You mean the way he sang to HUAC? >: )

Lots of very decent, well-meaning, patriotic Americans did so, Sean. People who have nothing to apologize for.

Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas...

(ahem) Sorry, what was that you said?

Yes, Casey, before someone implied I was a communist apologist rather than a lame punster. I thought it was leftists who had no sense of humor. Are there any more leftovers from that wassail bowl around here? :)

Little known facts about Burl Ives:

1. He never scored a point in an NBA game despite his phenomenal leaping ability.
2. Once french-kissed a llama for a dollar in Bolivia.
3. He was deathly afraid of kite string.
4. He could indeed ROCK the microphone.
5. Was fluent in ebonics.
6. Always mingled with the kitchen help.
7. Knew his way around a flyswatter.
8. Nursed a bi-polar bear back to health in the summer of 1947.
9. Downloaded Eminem secretly on his computer.
and
10. Kept his own private stash of horny eels in his basement for "special" parties.

He MUST be like your hero then, eh Tim?

When I was little I couldn't stand Burl Ives. Of course, that's because I thought he was a creepy snowman. And, he kept interrupting Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to tell bad jokes.

Nothing wrong with telling the HUAC what you knew. Only communists objected. The Communists were enemies of the United States, who wanted to overthrow our government and install their own, communist, state.

Communists have killed more people than Nazis, Baathists, and freaking Mongol hordes. Communists are evil, communism is evil, people who think communism is not evil are fools, and dangerous.

Are you a fool, Sean?

I was never into folk music very much, although I definitely preferred musicians whose lyrics I could heard, diffract and understand word for word and thought for thought. It was these characteristics, I think, that made Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, and John Lennon all great. So I didn't really know much about Burl Ives as a folk singer.

But as an actor -- God almighty! What a presence. Any of you who have ever watched William Wyler's 1958 western epic, "The Big Country", will know exactly what I refer to. He all but made Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Charles Bickford and baseball giant turned film star Chuck Connors look like a collection of wimps. In 1959, he was named 'best-supporting actor' for that role both at the Academy Awards and the Golden Globe Awards; well deserved in both cases.

As for his testimony at the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings, I would damned well have done the same if I had possessed inside knowledge of the communists who had infiltrated and attempted to subvert our motion picture industry during the previous 20 years or so. In my book, you are either loyal or you are a treacherous rat not deserving of America's sweet liberties.

And that's the way most of felt who were growing up in the late 1940s and early 1950s when I came of age. We all admired the job the Soviet Union and their magnificent army performed in breaking the bones of Hitler's Nazi Germany. But when Stalin began enslaving all eastern Europe and threatening the United States, we all knew international communism was an enemy to be kept at bay until it could be ultimately beaten. I'm sure a good man like Burl Ives felt exactly the same way.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I did not move to the good ole USA till I was in my late teens, so I missed Burl Ives. Though, i'd love to be able to sing like Tony Bennett or Perry Como.
As far as HUAC is concerned, , in the bigger scheme of things, I think it was a good thing, to root out communists. Communists were and are enemies of the free world, heck even the Soviets kicked out the communists and have gone in for unbridled capitalism.

Burl Ives was vaguley creepy. He was well cast in that Tennessee Williams play.

Tim:

A dollar? In Bolivia??

I'm impressed.

Most people don't know that it was Burl Ives NOT Burt Reynolds that was originally cast as "the Bandit" in "Smokey and the Bandit" but Sally F. didn't want to kiss him because his beard smelled of orange marmalade (something she loathed!)...the rest is history.

I knew a guy in college named Burl Ives. I think it was a "Boy Named Sue" deal. It certainly toughened him up. If you tried a joke about his name, you came out second best, that's for sure.

Couldn't sing a note, though.

burl who?

The film "Big Country" was absolutely one of the best of it's genre ever made. I saw it as a teenager and can still remember most of the story and great acting. Burl Ives was totally awesome and eclipsed everyone else in the film. I had forgotten that Ives won an Oscar for that film and I didn't realize the it was directed by William Wyler who produced so many masterpieces in his time. Thanks for the memories, Arnold.

Sufferin' succotash. You know, gents, when someone tosses off a one-liner at the expense of gays, if I think it's funny I laugh. If I don't think it's funny, I still don't respond with a poker-faced lecture about how painful it is to come out of the closet, because you just can't get a good read of people's ideologies based on one wisecrack. I know that McCarthy's being an asshole doesn't cancel out the real machinations of the Communist Party to take over America and the world. I know that the...well, I can't imagine calling myself "bohemian" with a straight face, but I've made plenty of non-traditional choices that are only possible in a free society and would be ruthlessly overruled under a communist regime. All right, already? I just don't believe that it's only my ideological opponents who need to get a sense of humor.

Happy last hours of Christmas, everyone.

Yes, I must agree with Jane in thanking Arnold for taking us down memory lane on that great movie. Oh what a crooner Burl Ives is. I know I have every one of his albums. I need the CD's or download I guess.

