November 28, 2018 • 38 mins
Every holiday season, Will and Mango rewatch The Peanuts classics. But how did Charles Schulz get his inspiration for the comic strip? Why did the network almost cancel the Charlie Brown Christmas special? And why does winning a Snoopy award mean so much if you work at NASA? From kite-eating trees, to footballs that never get kicked, Will and Mango go deep on Peanuts.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess what, mango, what's that? Well, it is officially
Charlie Brown season. I know, I am so excited. You know,
right between Thanksgiving and Christmas is when my family buckles
down and we watch all those specials, and it is wild.
That's been over fifty years since some of the big
ones actually came out. But what is weirdest to me
(00:22):
is that my kids are so into Charlie Brown, like
it's almost quaint. Ruby had a Peppermint Patty birthday party
when she turned three because she assumed everyone was into
Peppermint Patty too, uh, And so we just hand out
headbands and did at the gym. I love this fact,
and the fact that probably more than half the kids
had no idea who Peppermint Patty was, at least going
(00:43):
into the party. I'm sure Ruby told him all about her.
But anyway, So, so, why are they so into the specials?
You know, I have no idea of something just clicked
with them. But like Henry actually based his Thanksgiving speech
a few years ago completely on the one that I
think Charlie Brown gives and Thanksgiving special and and we've
definitely watched It's a great pumpkin Charlie Brown and Charlie
(01:04):
Brown Christmas a whole bunch of times. But you know,
they're even into some of the oddball ones like Race
for Your Life Charlie Brown, which is about the gang
going to camp. That's very good. I mean, you did
hit on some of the big ones there, but I
do think you forgot one of the most important of
them all. Really. Oh yeah, of course, It's Arbor Day
Charlie Brown. I do not think we watched that one.
(01:28):
Is that a real thing? We're just making that up? Oh,
it's absolutely a real thing. It was just one of
the forty five Charlie Brown specials out there, forty five.
I had no idea that that many. Oh man, I'm surprised,
Like you don't watch It's the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown
every single east. I don't know how could be Easter
without that special. And actually there's also It's Your First
Kiss Charlie Brown, which is another classic and also I
(01:49):
guess kind of weird. But we've got a lot of
catching up to do here, and with the holiday season
upon us, what we thought now would be the perfect
time to look into the history of our favorite melon
colleague Grade schoolers. So we'll talk about the origin of
the comics trip, including the real life inspiration behind some
of the characters, the story of how the beloved Christmas
Special came to be, and how it was very nearly
(02:11):
canceled in production. Now, of course, we'll also talk a
little bit about the reason why creator Charles Schultz hated
the name Peanuts and why some fans can't stand Snoopy.
There's a lot to cover, so let's dive in. Hey there,
(02:45):
podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson,
and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man
gues Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof
glass just shuffling a stack of buttered to It's kind
of like it's a deck of cars. It's our friends
and producer Tristan McNeil, and I do have to admit
when Tristan said he wanted to recreate the famous meal
from the Peanuts Thanksgiving Special, I really never dreamed it
(03:07):
would be this theatrical. But it's really quite a show.
Don't you think you didn't think Tristan would be theatrical?
I don't know, I don't know. It's just surprised me. Yeah.
I mean, I have no idea how he's doing this.
He's wearing those slices like he's a black jack dealer
or something. But I like that he's giving the Thanksgiving
Special a little love, and I feel like it's always
the one that gets overshadowed by both, like the Hallyween
(03:29):
Special and the Christmas Special. But you know, we've had
a saft spot for Charlie Brown Thanksgiving at my house,
especially where um Snoopy puts together that last minute feast
for Charlie Brown and he's got all that popcorn and pretzels.
But when the kids are gone, Snoopy and Woodstock are
just back of their doghouse and they've got a lavish
spread for themselves with like pumpkin pie, roast and vegetables,
(03:51):
even this giant cooked turkey, and they're basically living it
off while the kids are just eating you know, snack food.
