As the late 1930s dawned, Montgomery Ward had established a regular practice of giving away children's coloring books for Christmas every year. The usual route ahd been to acquiare the books from a third party. However, the drive for thriftiness inspired the powers that be, and so they decided that the 1939 book would be produced in-house. For this task, the company turned to Robert May, who wound up writing a work based upon the concept of a reindeer with a red nose, that at first faced adversity but was then accepted into the inner circle of the reindeer. When May completed his assignment, he had a poem that was set in the same meter as "Twas the Night Befroe Christmas", and Montgomery Ward was left with a massive hit. In fact, the store gave away more than 2.5 Million copies of the story in the very first year that it had come out.
A few years later, May's brother-in-law composed a song from the words in the poem, turning it into a song, which was turned into a much-acclaimed hit in 1949 by Gene Autry. In 1964, the tale and song took on a new level of fame when the stop-motion Rudolph film came out that year. Over the years, Rudolph has become an integral part of America's Christmas traditions.
However, one more thing. Rudolph's red nose almost ended his life before it began. When May's first drafts came before Ward's people, the character was rejected due to the fact that a red nose was a metaphor for chronic alcoholism at the time. However, May managed to make Rudolph 'cuter', and saved the day for us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment