The Abominable has returned to Anacortes! After a year in lockdown, the iconic Burl Ives characters are open to the public and ready to make more happy holiday memories with you and yours! Make your way down to the Island of Misfit Toys (the Anacortes Museum Carnegie Library), and take some holiday selfies with all your favorite characters!
Each year since 2017, the Anacortes Museum has celebrated the bumbles and misfit toys with a December tribute to Rudolph and friends.
Most of the 18 large Christmas cutout murals featuring Rudolph, Sam the Snowman, Santa and other characters from the 1964 animated Christmas TV special "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," which featured Burl Ives as the narrator and voice of Sam the Snowman. These Christmas decorations were placed out each year in Anacortes on Burl and Dorothy Ives' street frontage at 2804 Oakes Ave., to the community's great delight. The Ives' moved to Anacortes in 1989. He died here in 1995 and she died in 2016. The murals are painted on wood and range from about 2 feet to 7.5 feet in height by Eddie Strivens of Anacortes.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a 1964 Christmas stop-motion animated television special produced by Videocraft International, Ltd. (later known as Rankin/Bass Productions) and currently distributed by Universal Television. It first aired Sunday, December 6, 1964, on the NBC television network in the United States, and was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of The General Electric Fantasy Hour. The special was based on the Johnny Marks song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" which was itself based on the poem of the same name written in 1939 by Marks' brother-in-law, Robert L. May. --Wikipedia
In 1990, Ives and Dorothy moved to Anacortes, Washington, where they lived at 2804 Oakes Avenue. He indulged his hobbies and became involved in his community, helping to raise funds for a pediatric facility and cultural center. But soon Ives' health began to suffer. On April 14, 1995, Ives died with Dorothy and his three stepchildren at his side
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives, born June 14, 1909, in Hunt City Township, Ill., grew up in a large, musical family. His father, Frank, was a migrant farmer. As they kept house and tended the family, Burl's mother, Cordella, and grandmother, Kate White, taught Burl and his six brothers and sisters how to sing Irish, Scottish and English folk songs.
He narrated the still-popular animated television movie "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."