Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was born in 1939 as a marketing gimmick. This may surprise you, but the amazing thing is, Rudolph still draws ‘em in.

Rudolph began 67 years ago when the Montgomery Ward company asked one of their writers to come up with a little Christmas story they could give away to shoppers. The department store chain had been buying and giving away coloring books every year, but this year they wanted to save money by creating their own books.

The writer, Robert L. May, created the story of Rudolph inspired in no small part by the story The Ugly Duckling. Because May had been teased as a child for being a small and shy, he was drawn to this type of underdog story and believed other children would be as well.

He was right. In 1939, 2.4 million copies of the Rudolph booklet were given out. Rudolph was very popular; despite wartime paper shortages affecting printing, a total of 6 million copies of Montgomery Ward’s Rudolph were given away by the end of 1946.

After the war there was a great deal of interest in licensing the Rudolph character. Since May had created Rudolph as an employee of the department store chain, Montgomery Ward held the copyright and May saw no royalties.

In 1944 an animated Rudolph was made. This is the short cartoon that was endlessly shown on TV in the 50’s and 60’s. In a rare commercial credit, Max Fleischer (post the closure of his studio) produced this animation for The Jam Handy Organization. (Unlike most Rudolph products this animated film’s copyright wasn’t protected and it fell into the public domain. This is why it is included on many ‘cheap’ videos and DVDs.) This cartoon strictly adhered to May’s original story.

In order to receive any financial gain from his creation, May would need to secure the copyrights to Rudolph. In 1947 May did get those rights and that next year “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (created in 1944 by Max Fleischer) was finally shown in theaters.

However, the biggest success with Rudolph was when songwriter Johnny Marks, May’s brother in law, created the lyrics and melody that we now hear when we think of Rudolph. Mark’s lyrics tell a bit different tale of Rudolph (if you watch the original Fleischer cartoon, you’ll notice the differences).

Originally Mark’s song was turned down by many performers who didn’t want to mess with the long established Santa story. But in 1949 it was recorded by Gene Autry who sold two million copies that year. The song went on to become one of the best-selling songs of all time (second only to “White Christmas”).

It is interesting to note that Mark’s song is the reason we all list Santa’s reindeers’ names incorrectly. In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore gave us Santa’s reindeers’ names. He wrote them in his “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” which is more commonly known today by its opening line, “‘Twas the night before Christmas”. The lines read:

“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now, dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

Notice, the reindeer’s name is Donder, not Donner as Mark’s wrote it. (Now poor Donder is the maligned deer!)

Anyway, back to Rudolph…

In 1964 NBC ran the now traditional holiday TV special that most of us know and love. This stop motion animation with those now-familiar puppets and narrated by Burl Ives was created by Rankin/Bass. Even though it’s been available on video for years, CBS airs it every single year — making it the longest running TV special.

Generation after generation knows this version of Rudolph, which is based on the Mark’s song version of May’s story. This production by Rankin/Bass is now a part of our collective childhoods.

In 1976, a sequel to the Rankin-Bass original special, entitled Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, was produced. And a third, Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July, came in 1979. In 2001, a fourth in the series, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Island of Misfit Toys, was made. This last one was created entirely by computer animation as opposed to traditional stop-motion animation — however, care was taken to make the computer-generated characters resemble their original stop-motion counterparts as much as possible. Will more follow? Perhaps… We do love our Rudolph.

So many of us collect Rudolph items. Some of us focus on the vintage originals, as we preserve the history. A few collect items for their connections — to the author, to music or animation history. Others want any reindeer, any reindeer song. Many of us want all the original items from that 1964 TV special as well as the new theme games, ornaments & village & chacter pieces because we remember drinking cocoa with our sister as we both sat in our jammies and we want to hand that tradition down to our own children.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with Christmas. Maybe we just want all the Rudolphs we can get because we too felt like ugly ducklings and hope to become swans in our own right. But whatever our reindeer games, we collect them just the same.

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Article Tags: marketing gimmick, Montgomery Ward, red nose, reindeer, Rudolph

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 2:23 am and is filed under collecting fyi, decorating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.