Rudolph Lit Up Creator’s Career

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who turns 50 this year, saved more than just Christmas when he pulled Santa’s sleigh by the light of his famous snout. He saved his creator, Robert May, from financial ruin, May’s daughter recalls.

“My father said that Rudolph was the only reindeer in history that kept the wolf from the door,” said Virginia Herz of Novato, Calif. “It was definitely the highlight of his life.”

May was an advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward in Chicago when he invented the little reindeer--originally called Rollo--as a promotional gimmick in 1939.

The store handed out millions of copies of the story annually until the paper shortages of World War II. It reintroduced Rudolph in 1946, but gave May the copyright in January, his daughter said.

It proved a turning point for the May family fortunes.

May had the story commercially published with some success in 1947, and it was released in 1948 as a nine-minute theatrical cartoon.

But it was in 1949 that Rudolph really took flight, when songwriter Johnny Marks, married to May’s sister, put Rudolph’s story to music and Gene Autry recorded it.

“From what I hear, it was Gene Autry’s wife who really liked the song a lot and encouraged him to sing it,” Herz said.

The song sold millions of copies during the 1949 Christmas season, she said. In 1974, it became the basis for an animated television special.

Rudolph’s popularity translated to concrete gains for the Mays, Herz said.

The family was able to move from a small apartment to a four-bedroom house--”the house that Rudolph built,” May would joke--and the copyright residuals paid for college for May’s six children.

The copyright now is held by a company formed by May’s children and managed by Herz.

Before his death in 1976, May donated his original manuscript and the original pencil illustrations to Dartmouth College, which he attended. His children donated their collection of Rudolph memorabilia to the school’s Baker Library, where it is displayed annually.

The display features a larger-than-life-size Rudolph statue that once graced the Mays’ lawn in suburban Chicago.

“People would drive by and show their kids, ‘There’s Rudolph,’ ” Herz said.

For Herz, sharing a childhood with the world’s most famous reindeer provided an interesting juxtaposition of real life and fantasy.

“Right after the song came out and Rudolph was still in his heyday, I was still believing in Santa Claus,” she said. “Rudolph definitely existed for me. I just thought my father wrote a story about him. It was kind of a unique experience.”

The Rudolph bonanza gave May a feeling of accomplishment he hadn’t experienced before, she said.

“Being in the Montgomery Ward ad department all those years wasn’t really that exciting,” she said. “It was a real gift in the whole way that Wards had given it back to him, so it brought him a lot of joy.”

May “was kind of an underdog,” Herz said, hence his story of the reindeer that gets called names and refused entry into reindeer games.

“In a way, Rudolph is almost his story,” she said.