Now many critics claim that the Rudolph story has climbed along side Moore’s poem. Until Rudolph came along, there was only the 127-year old Clement Moore version of the story to fill the need. They want to hear about Santa Claus and his magic ride. The other reason, of course, is that Christmas is the big time of the year for Children. When Rudolph eventually rides to glory with Santa, each child rides with him. with Cinderella, the Ugly Duckling, Rudolph. That’s why children, even more quickly than adults, identify themselves with the underdog in a story. No matter how well adjusted they are, they just can’t help feeling pretty small and helpless alongside the adults that tower around them. He thinks, tho, that there are two reasons that make Rudolph get up and run.Ĭhildren are the little people, the underdogs of the world. What took Rudolph out if the class of just another Christmas story and into the fabulous land of living legend? May, himself, admits he doesn’t really know, and that he certainly had no foreknowledge of the furor was to result from completing a rather routine writing assignment 11 years ago. And one record, Gene Autrey’s version, was reproduced nearly 2,000,000 times. Last year, in song, Rudolph was really up there on the hit parade. This year 1,000,000 copies of the book may supply the demand. A publisher put out the next edition, 100,000 of Rudolph. Then, in 1947, the company turned the copyright over to May. The war and the paper shortage sent Rudolph back to the Eskimo country until 1946, when the company took him out of cold storage and distributed 3,600,000 copies of the free book. Rudolph was on his way, but not even May knew it. This shattered all records for any first edition of any book. Two million, four hundred thousand copies of the book were distributed in 1939. The story was written in about 50 hours (including time spent in reading various versions to the now disdainful Barbara). Rudolph was the result of this assignment. May, then an advertising copywriter given the job of writing a Christmas story to be given away to children in a nation-wide chain of department stores (Montgomery Ward). Rudolph was written as assignment in 1939. The children, left to right: Barbara, 16 Christopher, 8 Ginger, 5 and Joanna, 9. May on the porch of the home that Rudolph “built” in suburban Skokie. Nicholas.” How does a Christmas tradition start? How does an average guy like Bob May turn from an ad man to children’s poet? What us there about the story that is so enchanting to children? There is no question but that Rudolph has become a legend-the first new and accepted Christmas legend since Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” and Clement Moore’s “A Visit from St. And, worst humiliation of all, they have often heard him described as “Rudolph’s father’-which makes the socially unacceptable deer their half-brother, at least. They have heard their father called “Rudolph” innumerable times by somewhat less than witty friends. They have tested all the various Rudolph endorsed products, from children’s feeding dishes to stuffed toys. They have listened to Rudolph recited, sung, and honored. The other three May children have never lived in a normal household where a deer is not the man who came to dinner (and stayed for life). She has given eleven years of her life to Rudolph, and considers that quite enough. Barbara May was the original listener to her father’s verse-book about the ostracized young reindeer with the illuminated, over-size nose. So they voted in a family ordinance forbidding me to talk about Rudolph until after their bedtime.” Virginia, Bob’s wife, tactfully refrained from casting a vote. I talked so much about Rudolph at the supper table,” explained May, “that there wasn’t time for the children to tell about the more important things that happened to then during the day. Almost from the moment of Rudolph’s birth, May (and his family) entered into a bondage that finally resulted in revolt by the four May children, Barbara, Joanna, Christopher, and Ginger, now aged 16, 9, 8, and 5. Bob May is the creator of Rudolph-and by right of that creation, he has on his hands one of the most amazing (and benign) Frankenstein monsters in literary history. Living in the house, by kind of a squatter’s right, is the Robert L. The short-horned Durante built the place himself (buck by buck, you might say!). And the sad truth is that this is Rudolph’s own home. RUDOLPH, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, may be an enchanting Christmas legend to small fry, and a lilting holiday tune to older folks, but in one Chicagoland home the children wish that the neon-nosed reindeer would go lose himself-but good! May and given away by a mail order company. Largest first edition yet recorded, the 2,400,000 copies of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, written by Robert L.
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