Robert L. May (Rudolph)

Robert Lewis May (July 27, 1905 – August 10, 1976) was the creator of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

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 songwriter Johnny Marks in 1947. May graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1926.

Robert May’s parents were hard hit by the Great Depression (1929) and lost their wealth. Sometime in the 1930s, May moved to Chicago and took a job as a low-paid in-house advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward. In early 1939, May’s boss at Montgomery Ward asked him to write a “cheery” Christmas book for shoppers and suggested that an animal be the star of the book. Montgomery Ward had been buying and giving away coloring books for Christmas every year and it was decided that creating their own book would save money and be a nice good-will gesture.

May’s (Jewish) wife, Evelyn, had contracted cancer in 1937 and was quite ill as he started on the book in early 1939. 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. She is interred at Saint Joseph Cemetery, River Grove, Cook County, IL. 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.

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