Burl Ives

Born: 14 June 1909
Where: Hunt, Illinois, US
Died: 14 April 1995

The youngest of six children, Ives sang folk songs from an early age, many of which he learned from his pipe-smoking, tobacco-chewing grandmother.

He played fullback in high school and was planning to become a football coach when wanderlust overcame him during his senior year of college.

One night in 1930 at Eastern Illinois University, legend has it that Ives got busted taking part in an excursion to the Pemberton Hall women's dorm.

School officials found him a tad intoxicated and playing the piano in the lobby!

Ives dropped out of college and hitchhiked across the country learning folk songs from miners, cowboys, hoboes, and evangelists, before taking his music to New York City at the end of the Depression.

Ives began his acting career, appearing on Broadway.

Shortly after he made his feature debut in Smoky (1946), singing staples from his folk repertoire.

Since then he has portrayed Ephraim Cabot, the cuckold of Sophia Loren, in Desire Under the Elms and won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his rough but fair-minded ranch owner Rufus Hannassey in William Wyler's The Big Country.

Often the big baddie for film, his troubadour persona was just the opposite as he earned the reputation of a sweet, gentle giant. He died in 1995 aged 85.