"Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the hills
                The reindeer were playing ... enjoying their spills..."

and so on to a few lines later when it was ..

                "While every so often they'd stop to call names
                At one little deer not allowed in their games:
                'Ha, Ha! Look at ____________! His nose is a sight!

Why the blank space you ask? Three names were originally considered:  Reginald, Rollo and Rudolph.
                Upon completion of the rhyme story a book, with illustrations by Denver Gillen was published.  It was 7 1/2 by 10 inches with 32 pages.

                These were given away until the war caused paper shortages and the practice was suspended until cessation of the conflict.  There were also new Rudolph stories "Rudolph Leads the Way" and "Rudolph to the Rescue" which did not reach the same success.
                Following the war Rudolph was barely on the radar but still glimmering in the dark
In 1947 RCA Victor produced the story for the VERY FIRST Rudolph record featuring music by the Russ Case Orchestra with a narration of the lyrics by Paul Wing (RCA-Victor Y-353).
                 Montgomery Ward commissioned the Jam Handy Organization to produce an 8 minute animated film of the story.  Once again Paul Wing did the narrative chores and the cartoon was directed by Max Fleischer and copyright 1948 09 13.
                1948 also saw the publication of "A Guide to Children's Music" by Dr. Philip Eisenberg and Hecky Krasno (sic). In their review of Victor's Rudolph record they said, "The storyline is meager; the verse stilted and hard to follow; the music uninspired."  Thanks to the popularity and thoroughness of this book Hecky Krasnow (the actual spelling) became producer for Children's product at Columbia Records.
                At about this time Robert L May's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, was working on his version of the Rudolph story eschewing the derivative construction of May's original.  He then sent a demo and lead sheets to the various record companies where they failed to obtain consideration and were rejected until ---- it arrived on Hecky Krasnow's desk.
Hecky decided Gene Autry had a good voice to present the song and sent him a copy of the lead sheet.
Here the story takes on the aura of Public Relations puffery - Gene didn't care for the song, didn't think it was right for him but his wife Ina convinced him it was a nice story about the "Ugly Duckling" (in other stories, the underdog) and convinced him to do it.
Gene's initial refusal was probably due to some familiarity with the earlier Victor record.  Additionally Gene couldn't read a lead sheet since he could neither read nor write music, only play chords. All he could see were the lyrics.  His mind wasn't made up until Johnny Bond cut a demo of the song from which he learned the how it was to be presented.
 Gene called Hecky in Los Angeles and set up the date - June 27, 1949.  After two false starts; one to reset the microphone balance and the other interrupted by a phone bell which Hecky had failed to shut off, Gene, Carl Cotner's Orchestra and the Pinafores (Ione, Beulah and Eunice Kettle) completed the song in one take.
                After that the publicity and promotion machine took off.  The Victor recording was never mentioned in any context.  Montgomery Ward eventually assigned Robert L May the copyright, and recording history was made.  I won't quote any sales numbers here since they vary with sources and dates but can safely be said as Columbia Records, Johnny Marks and Gene Autry rode into the sunset that they sold millions and millions.
Larry Hopper

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