Ives, Burl Icle Ivanhoe

▪ 1996

      U.S. singer and actor (b. June 14, 1909, Hunt, Ill.—d. April 14, 1995, Anacortes, Wash.), was the portly, goateed entertainer whose mellifluous renditions of such folk ballads and popular songs as "The Blue Tail Fly," "Big Rock Candy Mountain," "Holly Jolly Christmas," and "Frosty the Snowman" endeared him to both children and adults and whose stage and screen performances brought him renown as a dramatic performer. Ives originated the role of the domineering Big Daddy in the 1955 Broadway play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and he reprised his powerful performance for the 1958 screen version. It was his role as a stubborn feuding landowner in The Big Country, however, that earned him an Academy Award for best supporting actor. Ives began performing in public at the age of four and learned hundreds of American ballads of Scottish, English, and Irish origin from his pipe-smoking grandmother. He attended Eastern Illinois State Teachers College for three years before abandoning his studies to hitchhike around the U.S., collecting songs from hobos and drifters and chronicling his adventures in the autobiographical Wayfaring Stranger (1948). In 1945, after having served in the military during World War II, he made his folk concert debut at Town Hall in New York City. He made his first film appearance in Smoky (1946). During the next 50 years Ives, who was hailed by poet Carl Sandburg as "the mightiest ballad singer of this or any other century," recorded more than 100 albums. He was remembered for his interpretations of such songs as "I Know an Old Lady (Who Swallowed a Fly)," "The Foggy, Foggy Dew," and "A Little Bitty Tear" and starred in such films as East of Eden (1955) and Desire Under the Elms (1958). He also appeared in 13 Broadway productions and numerous television shows. His last recording, The Magic Balladeer, was released in 1993.

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