The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, recently dug into its archives and unearthed the first page of A Charlie Brown Christmas’s draft script. It’s riddled with pencil markings and held together with the yellowing tape.
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The simplicity of the story.
The music of Vince Guaraldi is spectacular, and it’s a big part of the atmosphere, even though there’s no way I perceived that as a youngster. Linus quoting the Bible.
A Charlie Brown Christmas will be celebrated on November 30 on ABC with a special holiday retrospective called It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown! hosted by actress Kristen Bell. Mendelson said yes, he recalls, and the “Charlie Brown Christmas” special was born. The TV special captured the “Peanuts” magic we all grew up with. A few weeks later, Guaraldi called back and insisted he listen over the phone to a song he just wrote for the film. It was Guaraldi’s boogie-woogie romp “Linus and Lucy” that eventually became “Peanuts'” signature tune.
For the first time, viewers tuning in 50 years ago heard the iconic theme “Linus and Lucy”, joyously introducing us to Charlie Brown’s two best friends.
Quoting scripture was rare, if not unprecedented, for a cartoon on commercial television.
“The network thought it was going to be a disaster”, Melendez said.
It was a hectic six-month production schedule, and the producers were anything but certain about what they were delivering to CBS.
“The network was a little leery of it”, Mr. Mendelson said.
Originally the opening song was instrumental, and Mr. Mendelson thought putting words to it would jazz it up. “That was the highlight of the show”, he said. According to the report, the “executives watched in stony silence” and gave television producer Lee Mendelson a condescending and less than enthusiastic response: “Well, you gave it a good try”. By some estimates, more “Peanuts” strips focused on baseball than any other single subject.
Fans of the famous Peanuts comic strip are in for a treat: An exhibition housing a collection of Peanuts-themed items from around the world will open in the Singapore Philatelic Museum on Wednesday (Dec 2).
A special taped in Las Vegases includes performances of Sinatra classics by Tony Bennett, Garth Brooks, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Adam Levine, Carrie Underwood and Usher, plus archival footage. Quite the contrary: Linus’ reading inspires Charlie Brown to redouble his efforts to decorate his sad little tree. The Advertising Age headline read:”Move over, Red!” No one would put biblical passages in an animated show, and we did it….
Fifty years is certainly a milestone worth noting, but ABC’s one-hour tribute doesn’t look like it is going to be a worthy celebration.
The Van Pelts moved from the Cincinnati suburb in 1947 to Colorado Springs, where Schulz lived after marrying his first wife, Joyce Halverson.
It seems Charles Schulz’s roundheaded every-boy Charlie Brown just couldn’t get into the Yule spirit despite all the decorations going up.
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“Maybe I grew up enough to realize it was just some work, good work, that I had done, and it brought a lot of joy to people”.
