Inside the very shiny life of a 75-year-old marketing gimmick
(via Smithsonian.com)
by Ann Hodgman
There was his nose, to begin with. In the first version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” it glowed “like the eyes of a cat,” and Rudolph’s friends nicknamed him Ruddy because of it. When Santa came in on Christmas Eve, he found Rudolph’s bedroom alight with a rosy glow that Santa pretended was coming from his forehead. (“To call it a big, shiny nose would sound horrid!”)
Rudolph was born 75 years ago this Christmas season, at the Montgomery Ward department store headquarters in Chicago. He was the star of a humble coloring book, written by a copywriter, Robert May, who almost named the protagonist “Reginald.” May, who’d been lonely as a child, based the character on himself. Store executives fretted that shoppers might think Rudolph’s nose was red because he was drunk, but something about Rudolph’s story spoke to people. He was an outcast, down on his luck. When Santa gave him a job (it was the Great Depression, after all)—well, something clicked. That Christmas, the company passed out two and a half million copies of the book…
Every Moment Has A Song 