Burl Ives won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Big Country (1958) and appeared in films such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof the same year. He also built a successful career as a folk and country singer, with a repertoire that crossed into popular music. Millions came to know him as the voice of Sam the Snowman in the holiday special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), where he sang “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”