May grew up in an affluent, secular Jewish home in New Rochelle, New York. He had a brother and two sisters. One of the sisters, Evelyn May, is the grandmother of the well-known economist Steven D. Levitt, of “Freakonomics” fame. Another sister, Margaret, married (Jewish) songwriter Johnny Marks in 1947. May graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1926. Both of his parents were hard hit by the Great Depression (1929) and lost their wealth. Sometime in the 1930s, he moved to Chicago and took a job as a low-paid in-house advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward.
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| Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a fictional male reindeer with a glowing red nose, popularly known as "Santa's 9th Reindeer." Whenever depicted, he is the lead reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve. The luminosity of his nose is so great that it illuminates the team's path through inclement winter weather. |
Because May’s (Jewish) wife, Evelyn, had contracted cancer in 1937 and was quite ill as he started on the book in early 1939, many people believe that her fragile health inspired May to base the character of Rudolph upon her. However, we do know that May "drew on memories of his own painfully shy childhood when creating his Rudolph stories." He decided on making a deer the central character of the book because his then 4-year-old daughter, Barbara, loved the deer in the Chicago zoo.
He ran verses and chapters of the Rudolph poem by Barbara to make sure
they entertained children. The final version of the poem was first read
to Barbara and his wife’s parents.
Evelyn May died in July, 1939. His boss offered to take him off the
book assignment in light of his wife’s death. May refused and completed
the poem in August, 1939. The Rudolph poem booklet was first distributed
during the 1939 holiday season. Shoppers loved the poem and 2.4 million
copies were distributed.
War time restrictions on paper use prevented a re-issue until 1946. In
that year, another 3.6 million copies were distributed to Montgomery
Ward shoppers.
In 1946, May received an offer from a company that wanted to do a spoken-word record of the poem.
May could not give his approval (and be compensated) because Montgomery
Ward held the rights to the poem. In late 1946 or early 1947, Sewell Avery,
the company’s president, gave the copyright rights to the poem to May,
free and clear. The spoken-word version of the poem was a big sales
success.
In 1947, Harry Elbaum, the head of a small New York publishing
company, took a chance and put out an updated print edition of the
Rudolph (poem) book. Other publishers had passed on the book, believing
that the distribution of millions of free copies had ruined the market. The book was a best seller.
In 1948, May’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, wrote (words and music) an adaptation of Rudolph. Though the song was turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore, it was recorded by the singing cowboy Gene Autry. "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer"
was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal success, selling more
records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of "White Christmas".
In 1941, May married another Ward employee, Virginia, and had five
children with her. She was a devout Catholic, and Robert May was
converted to Catholicism during the marriage. He is buried in Saint Joseph Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois.
May wrote two sequels to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The
first is mostly in prose (except that Rudolph speaks in anapaestic
tetrameter), written in 1947 but only published posthumously as Rudolph's Second Christmas (1992), and subsequently with the title Rudolph to the Rescue (2006). The second sequel is entirely in anapaestic tetrameter like the original: Rudolph Shines Again (1954). May also published four other children's books: Benny the Bunny Liked Beans (1940), Winking Willie (1948), The Fighting Tenderfoot (1954), and Sam the Scared-est Scarecrow (1972).
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