We start out with the loftiest goals, looking to climb the highest mountains, but life has a funny way of getting in the way. As we grow up, our goals become more reasonable, our mountains more climbable. But sometimes, life has a funny way of making our dreams come true in a way we least expect.
This is the forgotten history of The Copywriter’s Story.
Robert was going to write the great American novel; he just knew it. A witty and endlessly creative young man, he was the life of every party with his parodies and limericks and his friends all believed that one day the world would be reading his work.
But as the years passed, the responsibilities of a family meant that a steady paycheck took precedence over a far-off dream, and Robert took a job as a copywriter with the Montgomery Ward department store. At 35, he was writing magazine ads for blouses instead of America’s Hamlet. He thought himself a failure, but his wife Evelyn still believed in him.
Even when he was at his lowest, thinking he would never be anything more than a lowly copywriter, she encouraged him to keep following his dream.
In the summer of 1939, Robert’s boss recognized his creativity and tasked him with creating a new Christmas character for a storybook that Montgomery Ward would hand out to children that December. He accepted but wasn’t quite sure he could get into the Christmas spirit. Evelyn had just been diagnosed with cancer and her prognosis wasn’t good. Still, her treatments put the family deeply in debt and Robert desperately needed any money he could earn.
After a visit to the zoo and an afternoon of deep thought, he settled on a reindeer as the main character of his story. But not just any reindeer, an outcast underdog who just needed a chance to shine—a reindeer just like his creator, Robert L. May.
Before he could put pen to paper, though, tragedy struck: Evelyn passed away. His boss offered to transfer the Christmas story to another copywriter, but Robert insisted that he keep working. Each night, he would read portions of his story to his four-year-old daughter Barbara. When it was finished, he called her and Evelyn’s parents into their living room and read them his story, which he called “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
After he finished, he glanced up and when he saw the looks in their eyes, he knew he had created something special. But his boss wasn’t convinced, especially about Rudolph’s red nose. In the late 1930s, it was the recognized symbol of alcoholism and Montgomery Ward couldn’t very well have its new Christmas character be a drunk, but Robert was insistent: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would be a massive success.
He was right. That Christmas, the store distributed a staggering 2.4 million copies of Robert’s book. But it made him neither rich nor famous: Montgomery Ward gave the book away, so there were no profits to be made, and since the store owned the rights to the character, Robert couldn’t use Rudolph in any new works.
Making matters worse, when the U.S. entered World War II, paper rationing meant Montgomery Ward couldn’t publish any Christmas stories for the next seven years. Rudolph faded into obscurity, and by Christmas 1946, the CEO of Montgomery Ward took pity on the still-struggling copywriter and signed the rights to Rudolph back to Robert.
He took his creation to every publishing company in New York, but every single one passed until a tiny company called Maxton—with an owner who saw himself in Rudolph—took a chance. The hardcover edition was a massive success, and so was the accompanying spoken-word record.
Its success prompted Robert, now remarried, to ask his brother-in-law Johnny Marks—a fledgling songwriter—to adapt the story into a new Christmas song. Once again, Rudolph was the reindeer no one seemingly wanted. Superstars Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore turned down the chance to record the song, but finally Gene Autry—the singing cowboy himself—fell in love with Rudolph and recorded a version for Christmas 1949.
The song exploded nearly overnight, quickly becoming the second-biggest selling Christmas carol of all time, surpassed only by Crosby’s “White Christmas.” Rudolph was a bona fide phenomenon, with countless children (and adults too) seeing themselves in the outcast underdog who saves Christmas.
The song’s massive success spawned an equally successful TV special and nearly every piece of merchandise imaginable. Rudolph became, almost overnight, a Christmas institution. And he made his creator a wealthy and famous man. He never did write the great American novel, but he created the quintessentially American Christmas figure, and for that, just like Rudolph, Robert L. May went down in history.