Runaway Rudolph

Author of a book that has had two editions totalling 5,841,016 copies but that hasn't as yet sold a single one is the paradoxical achievement of Robert L. May '26. His Rudolph the Red-NosedReindeer, a children's Christmas story originally written for MontgomeryWard & Co. as a give-away book, has reached and passed the five-and-threequarter million mark and is only exceeded in printing totals by the Bible.

When May conceived the idea for Rudolph in 1939 he was a copy writer for Ward's Retail Sales Department and his final effort, which he tested on his then five-year-old daughter Barbara, involves, as you might suspect, a reindeer whose chief oddity was a red nose which glowed at night and dazzled during the day. Rudolph overcame the social onus imposed on him by other more normal-nosed reindeer by providentially guiding Santa Claus on his Christmas trip one fog-bound Christmas Eve using his nose for a beacon.

The unprecedented popularity of his creation which sent the customers in Ward's retail stores into minor stampedes seems likely to carry May and Rudolph much farther afield than the mail order business now that May has acquired all rights to Rudolph from Ward's. A pottery concern is dickering with him now for the rights to make a ceramic Rudolph; Victor Records is in the process recording Rudolph; Hollywood is shuffling eagerly on the outskirts of the crowd with ideas about cartooning Rudolph; and four separate book publishers are bidding for the privilege of professionally printing Rudolph.

Throughout it all, May, although admittedly pleased, has remained refreshingly unimpressed by his success. He doesn't think he'll ever try anything more ambitious than Rudolph.

"I haven't been around very much and I don't know that I have any great message to give."

ROBERT L. MAY '26