Your Most Pressing Questions about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

First of all, the burning question:

Did the original Rudolph live at the North Pole?

I always thought that, didn’t you? Rudolph was hanging around Santa’s workshop, bullied and left out, until the night when he was in the right place at the right time. Those other reindeer who wouldn’t play with him were the well-known Germanic-sounding troupe including Donder and Blitzen. Weren’t they? Well, no. Not in the story as initially written. For that, we have to go back to 1939, as the Great Depression waned, and visit the Chicago branch of Montgomery Ward, a member of that great department store chain whose catalogs provided so much reading material to lonely housewives out on the lone prair-ee. (The chain, often fondly called “Monkey Ward,” is alas no more, but I will proudly point out that my little portable sewing machine was bought at the Denver store more years ago than I care to think about. It’s still going strong, I’m happy to say.)

Anyway, the manager decided that it would be a nice idea for his branch to produce its own children’s book to give out as part of their annual holiday promotion. He gave the job to someone in the catalog copy department, Robert L. May, who was known for his quick wit at parties. May considered himself a failure, having always (of course) wanted to write the Great American Novel, but he set to work on the story. He came back to his boss with the tale of an underdog, the reindeer whose very feature that had made him the butt of jokes becoming the means of rescuing Santa Claus’s mission. To summarize, Rudolph is simply a reindeer who lives in some unspecified forest, while Santa Claus lives “way, way up North.” Rudolph sheds big tears over the teasing of his fellow reindeer. The poem deliberately references “Twas the Night Before Christmas”; its opening line is: “Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills/The reindeer were playing . . . enjoying the spills.” That night is very foggy, as we know, and Santa is having a hard time navigating. As he frantically tries to get all the presents delivered by morning, he gets to the reindeers’ house and spots Rudolph. (Yes, I know. Why is he delivering presents to reindeer? And why do they live in a house?) As Santa stumbles through the dark house he sees the red glow of Rudolph’s nose, wakes him up, and asks him to save the day. The presents are delivered on time, Rudolph is vindicated in front of the other reindeer, and all ends happily.

How Did the Original Story Become the Popular Song?

The boss was not impressed, though, asking May if he couldn’t do better. But May believed in his story and went to the effort of getting a buddy to draw up some sketches to go with it. Together they convinced the manager to go ahead. Work on the light-hearted little tale went on even as May’s wife sickened and died of cancer; he and his four-year-old daughter Barbara found Rudolph to be a comforting shared interest. Well, of course the little book was a hit. I haven’t run across a website that has the original printed version, but I can give you a link to a page giving the original sketches and layout. Two million copies were printed and distributed across the country. But May didn’t prosper from his creation at first. It wasn’t until around 1946 that MW’s CEO decided to give May the rights to the character and story, most likely thinking that Rudolph had had his run as a holiday novelty. It just so happened that May’s sister had just married a struggling young songwriter named Johnny Marks. He had apparently seen the story’s potential as a song back when it was first published, but now his brother-in-law owned it. So he got to work writing a finished version, even going to the length of spending $25,000 to start his own publishing company so that there would be no question that he owned the rights. Now all he needed was a Big Name to agree to record the song. He sent it off to four of the biggest: Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, and Gene Autry, the singing cowboy. Autry was the only one who responded; he was looking for a followup Christmas hit after his previous success with “Here Comes Santa Claus.” And did he ever get one, with his single selling 2 million copies. I don’t know how much money Robert May ended up getting from all this, but Marks made a mint, as once Autry made the song popular everyone else wanted to sing it. The royalties have been pouring in ever since. You can hear almost any conceivable version, from the Supremes to Willie Nelson to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Jewel. In any case, Rudolph’s nose is now solid gold.

Anything Else?

But wait—there’s more! I wrote the above material several years ago, and when a member of the Chorale, Marilyn Bogan, read the post she informed me that she had a personal connection to the author of the original poem:

When I was in elementary school in Evanston, Illinois, one of my best friends was Virginia May, daughter of Robert May who wrote the original story of Rudolph. [Virginia, “Ginger” to her friends, was born in 1946 to May and his second wife.] Each year at Christmas time, there was a large “Rudolph” on their lawn. We didn’t think much of it at the time, but my grandchildren have been excited to know about this relationship. Today Virginia manages the Robert L May Company which I would assume is based on proceeds from the book and any subsequent licensing.

Because I had written the original post mainly with material from the story NPR ran about May and his deer, I hadn’t read much further. But if you read the Wikipedia article on Robert L. May you will find out all sorts of interesting facts about him that I hadn’t known originally. And when I googled “Robert L. May Company,” sure enough, there it was, in Novato, CA, with a “Virginia Herz” listed as “partner.” So it looks like Virginia is carrying on her father’s work.

Are you familiar with fractals? They are designs that you can zoom into almost indefinitely, with deeper and deeper levels of complexity. Anyone’s life, anyone’s story, is a fractal. There’s always more to be said, more details, more explanations. So I started out with a simple little idea that I’d write about the true origins of the Rudolph character, and I stumbled upon this fascinating man and the tragedy in his life that was occurring as he wrote his story, and now I’ve found out a great deal more.

Just one little factoid more, I promise! We are told that May made Rudolph a deer because his daughter Barbara liked the ones at the Chicago zoo. But . . . he had to know about Santa’s reindeer in “The Night Before Christmas.” So even that one little idea probably isn’t all that simple. Can you imagine May’s mind skittering from the zoo to the poem, making a connection as his daughter said, “I like the deer, Daddy.” I’m sure that’s how it happened!

Well, here’s a very low-res video of Gene Autry singing his hit. (I was lucky to find any video at all.)