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
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer widely parodied and imitated in the decades since its original airing. The success of the special led to two sequels "Rudolph's Shiny New Year" (premier air date December 10, 1976) which continued the reindeer's journeys, and the series was made into a trilogy with the 1979 feature-length film "Christmas in July", which integrated the "Rudolph" universe into that of Rankin/Bass's adaptation of "Frosty the Snowman". "" (1998) is an animated feature film. It received only a limited theatrical release before debuting on home video. Its inclusion of a villain, a love interest, a sidekick, and a strong protector are more