Twenty Chain Links

 

Robert Lewis May was born to a wealthy secular Jewish family in Long Island. The Mays lost everything during the Great Depression, when Robert was in his early 20’s. For most of his career, Robert was a poorly paid in-house advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward. In 1939, his employer asked him to write a cheerful children’s book for the department store to give to Christmas shoppers. Deeply in debt (his wife had just died from cancer), Robert wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In 1946, RCA Victor asked Robert for permission to make an audio recording of the booklet, but Montgomery Ward owned the rights to Rudolph. In an unprecedented move, the department store GAVE Robert the rights. Three years later, Robert’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, wrote the song that’s running in your head right now. Gene Autry’s version that same year sold 2.5 million copies. There was a Max Fleischer cartoon in 1948, and a full-color stop-motion TV special in 1964.