Two Designers Walk Into a Bar · Evergreen Podcasts

The Origin Story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

·34 min·2 clips

Robert L. May wrote Rudolph while his wife Evelyn was dying of cancer and he was in debt at age 35.

Rudolph arrives wearing a sales tag. Elliot and Todd open with the funny, slightly deflating premise: the red-nosed reindeer began inside a department store marketing department. From there, the bar-room history tracks how a poem book got awkwardly valuable after six million copies were already out in the world. Nobody wanted Rudolph at first, and the reason is pure marketing trouble. If six million free copies are already circulating, what exactly is left to sell? Then Harry Elbaum shows up. As head of Maxton Publishers, a small New York company formed in 1945, he takes the chance other publishers passed on. Maxton puts out the first commercial edition for the 1947 Christmas season, now as a hardcover. Elbaum prints 100,000 copies, prices them at 50 cents, and suddenly the red nose has a balance sheet. The hosts run the numbers: $50,000 then, close to $690,000 today, which somehow becomes bar-tab material. After that, the merchandise pile gets delightfully weird. There is a spoken-word 45 narrated by Paul Wing, music by George Klessinger, a stuffed reindeer toy, picture puzzle books, and children's slippers. The slippers get proper attention, because of course they do. By the end, Rudolph has stamps too, and the episode keeps one eye on the odd retail shelf that helped make him last.

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