World War II, which led him to record several songs such as "The Cowboy's Lament," "Hush Little Baby," "John Henry," "Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord," "On Top of Old Smoky" and "Sweet Betsy From Pike." He also recorded more than 120 songs for Historical America in Song, a six-album collection released by Encyclopædia Britannica Films. In 1950, Ives starred with Audie Murphy in the Western film Sierra. He also continued to appear in several notable New York theater roles throughout the decade, including Show Boat and Paint Your Wagon, the latter of which led to him starring in the national tour from 1952 to 1953. In 1953, Ives two new books: the Burl Ives Song Book, which included 115 folk songs, and Burl Ives' Sea Songs of Sailing, Whaling and Fishing, which included 68 songs. He followed those up with the book Tales of America the next year. In 1955, he portrayed Big Daddy in the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which earned him critical praise and became arguably his most famous role.

Film career
In the mid-late 1950s, Ives' film career began in earnest. He played a supporting role in Elia Kazan's East of Eden (1955), as well as a minor role in the 1956 film The Power and the Prize, and an uncredited performance as himself in A Face in the Crowd (1957). Ives also branched into television roles, portraying dramatic roles on the CBS programs Playhouse 90 and The United States Steel Hour. But it was in 1958 that Ives would reach the pinnacle of his acting career. He reprised the role of Big Daddy in Richard Brooks' film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and played Rufus Hannessey in William Wyler's The Big Country. Also that year, Ives' performance as a man who is forced to kill his son so impressed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that they gave him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor that year. Also in 1958 he starred in Desire Under the Elms and Wind Across the Everglades, and the next year he played a gang leader in Day of the Outlaw.

Ives also displayed a degree of versatility. While East of Eden, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Big Country were all "adult dramas," he also appeared in the comedy Our Man in Havana (1959), and was also proficient in children's fare, such as Summer Magic in 1963 and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in 1964. Rudolph, in which he played "Sam the Snowman" and functioned as the narrator, was a special success for Ives due to the appeal of songs he contributed, "Holly Jolly Christmas and "Silver and Gold", that became instant Christmas classics and remain so to this day. Over the rest of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Ives had a popular run on television as the lead roles on both O.K. Crackerby! (1966-1969) and The Bold Ones: The Lawyers (1969-1972). In 1972, he starred in an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, "The Other Way Out". After these shows, most of his work was with Walt Disney Studios on movies meant for children.

Later life
In 1962, Ives won the Grammy Award for Best Country Western Recording for "Funny Way of Laughin." Later that decade, Ives returned to Columbia, where he would record such ballads as "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Softly and Tenderly." In 1971, Ives was divorced from Peck, and two months later married Dorothy Koster Paul. Peck was awarded custody of Alexander and Ives adopted his new wife's three children: Rob, Kevin and Barbara. After a long hiatus from recording, Ives recorded one last major album, "Payin' My Dues Again," before relegating himself to children's and religious music. Upon reaching the age of 70 in 1979, Ives retired to Washington State, with his wife and children.

Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
"Our story begins in a time long, long ago, deep in an enchanted forest, on the distant moon of Endor."

- Burl Ives as the Narrator

He would still make the occasional cameo on television or film, and he provided narration for John Korty's 1984 Star Wars telemovie, Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. Ives' narration continued throughout the course of the film, and provided context to a seemingly complex plot in which a brother and sister must save their parents from a giant monster.

Legacy
"Burl Ives, whose sweet, strong, mournful way with folk ballads made him an international singing star in the 1940's and whose earthy acting won him an Academy Award in the 1950's, died yesterday at his home in Anacortes, Wash. He was 85."

- The New York Times obituary, by Richard Severo

Ives' work would not be forgotten, however. In the early 90s, the creators of the cult animated Ren & Stimpy Show used stock audio of Ives in order to have him "guest star" on the show. When he heard of this, Ives claimed that he would have done it for real, had they asked. Decca would continue to release his records for many years, even after his death in 1995 due to oral cancer. Ives was survived by his wife and children.