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‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ remains a beloved holiday song, thanks in no small part to singer Burl Ives’ warm, mellow voice. It lights up Christmas every year.The singer and actor Burl Ives could easily have played Father Christmas in any stage or film production. The Illinois-born entertainer had the girth (he weighed an imposing 300 pounds), the white beard, the chuckle, and the grin of the very best Santas. It’s fitting, then, that he should be best remembered for the Christmas song “Holly Jolly Christmas.” Ives, one of the stars of the movie Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and winner...

Burl Ives - Holly Jolly Christmas (Merry Christmas, FReepers!)

"Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" by Burl Ives for Boston Legal. And staying with Boston Legal for Christmas, "Angels We Have Heard on High" from the Jug Mountain Boys

Tributes to two of the most famous American entertainers of the 20th century serve as a reminder of how fame flees. The entertainers are Bing Crosby and Bob Hope; the reminders are the documentary “American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered,” which had its premiere last week (and will run again on Dec. 26 ) on PBS, and “Hope: Entertainer of the Century,” a new biography by Richard Zoglin. Neither Crosby nor Hope have much cachet with contemporary consumers of art and culture, but the accounts of their careers make convincing cases that their contributions still influence their respective fields, even if...

Today's feature is one of my favorite epic westerns of all time. "The Big Country" features a terrific cast and perhaps the most memorable western score ever by Jerome Moross. Charlton Heston is terrific in an atypically, unheroic role for him. Wm. Wyler was so impressed with him he cast him as "Ben-Hur" the next year. The lovely Jean Simmons is fantastic as well as the beautiful and intelligent school marm whose ranch is the centerpiece of the feud. Of all Gregory Peck's leading ladies, she's the one he had the best chemistry with. The scene where they swap horror...

Larry Buchanan, the filmmaker who has died aged 81, specialised in the niche market for what he called "guerrilla filmmaking" - truly dreadful B-movies with such names as Zontar, the Thing from Venus; Curse of the Swamp Creature; Naughty Dallas and Mars Needs Women, a film which reputedly features in every list of the worst movies ever made. But even this last title found a market, and reached its widest audiences in a version dubbed into Yiddish. Buchanan combined the roles of producer, director, screenwriter, editor and, where appropriate, voice-over narrator. He was unashamed, even proud, of tacky production values,...