Hoping Santa was good to you...!
The story of how Rudolph came to be
You know Dasher and Dancer and the rest of the gang. But do you
recall, the most "Perfect Christmas Crowd-Bringer" of all?
That's
how executives at Montgomery Ward originally described Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer, who first appeared in a 1939 book written by one of
the company's advertising copywriters and given free to children as a
way to drive traffic to the stores.
A first edition of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer",
bottom, and an original layout, top, part of a special collection at
Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. The book is from the estate of Robert
May, a Dartmouth graduate who wrote the famous story in 1939 as part of
a Montgomery Ward marketing campaign.
AP Photo/Toby Talbot
Curious
to know more about how Rudolph really went down in history? It's all in
the pages of a long-overlooked scrapbook compiled by the story's
author, Robert L. May, and
housed
at his alma mater, Dartmouth College.
May donated his
handwritten first draft and illustrated mock-up to Dartmouth before his
death at age 71 in 1976, and his family later added to what has become a
large collection of Rudolph-related documents and merchandise,
including a life-sized papier-mache reindeer that now stands among the
stacks at the Rauner Special Collections Library. But May's scrapbook
about the book's launch and success went unnoticed until last year, when
Dartmouth archivist Peter Carini came across it while looking for
something else.
"No one on staff currently knew we had it. I
pulled it out and all the pieces started falling out. It was just a
mess," Carini said.
The scrapbook, which has since been restored
and cataloged, includes May's list of possible names for his story's
title character — from Rodney and Rollo to Reginald and Romeo. There's a
map showing how many books went to each state and letters of praise
from adults and children alike.
The scrapbook also chronicles the
massive marketing campaign
Montgomery
Ward launched to drum up newspaper coverage of the book giveaway
and its efforts to promote it within the company.
Near the front
of the scrapbook is a large colored poster instructing Montgomery Ward
stores about how to order and distribute the book. An illustration of
Rudolph sweeps across the page, his name written in ornate script. There
are exclamation points galore. "The rollinckingest, rip-roaringest,
riot-provokingest, Christmas give-away your town has ever seen!" ''A
laugh and a thrill for every boy and girl in your town (and for their
parents, too!)"
Rudolph is described as "the perfect Christmas
crowd-bringer," if stores follow a few rules, including giving the book
only to children accompanied by adults. "This will limit 'street urchin'
traffic to a minimum, and will bring in the PARENTS ... the people you
want to sell!"
The response was overwhelming — at a time when a
print-run of 50,000 books was considered a best-seller, the company gave
away more than 2 million copies that first year and by the following
year was selling an assortment of Rudolph-themed toys and other items.
But
lest this become a story about corporate greed, it should be noted that
in 1947, Montgomery Ward took the unusual step of turning over the
copyright to the book to May, who was struggling financially after the
death of his first wife.
"He then made several million dollars
using that in various ways, through the movie, the song, merchandising
and things like that," Carini said. "I think it's a great story because
it shows how corporations used to think of themselves as part of civil
society and how much that has changed."
May eventually left
Montgomery Ward to essentially manage Rudolph's career, which really
took off after May's brother-in-law Johnny Marks wrote the song (made
famous by Gene Autry in 1949), and the release of a stop-motion animated
television special in 1964.
Both the song and movie depart
significantly from May's original plot, however. In May's story, Rudolph
doesn't live at the North Pole or grow up aspiring to pull Santa's
sleigh — he lives in a reindeer village and Santa discovers him while
filling Rudolph's stocking on a foggy Christmas Eve.
"And you,"
Santa tells Rudolph, "May yet save the day! Your wonderful forehead may
yet pave the way!'"
May's story is written in verse, similar to
"The Night Before Christmas" by Clement Clarke Moore, and opens, "'Twas
the day before Christmas and all through the hills/ The reindeer were
playing ... enjoying the spills."
"It's lovely to hear it read out
loud, it really comes alive," Virginia Herz, one of May's daughters,
said in a phone interview this week.
As a small child, Herz, who
declined to reveal her age, didn't think there was anything unusual
about growing up in a house surrounded by Rudolph merchandise. It wasn't
until she was older that she realized her father's job of "taking care
of Rudolph" was a bit different. She tells her grandchildren that their
great-grandpa wrote a story about Rudolph, not that he created the
character.
"As I child, that's how I felt. I knew my dad had
written a wonderful book about Rudolph and now there were Rudolph toys
and other things all around us," she said. "But it was no different than
the guy next door who sold cars, or the guy down the street who was a
painting contractor."
She acknowledges the myths that have become
entwined in Rudolph's history — including the notion that May wrote the
story as a Christmas gift for his older daughter, Barbara, when his wife
was dying of cancer and that a Montgomery Ward manager "caught wind of
the little storybook." In reality, Montgomery Ward assigned May to write
a Christmas book around the same time his wife was ill, Herz said.
''What's
out there on the Internet is a softer telling," she said. "My dad was
aware of it and considered it appropriate. There's the softer, romantic
version and the more fact-based version."
Herz said her father
would be thrilled to see how his creation and its many incarnations have
become part of American culture.
"I think he would be startlingly
amazed," she said. "It really is an eternal part of Christmas. He would
have been amazed."
I found the story of Rudolph very interesting...wouldn't it be great if corporations would bring back some of that mentality of being part of "Civil Society"..!!?
