BY MAX BURBANK (maxburbank.wordpress.com) | It’s been 50 years since Rankin/Bass gave the world “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Like the song says, he “went down in history” along with Clarice and Hermey and Yukon Cornelius and that one really tall elf with the glasses. But what happened to them after that? Where are they now?
RUDOLPH Rudolph, or “Rudy” as friends knew him, came to view his fame with puzzlement. His refusal to do the convention circuit, often seen as arrogance by fans, was more due to embarrassment. “Look, I’m just a working buck who happened to get born with a shining nose. Some Christmas Eves, the weather gets bad and it works out good for everybody, I’m glad of that. Most years I just pull the sleigh, same as the other guys.”
“He was the most decent reindeer I ever met,” recalls close friend Hermey the elf. “But after his folks died the way they did and then the divorce…it just broke him. He let Clarice have it all — the cave, the kids, the rights to the song. Everybody says the cancer got Rudy, but that’s a lot of crap. He had the biggest heart in Christmas Town, and that lousy doe broke it to pieces. That’s what he died of.”
Dr. William “Sparkly” Elf, North Pole Large Animal Veterinarian, disagrees. “A biological deviation like Rudolph’s nose…well, it rarely comes alone. Generally something like that is part of a syndrome, a suite of genetic anomalies and honestly, it’s never good. If he’d been born with fifth hoof coming out of his chest, no one would have been surprised he died young. Frankly it’s a miracle he lived as long as he did.”
CLARICE “Look, I make no apologies,” says Clarice, retired to Boca Raton, Florida. “Do you know how old I am in reindeer years at this point? Am I gonna do regrets? No. No I am not. So I got all the money. I had kids to raise, and who’s supposed to pay for my chemo — Santa? Look, I was a young doe when Rudy and I hooked up. I was the first one to look past the nose, okay? I oughta get some slack for that, but everybody wants to give me a ration of crap for leaving Rudy. Fine. Yes, Rudy was a nice buck. Absolutely. But not to put too fine a point on it, he was pretty dull. Yeah, dull! Oh, sacrilege! Lookit, here’s a buck who’s on the cover of Time and Newsweek, saved friggin’ Christmas, right? And he won’t take one friggin’ endorsement deal! Like to know how many kids I had in my first litter? Five! No one ever writes a hit carol about that, do they? It’s all ‘Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.’ You try livin’ in a North Pole cave with a Reindeer with clinical depression who refuses to get treatment. It’s no picnic.”
YUKON CORNELIUS Cornelius gave up prospecting in 1972 and moved to Key West, where he opened a very successful bar: Silver and Gold. In 1979, he established the annual “Polar Bear Ball” and, while now retired, is still the honorary Grand Bear.
Asked to comment on “The Rudolph Years,” he said:
“Rudy was a good kid, but naive, you know? Working for Santa because of the ‘True Meaning of Christmas’ my wrinkled old prospector’s behind! When did Santa get on the right side of the nose issue? When he found a way to exploit it, that’s when! Nah, I got outa the whole North Pole Christmas scene as soon as I could. I’m one of the lucky ones! Look at all those elves who didn’t reach retirement.”
THE ABOMINABLE SNOW MONSTER “Bumble” as he’s still called, runs an LGBT trailer park in Saskatoon, Canada.
“I’ll tell you what. When Hermey, the elf who wanted to be a dentist, pulled my teeth? I may not have asked for it, but it was empowering. He could never help himself, but he sure helped me. He had the deepest closet of anybody I’ve ever known. What was he hiding from? His imagination. We were all gay up there! Anyhoo, before I got my chompers yanked, it was all ‘monster this, monster that.’ Well you know what? I AM a monster. I’m a big, gay, hairy monster, which is just how God made me. But it doesn’t mean I have to devour talking sentient reindeer, does it? We all make our own prisons, don’t we? Well, bust out, that’s what I say!
I’m still in touch with the old gang. I see them at fan cons, or we email. I won the King Polar Bear sash in Key West five years running! I mean, come on, who’s going to beat me? Unless I let ‘em, right? Which I sometimes do. I can’t go anymore. It’s just too much of a schlep, with my hip and all. Oh, it’s just arthritis, don’t worry about me! I’m just about the only one of us who didn’t get ‘The Big C.’ I guess I’m just lucky.”
