Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor

1958

Burl Ives 

as

Rufus Hannassey

The Big Country

Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995) was an American folk singer and actor of stage, screen, radio and television.

He began as an itinerant singer and banjoist, and launched his own radio show 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 sang many country hits such as A Little Bitty Tear and Funny Way of Laughing, while expanding his film career, notably as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Rufus Hannassey in The Big Country, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Ives was a lifelong supporter of the Boy Scouts of America.