Robert L. May

He went on to graduate from New Rochelle High School in 1922, and from Dartmouth College in 1926, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received his A.B.

[1] At Dartmouth, May majored in psychology, and was exposed to the work of Alfred Adler, whose thesis was that the basic human motivation is a striving for perfection and self-assertion that stems from a desire to overcome feelings of inferiority.

Adler's impact on May is strongly suggested by the fact that several of the children's stories he later wrote involved a hero striving to overcome a physical handicap that had produced a deep sense of inferiority.

His parents were likewise hard hit by the Depression: his father Milton's business, the May Lumber Co., was forced to close and the family lost most of their wealth.

[9][7] May had some difficulty finding a new job, but in 1933, he was hired as advertising manager and copywriter for Gimbel Brothers department store in New York City.

Early in 1936, May resigned from Gimbel's in order to move to Chicago where he took on a low-paying job as in-house advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward.

[11] Early in 1939, May's boss at Montgomery Ward asked him to write a "cheery children's book" for Christmas shoppers, suggesting "it should be an animal story, with a character like Ferdinand the Bull", which was then recently released as a short film by Walt Disney.

Evelyn was dying of cancer and he was struggling to support his family and pay for her medical treatments on a salary of $5,000/year (equivalent to $109,522 in 2023).

"[7] He and his then four-year-old daughter Barbara, together with Montgomery Ward artist Denver Gillen, visited Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo one Saturday to get a better idea of what Rudolph might look like.

At the encouragement of Wilbur H. Norton, a company vice-president, Ward's president, Sewell Avery, gave May the copyright to the poem, free and clear.

[24] The same was true of RCA Victor's 45-rpm spoken-word version of the poem, narrated by Paul Wing with music by George Kleinsinger.

[27] A number of other Rudolph products were also put on the market that year, including a stuffed reindeer toy, picture-puzzle books, and children's slippers.

Though the song was initially turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore, it was finally recorded in 1949 by Gene Autry, whose wife persuaded him to sing it.

[29][30][7] The song became a phenomenal success, recorded by many famous artists, including Mitch Miller,[31] Dean Martin,[32] and Perry Como[33]—and eventually even Crosby.

It has become popular in a short time, and there are signs that this 'rejected' deer will be fused with Santa Claus in Christmas lore.

The first, Rudolph's Second Christmas, was a 1951 RCA Victor phonograph album narrated by Paul Wing;[39] it did not appear in book form until 1992, long after May had died.

[43] Rudolph became popular in Europe, Australia and Canada, and achieved limited acceptance in some Latin American countries where Santa Claus is not a traditional part of the Christmas season.

In addition to an English version put out in Britain, a Danish edition was published in Copenhagen in 1951, under the title Rensydret Rudolf med den Røde Tud.

[45] Several French editions were published in Paris, under the title Le Petit Renne au Nez Rouge.

[48] In addition to his Rudolph stories, May published several other children's books: Benny the Bunny Liked Beans (1940);[49] Winking Willie (1948);[50] and Sam the Scared-est Scarecrow (1972).

The first, an eight-minute animated film directed by Max Fleischer and narrated by Paul Wing, was a 1948 promotional piece made by Montgomery Ward.

[57] Three years later, GoodTimes produced an animated sequel, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys.

[62] May was active in civic affairs, planning and writing the City of Chicago's Community Fund Campaign in 1941, 1942 and 1945.