Back when I was seven, I used to take a pair of plastic safety sissors and cut Peanuts comic strips out of the Toronto Star. Then I’d fetch some Elmers Glue-all and paste them in a scrapbook.
My obsession grew. I spent all my nickels and dimes on the Fawcett Crest Peanuts paperbacks. They were bought and read at the Loblaws at Six Points Plaza in Etobicoke while my mom shopped for groceries. Those beautiful little books cost 40 cents each until the price jumped to 50. An extra dime? Rats.
It was thrilling, therefore, to sit on the living room rug in front of the black and white Marconi TV set and watch the first broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas on Dec. 9, 1965 – “brought to you by the bottlers of Coca-Cola.” The wonder of it was that the animated special was a perfect translation from the comic strip, lovingly recreated – on a tight time line and budget – by producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez. That the young voice cast seemed such a natural fit for the characters was also such a bonus.
Today, you don’t need to be in front of the set on a certain day at a certain time. You just need an AppleTV subscription. The streamer recently renewed rights to the special through 2030.
For a child of the sixties, a great part of the enduring appeal of this animated half hour is nostalgia. Seeing the special these many decades later is like wrapping yourself in an electronic version of Linus’s security blanket. For kids today, it is probably strange to see kids playing outside all the time, without phones or parents. Also they were drawn simple and sounded smart. What child could ever resist?
Fourteen years ago at a network press tour in Los Angeles, Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge spoke about how he was influenced by Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip.
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“I think we all owe a lot to him,” said Judge, 63. “The Simpsons too. The way the drawing of The Simpsons are so simple.”
Judge is also a fan of the animated Peanuts specials and studied them when crafting his own animated series. He admits he’s no master cartoonist but he deliberately made Beavis and Butt-Head look like they were drawn by a typical 14-year-old.
Al Jean, the executive producer of The Simpsons, told reporters on a tour of the Simpsons animation studio several summers ago that the simplicity of Matt Groening’s original Simpsons character designs is a big part of that shows’ enduring appeal. “Face it — they can be drawn by a five year old,” he said.
Judge points out how the animated Peanuts specials have a very two-dimensional quality. “You never saw the front of Snoopy’s doghouse,” he points out. He even tried to duplicate the way Pig Pen’s hair “moved” in how Butt-Head’s hair was animated.
Judge made a point to speak with Phil Roman, one of the animators on the original Charlie Brown specials. He never did get to speak with Schultz, who was on his bucket list. Schultz passed away at 80 in 2000 after 50 years at the Peanuts drawing board.
“I don’t normally need to meet people I’m a huge fan of,” says Judge, “but I wanted to meet him out of curiosity.”
Some biographies suggest Schultz was a lonely, somewhat tortured guy. He sure poured his heart out in his art, says Judge. “That Little Red Haired Girl stuff—that was really like tugging at the heart strings. He did it so simply.”