I drove my children nuts playing my songs of his over and over and over. I got my love for his great music from my daddy. My dad did that very same thing to my brother, my sister and me. We did love it very much.

Hey, Rosemary that is funny. My daughter cried the first time she saw Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. She was sitting there crying so hard that her shoulders were moving and she was boo hooing terribly. I got up and put my arms around her asking her what was the matter!
" ALL THE OTHER REINDEER WON'T PLAY WITH RUDOLPH CAUSE HE HAS A RED NOSE AND THEY ARE LAUGHING AT HIM MOMMY!"

You are cute too Rosemary!

Sean:

I thought it was funny!!!

Thanks, Madam. You've got a way with retaliatory-nuke humor yourself.

Sean ,

I just don't believe that it's only my ideological opponents who need to get a sense of humor.

If only you could have seen the big shit eating grin on my face as I composed that diatribe. :)

Tailgunner Joe is not equivalent to the HUAC. HUAC preceded him and succeeded him

I was a grade-school kid in the 50s and we were all terrified of the Communists. I remember when I was a bout 5 years old, I heard on the radio that President Truman was going to have a meeting with Stalin in Russia (this was about 1947) and I went very worridly to my mother telling her that the President shouldn't go to Russia because they might shoot him or hurt him. My mother assured me that wouldn't happen.

Later, during the 50s we were really scared that the Russians would nuke us. I remember practicing bomb drills at school and crawling under my desk as part of the drill. We also stood in lines in the hallway and sat down covering our heads with our arms. On television we saw the weekly series "I Led Three Lives" about an American spy infiltrating a communist cell. Very scary to kids.

Anyway, that fear was the genesis of the HUAC hearings, I'm sure. And communisim was very popular among the intelligentsia of the 30s (hence the "Cambridge" spies in the UK who did so much damage giving away nuclear secrets to the Reds and the Rosenbergs...who I believe should NOT have been executed, a big over-reaction in my opinion by the government). Anyway, lots of writers, directors and some actors had been enamored with communism prior to WWII and it WAS an idealogy that could be detected in various films, plays and books. The Hollywood left now romanticizes that era as an unjustly persecuted group of loyal Americans who suffered for their principles. I wonder... seems a little revisionist to me and so convenient now when they are critized for their leftist activities to cry "McCarthizim!!".

And Sean, I don't mean this as a lecture to you. I'm just remembering as a persons who actually was formed in that era. Actually, I grew up with very liberal (for that time) opinions about civil rights and all that. I watched the Little Rock High School drama on TV and completely hated the horrible southern segrationists and those who would bomb black churches and kill black people. I loved Jackie Robinson for what he stood for as the first black ML ball player. I evolved into a conservative in the last 20 years. My parents were staunch New Deal Democrats. FDR and HST were heros in our house.

Nevertheless, we hated the communists and were pretty worried about them taking over the world.
Memories of Burl Ives' Christmas song sure got us goin today. Hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas. I'm off to the mall to look for some bargains! Happy New Year one and all.

I'm very pleased to see such good commentary on the HUAC and the efforts to expose the Communist Fifth Column in this country. I must mention Ayn Rand's testimony before the HUAC (she would have liked to have said more) and her "Screen Guide for Americans" (published by the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals) did much to expose Communist propaganda in movies. Unfortunately, now that anti-Communism is smeared as "McCarthyism" (is that worse than "Lattimore-ism"?), we today see more Communist, collectivist, and anti-individualist propaganda in film than ever. I must mention also that the HUAC was originally founded during World War II to expose Nazi Fifth Column activity.

HUAC was not caused by fear of communism; it was enabled by and exploited that fear. McC was a patently irrational small-time power-mad sleazeball. It is the great shame of America that it fell for him.

There could be no better example than HUAC of the danger of adopting the tactics and mind-set of the enemy. Specifically, show-trials, networks of blackmailed informants feeding innocent friends and family into the furnace, etc. Pathetic and disgusting, but very, very, dangerous.

Steven,

I am more certain than you that the philosophies and practices of liberty and enlightenment are overcoming anti-individualist and pro-socialist/collectivist/statist propaganda over most of western civilization. One of my own grown sons has been active for a few years in an objectivist group around the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, a hotbed of radical leftism for many decades. A couple of years ago, this group was instrumental in bringing professor Yaron Brook, one of the leading objectivists, to an appearance on the campus. I would not be surprised to learn that this particular philosophy of individualism, liberty and personal responsibility is progressing on a widespread basis.

I began reading the novels and philosophy of Ayn Rand more than 40 years ago, when I was working my way through the first of two university degrees in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The overall effect was akin to lighting a powerful torch in a pit of darkness. I think now that anyone who takes the trouble to school himself in a serious philosophy shall never be caught up in any kind of anti-individualism or other form of collectivism in which otherwise free people forge their own bonds of slavery and degradation.

Like you, I believe that the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) carried out fully useful purposes, both during World War II against German, Italian and Japanese fascism, and during our postwar struggle against international communism.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Bur Ives..Burl Ives I LOVE THAT MAN!!!