ABC will celebrate Monday’s Golden Anniversary with an hour-long special, starting at 8:00 p.m. leading up to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” which airs at 9.
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The new movie, which has grossed more than 0 million, shows there’s still an appetite for Peanuts, even if the film offers dollops more sugary than the old-school bittersweet. “I had to educate them about the world of Peanuts, but now they love it”.
“Then we told them we wanted to use jazz [composed and performed by Vince Guaraldi], which was met with great resistance”.
Network executives were even less gung-ho about what they saw.
Americans will see the classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for the 50th time on Monday, with an extra bonus thrown in about the making of that legendary show.
Charlie Brown finds himself in a conundrum when Peppermint Patty invites herself over for a Thanksgiving meal. In fact, Cinemablend reported that the iconic TV special was this close to becoming displayed when it was first presented to CBS producers. In a world filled with memes, “Charlie Brown Christmas” offers a number of its own, from Linus’ blanket-improvised shepherd’s headpiece during the school play rehearsal to Snoopy’s gaudily decorated doghouse to the gang’s inimitable dance moves during the jazzy theme, “Linus and Lucy”. “I won’t let all this commercialism ruin my Christmas”. “I had never heard of anything so serious being done in an animated cartoon”, Mendelson says. What the Peanuts special offered were moves that charmed the nation – the children dance with a spastic abandon that grown-ups, encrusted with decades of self-consciousness, watch a little more wistfully as each year passes. In the original version, Linus crashed into a Coca-Cola sign, Mendelson says. According to David Michaelis’ 2007 biography “Schulz and Peanuts”, Mendelson, inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen short story, suggested a holiday tree be included as a plot point, and Schulz immediately warmed to the idea. “But Schulz just said, ‘Well, if we don’t do it, who will?’ And, of course, that became the climax of the whole show”. Visually it was well done, and though the main plot revolves mostly around Charlie Brown’s silly crush on a new neighbor, the story successfully involves each of the characters in a nature true to the history of the franchise. Indeed, which is why this year, as every year, Mendelson will sit down with his family to watch the Christmas special again.
The cartoon commences with children warbling, “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer, time for all that children call their favorite time of year”.
Charlie Brown’s visit to Lucy’s psychiatric booth? They didn’t like that there was no laugh track.
“That is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown”, says the lad. “They had to put it on the air as we delivered it, but they sure weren’t happy about it”.
Now, thanks to her involvement in the special, McLachlan has passed her love of A Charlie Brown Christmas to a new generation.
Charlie Brown takes the woeful tree outdoors and beneath a starry sky looks heavenward and confesses, “Linus is right”. They were going into the studio at the last minute and they had no lyrics.
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The staying power of this sweet, understated animated special is especially remarkable given the disposable age in which we live. “One of the animators stood up and said, ‘You guys are insane”.
