Peanuts

Peanuts was a syndicated daily comic strip written and drawn by American cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950 to February 13, 2000. The strip was one of the most popular in the history of the medium. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 40 languages. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in many newspapers.

Television, film, and theatre

In addition to the strip itself and numerous books, the Peanuts characters have appeared in animated form on television many times. This started when the Ford Motor Company licensed the characters in 1961 for a series of black and white commercials for the Ford Falcon. The ads were animated by Bill Melendez for Playhouse Pictures, a cartoon studio that had Ford as a client. Schulz and Melendez became friends, and when producer Lee Mendelson decided to make a two-minute animated sequence for a TV documentary called A Boy Named Charlie Brown in 1963, he brought on Melendez for the project. Before the documentary was completed, the three of them (with help from their sponsor, the Coca-Cola Company) produced their first half-hour animated special, the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning A Charlie Brown Christmas, which was first aired on the CBS network in 1965.

Related Topics:
Animated - Television - Ford Motor Company - 1961 - Commercials - Ford Falcon - Bill Melendez - Playhouse Pictures - Lee Mendelson - A Boy Named Charlie Brown - Coca-Cola - Special - Emmy - Peabody Award - A Charlie Brown Christmas - CBS - 1965

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The animated version of Peanuts differs in some aspects from the strip. In the strip, adult voices are seldom heard, and conversations are usually only depicted from the children's end--in other words, the characters just answer questions or repeat the questions posed to them. To translate this aspect to the animated medium, Melendez famously used the sound of a modified trombone to simulate adult "voices". A more serious deviation from the strip was the treatment of Snoopy. In the strip, the dog's thoughts are verbalized in speech balloons; in animation, he is typically silent, his thoughts communicated through growls, laughs, and pantomime, or by having human characters verbalizing his thoughts for him. These treatments have both been abandoned temporarily in the past; they experimented with teacher dialog in She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, and in the animated adaptations of the plays, Snoopy's thoughts were conveyed in voiceover. The elimination of Snoopy's "voice" is probably the most controversial aspect of the adaptations, but Schulz apparently wanted or at least approved of the treatment.

Related Topics:
Pantomime - Voiceover

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The success of A Charlie Brown Christmas was the impetus for CBS to air many more prime-time Peanuts specials over the years, beginning with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown's All-Stars in 1966. In total, more than thirty animated specials were produced. Until his death in 1976, jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi composed highly-acclaimed musical scores for the specials; in particular, the piece "Linus and Lucy" has become popularly known as the signature theme song of the Peanuts franchise.

Related Topics:
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - 1966 - 1976 - Vince Guaraldi

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Schulz, Mendelson, and Melendez also collaborated on four threatrical feature films starring the characters, the first of which was A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969). Most of these made use of material from Schulz's strips, which were then adapted, although in other cases plots were developed around areas where there were minimal strips to reference. Such was also the case with The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, a Saturday-morning TV series which debuted on CBS in 1983 and lasted for two seasons.

Related Topics:
Feature films - 1969 - The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show - Series - 1983

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By the late-1980s, the specials' popularity had begun to wane, and CBS had sometimes rejected a few specials. An eight-episode TV mini-series called This is America, Charlie Brown, for instance, was released during a writer's strike. Eventually, the last Peanuts specials were released direct-to-video, and no new ones were created until after the year 2000 when ABC got the rights to the three fall holiday specials. The Nickelodeon cable network re-aired the bulk of the specials, as well as The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, for a time in the late 1990s. Many of the specials and feature films have also been released on various home video formats over the years.

Related Topics:
1980s - CBS - TV mini-series - This is America, Charlie Brown - ABC - Nickelodeon - Home video

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The Peanuts characters even found their way to the live stage, appearing in the musicals You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!!.

Related Topics:
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown - Snoopy

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You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown was originally an extremely successful off-Broadway musical that ran for four years (1967-1971) in New York City and on tour, with Gary Burghoff as the original Charlie Brown. An updated revival opened on Broadway in 1999. It was also adapted for television twice, as a live-action NBC special and an animated CBS special.

Related Topics:
Off-Broadway - New York City - Gary Burghoff - Broadway - NBC

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Feature films

• A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969) (76-Minute Movie Special)
• Snoopy, Come Home (1972)
• Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)
• Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!) (1980)

Animated TV specials

• A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1963) (2-Minute Special)
• A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
• It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
• Charlie Brown's All-Stars (1966)
• You're in Love, Charlie Brown (1967)
• He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (1968)
• Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz (1969)
• It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969)
• Play It Again, Charlie Brown (1971)
• You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown (1972)
• A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
• There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown (1973)
• It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown (1974)
• It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown (1974)
• Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975)
• You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (1975)
• It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (1976)
• What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown! (1977)
• It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977)
• Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown (1979)
• You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown (1979)
• Life Is a Circus, Charlie Brown (1980)
• It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown (1980)
• She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980)
• It's Magic, Charlie Brown (1981)
• Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown (1981)
• A Charlie Brown Celebration (1982)
• Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? (1983)
• What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983)
• It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown (1984)
• Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! (1985)
• You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1985)
• Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown (1985)
• It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown (1988)
• The This is America, Charlie Brown mini-series (1988-1989)
• The Mayflower Voyages
• The Birth of the Constitution
• The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk
• The NASA Space station
• The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad
• The Great Inventors
• The Smithsonian and the Presidency
• The Music and Heroes of America
• Why, Charlie Brown, Why? (1990)
• You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown (1990)
• Snoopy's Reunion (1991)
• It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown (1992)
• It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992)
• You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown! (1994)
• It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown! (1997)
• ' (2000)
• ' (2000)
• It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown (2000)
• A Charlie Brown Valentine, Charlie Brown (2002)
• Charlie Brown Christmas Tales (2002)
• The Making of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (2002)
• Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown (2003)
• I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown (2003)