(Originally
published 12/16/10)
Once upon
a time, at the behest of his employer, department store Montgomery Ward, Robert
L. May penned a children’s Christmas tale. This retail chain desired some sort
of holiday giveaway that would win the hearts and minds of little girls and
boys and, more importantly, the pocketbook loyalties of their mommies and
daddies. May, a low-on-the totem-pole advertising copywriter, did not
disappoint with his story,
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which
chronicled the ups and downs of a distinct member of a very cold society that
celebrated, above all else, conformity.
While
Rudolph
was not exactly autobiographical, May, after all, was not a four-legged
creature with antlers and a nose that, both inexplicably and unpredictably,
cast a powerfully bright red luminescence into the ether. Nevertheless, he
loosely based the Rudolph character on his own youth as a short and shy boy
frequently picked on for being somehow different from the rest of the crowd.
Debuting
in 1939, Montgomery Ward dispensed with more than two million
Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer booklets at their myriad stores. Even World War II and a
simultaneous paper shortage did not derail ongoing sales. Six million copies
were in print by 1946. This could mean only thing:
Rudolph was a bona
fide phenomenon. Seeking to take this beloved misfit of a reindeer to new
heights, wannabe licensees of all stripes came a-calling.
Unfortunately,
from Mr. May's perspective, all rights to Rudolph belonged to the
Montgomery Ward Company. And, at the time, his personal life was a sorry mess.
His wife, who had long suffered from cancer had passed away, leaving him a
widower with a young daughter to raise and a pile of medical bills to pay,
which he could ill afford. May importuned a man named Sewell Avery, the
Montgomery Ward chairman, to hand over the Rudolph copyright to its
creator, and Avery complied—a rare act of corporate benevolence that would be
inconceivable today. May would no longer have to sweat the bucks and could pay
his bills and then some, particularly after two million Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer records were sold with Gene Autry singing the lyrics
written by Johnny Marks, who just happened to be May’s brother-in-law. Of
course, it was the 1964 television special narrated by the avuncular Burl Ives
that brought Rudolph and friends to life in perpetuity.
As a
footnote here, the original story and the television telling are at odds in a
few critical areas. For example, Rudolph had a supportive family in the book.
His father was not smudging mud on his nose to conceal his so-called deformity,
nor was dad "Donner," a member of Santa's elite team of reindeer.
Remember in the TV special old Donner's embarrassed non-reaction to the oafish
and callous reindeer flying coach—a prototype of a high school gym teacher—who
said, "From now on gang, we won't allow Rudolph to play in any reindeer
games." In the book, Rudolph’s family also lived in a working-class
community of reindeer, not tony Christmas Town lorded over by the irritable
King of Jing-a-ling, who could have, by the way, made Rudolph's young,
impressionable life a whole lot less traumatic had he only seen the light a
little sooner.
