How Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer got Started

Subject: How Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer got Started Thu Nov 06, 2008 2:16 pm

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Ugly Duckling of Santa’s reindeer herd. The Montgomery Ward Co. had been for years buying and giving out coloring books for Christmas at their stores, in an attempt to cut their cost they had one of their employees, copywriter Robert May write a story. Robert May wrote the story to cheer up his 4yr old daughter Barbara whose mother was dieing of cancer. Rollo then Reginald were the first names he'd named the deer before he settled on Rudolph. His wife died shortly before the story was published.
He had Denver Gillen from the Ward’s art dept. illustrated the story. Montgomery Ward’s distributed 2.4 million copies of the booklet in 1939.

In 1947 Montgomery Ward’s gave the copyright to May who had become deeply indebted with his wife’s medical bills. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was printed commercially in 1947 and a cartoon came out in 1947 to be shown in theaters. Songwriter Johnny Marks wrote a musical version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, taking a few liberties with May’s story. May’s Rudolph lived in a reindeer village elsewhere, not the North Pole with Santa’s reindeer, May’s grew up in a good household though taunted by other reindeer, and May’s Rudolph was discovered by accident when Santa seen his glowing nose while he was delivering presents to Rudolphs’ house, and being already distressed the by fog, asked Rudolph to lead his sleigh.
Gene Autry recorded Mark’s song in 1949, selling two million copies the first year and became the second top selling song of all time. In 1964 Rankin/Bass TV special was made and narrated by Burl Ives, which is still popular Christmas rerun.