🎅 The history behind the creation of Rudolph the Reindeer; Robert L. May & Montgomery Ward
From Svengoolie's Blog (MeTV) December 24, 2022
by TheKodakKid
You know Dasher and Dancer, Comet and Cupid, Prancer and Vixen, Dunder and Blixem, but do you recall the story behind the most famous reindeer of all?
Rudolph came to life in 1939 when the Montgomery Ward company asked one of their copywriters, 34 year old Robert L. May, to come up with a Christmas story they could give away in booklet form to shoppers as a promotional gimmick-the Montgomery Ward stores had been buying and distributing coloring books to customers at Christmastime every year, and they saw creating a giveaway booklet of their own as a way to save money. Robert May, who had a penchant for funny stories and limericks, was tapped to create the booklet.
May, drawing in part on the tale of the Ugly Duckling and his own background (he was often taunted as a child for being shy, small, and slender), settled on the idea of an underdog ostracized by the reindeer community because of his physical abnormality: a glowing red nose. Looking for an alliterative name, May considered and rejected a number of possibilities, including Rolo (too cheerful and carefree for the story of a misfit) and Reginald (too British) before deciding on Rudolph. He then proceeded to write Rudolph's story in verse as a series of rhyming couplets, testing it out on his four-year-old daughter, Barbara, as he went along.
Although Barbara was thrilled with Rudolph's story, May's boss was worried that a story featuring a red nose-an image associated with drinking and drunkards-was unsuitable for a Christmas tale. May responded by getting Denver Gillen, a friend from Montgomery Ward's Art Department, to draw up some sketches. Together they convinced the boss. Montgomery Ward distributed 2.4 million copies of the Rudolph booklet in 1939, and although wartime paper shortages curtailed printing for the next several years, a total of 6 million copies had been distributed by the end of 1946.
The post-war demand for licensing the Rudolph character was tremendous, but since May had created the story on a "work made for hire" basis as an employee of Montgomery Ward, that company held the copyright to Rudolph and May received no royalties for his creation. By this time May was deeply in debt from medical bills resulting from his wife's terminal illness (she died of cancer about the time May created Rudolph). Montgomery Ward's president, Sewell Avery, turned the copy write over to him in January 1947. The reason is unclear. May's daughter said the bosses never thought Rudolph had potential as more than a holiday promotion, but we'd like to think that doing right by his fellow man was the chief motivating factor. (Unlike Santa Claus and other familiar Christmas figures of the time, the Rudolph character was a protected trademark that required licensing and the payment of royalties for commercial use.)
"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was reprinted commercially beginning in 1947 and shown in theaters as a nine-minute cartoon the following year, but the Rudolph phenomenon really took off when May's brother-in-law, up-and-coming songwriter Johnny Marks, developed the lyrics and melody for a Rudolph song. Marks musical version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was rejected by a number of singers before it was recorded as the "B" side of 45 by cowboy crooner Gene Autry in 1949. It sold two million copies that year, and sent on to become one of the best-selling Christmas songs of all time (second only to "White Christmas"). A stop-action television special about Rudolph narrated by Burl Ives was first aired in 1964 and remains a popular perennial holiday favorite in the U.S.
May quit his copy writing job in 1951 and spent seven years managing the Rudolph franchise before returning to Montgomery Ward, where he worked until his retirement in 1971. May died in 1976, comfortable in the life his reindeer creation had provided him and his family.
The story of Rudolph is primarily known to us through the lyrics of Johnny Mark's song (which provides only the barest outlines of Rudolph's story) and the 1964 television special. The story Robert May wrote is substantially different from both of them in a number of ways. Despite these differences, and his beginnings as a giveaway gimmick, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" has gone down in history as a much-loved Christmas classic.
Here’s a link where you can see the original illustrations to the story, and listen to it read by Rudolph’s “Big Sister.”
https://www.npr.org/2015/12/25/461005670/the-history-of-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer