Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American singer and actor of stage, screen, radio, and television. His Disney roles were Uncle Hiram in So Dear to My Heart, Osh Popham in Summer Magic, and the voice of Sam the Eagle in America Sings. He also recorded a few albums for Disneyland Records: Walt Disney Presents Burl Ives' Animal Folk, Walt Disney Presents Burl Ives' Folk Lullabies, Walt Disney Presents Burl Ives: Chim Chim Cheree and Other Children's Choices, A Day at the Zoo with Burl Ives, and Little Red Caboose And Other Children's Hits.
Ives was born in Hunt City, Illinois and attended Eastern Illinois State Teachers College (now Eastern Illinois University) in Charleston, Illinois, where he played football. During his junior year, he decided to drop out.
Burl Ives began as an itinerant singer and banjoist, and launched his own radio show called The Wayfaring Stranger, which popularized traditional folk songs. In 1942, he appeared in Irving Berlin's This Is the Army, and then 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'". A popular film actor through the late 1940s and '50s, Ives's best-known film roles included parts in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Rufus Hannassey in The Big Country (1958), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Burl Ives is often remembered for his voice-over work as Sam the Snowman, the narrator of the classic 1964 Christmas television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which continues to air annually around Christmas. He continued to receive residuals from the special by the time he passed away.
Throughout his later years, Ives continued to perform, author books, and support institutions, like the Boy Scouts of America. A longtime smoker, was diagnosed with oral cancer in the summer of 1994. He fell into a coma and died on April 14, 1995, at his home in Anacortes, Washington, just two months before his 86th birthday.
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