![]() Half of America tuned in – and they loved it. It was scheduled with no expectations of success and great fears that it might, in fact, create a backlash of sorts for CBS. But they had just a week to preview the special and a commitment to Coca-Cola to air it. In short, the execs at CBS hated A Charlie Brown Christmas. The voices had been done by real kids, not adult actors. With just a few months to produce Schulz, Mendelson, and animator Melendez put together a special that comprised of all the wrong elements necessary for a successful television special: There was not enough action. “CONFIRM SALE OF CHARLIE BROWN FOR CHRISTMAS TO COCA-COLA FOR DECEMBER BROADCAST AT YOUR TERMS WITH OPTION ON SECOND SHOW FOR NEXT SPRING. But Coke responded with a just a short telegram: Schulz and Mendelson’s one-page outline proposal was thin on details that likely would have been rejected by the corporate-minded CBS. It was commissioned by Coca-Cola, not CBS television. It is important to note the distinction of the creative process behind the creation of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The cartoonist’s response, Mendelson recalls: “If we don’t do it, who will?” Mendelson and Melendez asked Schulz whether he was sure he wanted to include Biblical text in the special. ![]() Otherwise, Schulz said, “Why bother doing it?” There was talk of a Christmas play and a sad Christmas tree.Ĭharles Schulz insisted on one core purpose: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” had to be about something. Working by the seat of their pants they tossed out ideas for what Christmas would be like for Charlie Brown. Mendelson nonchalantly agreed it could be done and in the rushed fashion, he and Schulz crafted an outline for what would become A Charlie Brown Christmas. The documentary never went anywhere but visionary advertisers at Coca-Cola saw the beauty of an animated Charlie Brown and asked Mendelson if Schulz could craft a Peanuts Christmas special for TV. Set to original music composed by Vince Guaraldi the animated clip was the foundation for what others hoped would be a jump of Charlie Brown and gang from the newspaper comic pages to American television. That documentary featured a 2-minute animated segment of Peanut characters brought to life by Disney animator Bill Melendez. In 1963 television producer Lee Mendelson produced a documentary on Schulz, who had emerged in American pop culture due to the successful run of Peanuts, a comic strip featuring the now-familiar characters of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and gang. ![]() Schulz’s impact on Christmas is measured not by his work in print but for his animated Christmas television special that almost never saw the light of day. He was nearly right: the last Peanuts strip ran just a few hours after Charles Schulz passed away in the year 2000. That story, and countless regular human emotions and stories like it, were continuously conveyed in the comic strip that he vowed would outlive him. When he was in first grade, his mother helped him get valentines for everybody in his class so that nobody would be offended by not getting one but he felt too shy to put them in the box at the front of the classroom, so he took them all home again to his mother. Linus and Lucy has absolutely no words, yet the tune is still equated with Christmas joy.Schulz himself was the model for the central character of the strip, Charlie Brown. Schulz may have disliked the jazz, but Vince Guaraldi’s tunes have become classics on their own, gently and whimsically reminding listeners of the Christmas spirit. Even Christopher Shea, who voiced Linus, couldn’t read. Their voices come across all the more real and raw for it. Some of the children couldn’t even read their scripts, so Melendez would have to recite the lines to them. The little lisps and stutters of the untrained children help to make each character sweeter and more endearing. There is something valuable and sweet about simplicity. The animation is not perfect, and yet it somehow propagates the message of the short there are some things more important than consumerism. These flaws help to make the special as memorable as it is. However, on December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas aired and half of the population who owned a television ended up watching (roughly 15 million people) making it exceedingly successful right away. ![]() There were continuity errors, Schulz hated the jazz music, Charlie Brown’s head was difficult to animate, and almost none of the voice actors were trained. There was no laugh track (something that was a staple in the 1960’s) and the animation was rough (even Schulz wasn’t particularly fond of it). When Coke checked in on the project in its half completed state, they almost cancelled the entire project and even CBS thought the short was a disaster due to its slow nature. In the end, the trio ended up only getting $76,000 and six months for production.
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