The Chicago Roots of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”

The tale of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer has been loved throughout the world for generations. And it was created in Chicago, with the city even serving as inspiration for part of the story. For more holiday fun in the Windy City, take the Museum of Illusions’ Christmas Tree Adventure Scavenger Hunt or visit one of the many holiday-themed pop-ups that run through the end of the year.

By Dave Lifton (@daveeatschicago)

During Christmastime, Chicago-based catalog mail-order and retail giant Montgomery Ward used to give out coloring books to children at its more than 600 stores. Wanting to save money in 1939, the company decided to make its own book. One of its copywriters, Robert L. May, was enlisted with the task, told only that the main character had to be an animal.

But May wasn’t infused with Christmas spirit in early 1939. His wife of 10 years, Evelyn, was dying of cancer. In addition, May, who graduated magna cum laude with a degree in psychology from Dartmouth, was down on himself.

“‘And how are you starting the new year?’ I glumly asked myself,” he wrote in 1975. “Here I was, heavily in debt at age 35, still grinding out catalogue copy. Instead of writing the great American novel, as I’d once hoped, I was describing men’s white shirts. It seemed I’d always been a loser.”

He chose a reindeer as the star because it was already associated with Christmas and his four-year-old daughter Barbara had become fond of the deer at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The fog off Lake Michigan caused May to wonder how Santa could ride in those conditions, and determined a bright red nose would work. Wanting to keep the alliteration, May made a list of names starting with “R”—including Reginald, Rodney, and Rollo—before thinking Rudolph sounded best.

May based the story on both the classic tale of the Ugly Duckling and his own childhood as a shy, bookish kid who felt isolated from his peers. His department head, however, was skeptical, especially since having a red nose was associated with alcoholism. Shortly thereafter, Robert, Barbara, and a Montgomery Ward illustrator named Denver Gillen went to the zoo to see the deer. Gillen made a few sketches and after May’s boss saw them, he received the go-ahead to continue.

Unfortunately, Evelyn passed away in July 1939. Robert was given the option of removing himself from the project, but he declined, and threw himself deeper into the project to take his mind off of grief. Within a month he had completed the 89-couplet poem that was spread out over 32 pages, complete with Gillen’s artwork.  

The story was an immediate success. Montgomery Ward distributed 2.4 million copies of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that Christmas, but it was shelved due to a paper shortage during World War II.

Seven years later, RCA-Victor contacted Ward’s about making a recording of the poem set to music. May, who didn’t make any additional money from it because Montgomery Ward owned the copyright to his work, used the offer to try to secure the rights for himself. After much debate, Montgomery Ward Chairman Sewell Avery gave May the rights to Rudolph for free, starting in 1947. The delay gave the store an opportunity to reissue the tale for that Christmas, when another 3.4 million books were printed.

With May now able to profit from his creation, RCA’s record and a for-sale edition of the book arrived in 1947, with an eight-minute Max Fleischer cartoon coming a year later. Then, May asked his brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, to turn Rudolph’s story into a song. The tune was sent to Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore, both of whom rejected it. So did Gene Autry, “The Singing Cowboy,” but his wife persuaded him to record it. Released in September 1949, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” went to No. 1 on both the Billboard Pop Singles and Country & Western charts and sold 1.75 million copies that season. Nine years later, Marks penned another entry into the Christmas canon, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” first made famous by Brenda Lee.

By 1964, the “Rudolph” song had become a seasonal standard. A few years earlier, Marks’ friend, Arthur Rankin, formed a production company with Jules Bass. Rankin approached the songwriter about creating a TV special based on the story for the GE Fantasy Hour, which aired on NBC. Romeo Muller’s script fleshed out May’s tale with a host of misfits who accept the exiled Rudolph until it’s time for his flight of destiny, and Marks wrote seven more songs, including “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” Shot in Tadahito Mochinaga’s “Animagic” stop-motion animation style, Rankin/Bass’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a huge hit, and it has been re-broadcast every holiday season since.

All three entities mined Rudolph for more material over the years. Robert L. May licensed the name for dozens of products and wrote a pair of sequels. Rankin/Bass produced many more animated Christmas specials through 1985, including two more Rudolph stories for which Marks contributed the songs. The Rankin/Bass versions of Rudolph and Santa Claus, plus two other characters from the special—Hermey and Bumble—were honored as stamps by the U.S. Postal Service in 2014, the 50^th anniversary of the show’s premiere.

May passed away in 1976, secure in the knowledge that his story of the underdog using the gift that made him special continues to resonate well beyond its origins as a promotional giveaway.

“My reward is knowing that every year when Christmas rolls around,” he wrote, “Rudolph still brings that message to millions young and old.”