Burl Ives Disney's "Summer Magic" with Hayley Mills, Dorothy McGuire, and Eddie Hodges, and a score by Robert and Richard Sherman. In 1964, he played the genie in the movie "The Brass Bottle" with Tony Randall and Barbara Eden. Ives' "A Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Silver and Gold" became Christmas standards after they were first featured in the 1964 NBC-TV presentation of the Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated family special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". Johnny Marks had composed the title song (originally an enormous hit for singing cowboy Gene Autry) in 1949, and producers Rankin and Bass retained him to compose the TV special's
Frosty the Snowman (film) people to record the song when it was released in 1950 (at the time the song had slightly different lyrics); he re-recorded the song for the special. Rankin/Bass veteran writer Romeo Muller adapted and expanded the story for television as he had done with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". "TV Guide" ranked the special number 4 on its 10 Best Family Holiday Specials list. In a school on Christmas Eve, a teacher hires Professor Hinkle, an inept magician, to entertain the children for their class Christmas party. After failing his first trick, he throws his hat away. Class is dismissed and