SAM THE SNOWMAN Telling Rudolph’s story was only a single stop on Sam the Snowman’s long life journey.
Blacklisted for his membership in the Communist party, Sam the Snowman made a remarkable comeback, winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Snowman in “The Big Country With A Lot Of Snow” — but he is probably best remembered for his music. Prominent New York Times music critic John Rockwell famously wrote: “Sam the Snowman’s voice…had the sheen and finesse of opera without its latter-day Puccinian vulgarities and without the pretensions of operatic ritual. It was genteel in expressive impact without being genteel in social conformity. And it moved people.”
In 1995, Sam the Snowman died of cancer of the mouth at the age of 85. In accordance with his wishes, he was melted. His water was scattered over the Grande Tetons by his life partner Snow Miser.
MISFIT DOLL Misfit Doll runs a successful psychotherapy practice in Eugene, Oregon and is the author of “Sub Plot: The Gulag of Misfit Toys.”
“Anyone can see a train with square wheels is challenged. People can be cruel, but they can also see with their own eyes what the problem is. Some disabilities are not so visible. Some disabilities are on the inside. That was me. ‘What are you doing here, what are you doing here?’ That’s what they all kept asking me. Bird that Swam, Jelly-Shooting Water Pistol, all of them. Oh, I was in the right place, all right. How ironic I should have survived. What happened to us was terrible, terrible. Was it Rudolph’s fault? No. No. Should he have seen, should he have known? Perhaps. He was a young buck with serious problems of his own. In my book, I say he was as much a victim, as much a ‘misfit’ as the rest of us. Do you know I got death threats for saying that? Death threats. Imagine. Santa says he didn’t know.
Santa says Moonracer supplied the parachutes. Santa says he was as shocked and horrified as anybody else. Well, he’s given a lot of money to the survivors over the years. Did it begin and end with Moon Racer? It seems impossible to me. But we’re all old now, aren’t we? If anyone was going to come forward…No, no, it’s done. It’s a closed book. Anyone who knew anything died a long time ago. Most of them from brain cancer.”
TALL ELF WITH GLASSES Tall Elf With Glasses left the North Pole in 1975 and worked as a merchant marine, shrimp fisherman, roofer and drifter prior to his arrest in 1988 for a series of pipe bombings he claims he did not commit.
“Yeah. Yeah. Pipe bombing. All too convenient, right? They followed me for years, dropping evidence wherever I holed up. Bunch of wires in an Alaska flophouse, blown up mailbox in Klamath Falls, whatever town I took some crap job in. Because I know, see? I know it all. They hadda make it so they could get me out of the way whenever they needed to. Make it so if I ever got called to the stand at Moonracer’s trial, no one would believe me. Cause I could connect the dots, see?
Oh, yeah, yeah, glow in the dark paint, lotta dead elves, class action lawsuit, Santa settles, he’s very sorry, what a tragedy, lets establish a foundation…It’s a drop in the bucket for him. He’s Santa! Nothing sticks too him.
Listen. Rudy? Brain Cancer. His folks? Brain Cancer. Clarice? DYING…of BRAIN CANCER! When did any of those poor bastards ever pick up a paintbrush with glow in the dark paint on it? NEVER! Reindeers DO NOT MAKE TOYS! Oh, oh, oh, and a whole bunch of toys that MIGHT have died of cancer just happen to get shoveled out of Santa’s sleigh with defective parachutes — and Moonracer, ever the good soldier, it’s all his fault. And which elf does not eventually end up with brain cancer? The TALL elf. Me. Me and Bumble are cancer-free. The only ones with their brains at least three feet away from that damn nose!
You do the math. You ask yourself how some poor little reindeer got born the way he did and how Santa always wore a lead-lined hat for what, a FASHION STATEMENT?! ‘You could even say it glows?!’ Hello? What do you think makes a reindeer schnozz glow bright enough to cut through a winter storm? That beak was friggin’ radioactive! You know what? I’m tired. Leave me alone. Get outta here, go on, lemmee rot. Visiting hours are over.”
KING MOONRACER King Moonracer was tried and found guilty of crimes against toymanity by the World Court at The Hague in 1989. Sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, he died of pancreatic cancer in 1991.
NOTE: For the real story, see cbsnews.com/news/passage-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer/.