I mean, it's kind of a jerk move, but when
you think about that, it's it's that mix of whimsy
and low key meanness that are sort of par for
the course for peanuts that actually, for instance, did never
strike you as just a little bit weird that Woodstock
would help Snoopy carve and eat the turkey. I mean,
(04:14):
Woodstock is a bird if you haven't noticed. You know
what's funny about it is that I never actually gave
it much thought. But it turns out you're not alone
in this. Lee Mendelssohn, who was the executive producer on
the Peanuts specials, he actually objected to that scene because
he was so weird it out by it, But because
the idea had comes straight from Charles Schultz, the Peanuts creator,
he was just overruled and the scene aireds planned. But uh,
(04:37):
you know what was funny is that Mendelssohn did eventually
get his way. So all these years later, CBS asked
Mendelssohn to cut three minutes from the special so they
could fit in, you know, more commercials, and Mendelssohn sees
the chance and he removed that scene of Woodstock eating turkey,
so you can only see him eating pie instead. But
then a few years later, the rights of the special
move to ABC and the network decided to air it
(04:57):
on cut, meaning Woodstock is once again accountable. It feels
a little bit odd to be kicking off our Peanuts
show with a fact about bird cannibalism, but it also
kind of feels appropriate, you know, given how dark Charlie
Brown and his chums could often be. Actually, in fact,
have you ever seen the very first Peanuts trip? I have,
(05:18):
and I don't remember it. Yeah, So it shows a
boy and a girl just sitting on the sidewalk and
this boy, Scheremy is his name. He says, well, here
comes good old Charlie Brown. Good old Charlie Brown. Yes, sir,
good old Charlie Brown. And then when Charlie Brown is
out of sight, Cheremy adds, how I hate him, you know,
(05:39):
and that's the punch line. So yeah, there's there's definitely
some darkness to the world of Peanuts, no matter how
cute or simplistic the characters might look. But there's also
incredible warmth and humor there as well, and it feels
like it's that unique mix that really made Peanuts this
enduring part of pop culture, not only in the US
but all around the world. So we've definitely got a
(05:59):
lot to go through today. But where do you think
you want to start? Why don't we spend a few
minutes on the man behind the Peanuts himself, Charles M. Schultz.
So This name sounds familiar enough because we've all seen
his name a million times. It's signed at the bottom
of each and every Peanuts strip, all seventeen thousand eight
of them. But despite the constant exposure, lots of people
(06:20):
still misname him as Schultz with the T. It's actually
s C h U l z. And according to Medium,
the misspelling is so common that's actually appeared wrong in
more than thirty thousand articles to Day, as well as
the original opening to the Peanuts Christmas Special. I guess
someone caught it at the very last minute, but there
was an error that was gonna be aired in the
(06:41):
premier You know, I guess I've actually never thought about this,
and I'm sure that I'm guilty of making the same mistake.
But what kind of name is Schultz? Like it is?
Is it German? Yeah? His dad, Carl Schultz, immigrated from
Germany to Minnesota, which is where he met charles mom Dina,
and Charles was this only child. He was born in too.
He grew up in St. Paul. But what's interesting is
(07:02):
that St. Paul is one of the few places in
the country that has both super hot summers and freezing
cold winters, and It's the same for the Peanuts Kids, right, Like,
there's so many strips that are centered on these summer
activities like playing baseball, flying kites, selling lemonade on hot days.
But then you have a ton of strips where there's
like a foot of snow on the ground and everyone's
playing ice hockey. So then it is Peanuts actually set
(07:25):
in St. Paul. I mean, there's some debate about that.
Some fans think the strip is set near Santa Rosa, California,
which is where Schultz lived once the Peanuts became a hit.
But you know, that doesn't make much sense when you
look at all all the strips set in the winter.
But what little evidence there is in the strips does
kind of point to either St. Paul or Minneapolis as
their hometown. For instance, there's a strip in nine seven
(07:49):
that implied that the character has lived in Hennepin County,
which is in Minnesota, and two years before that there
was one where Schroeder confesses he always thought his hero
Beethoven was a native in Minnesota, which you know is
presumably just like him. All right, Well, although that makes sense,
and you'd actually expect the cartoonists to set the strip
about childhood in their hometown. That wouldn't be that surprising,
(08:09):
and it would be pretty on theme for Schultz, because
when you look at the comics, so many elements of
the Peanuts strip turn out to be somewhat biographical. I mean,
just listen to this breakdown. Shuremy was a childhood friend.
Schroeder was a caddy at the golf course Schultz worked
at as a teenager. Linus and Lucy van Pelt got
their last name from a man's Schultz served in the
(08:30):
army with. Meanwhile, Lucy's character was inspired by Schultz's first
wife and his mother. I guess there's a lot to
unpack there, but that does seem to be the case. Actually,
I was reading this tribute to Charles Schultz from Bill Waterson,
who is my hero and uh who did the Colvinant
Hobbs strips, and he thought of Peanuts as the gold
standard of comic strips, and this is his take on
(08:52):
Lucy quote. I was struck less by the fact that
Schultz drew on his troubled marriage for material than by
the sympathy that he shows for his torment, and by
his ability to poke fun at himself, which is actually
pretty interesting, like, like, you know, Lucy is annoying and
mean spirited, but you don't ever really hate her for it. Now,
that's true. And you know he was looking for inspiration everywhere.
(09:14):
Even line is his famous blue blanket came straight from
Schultz's life when his daughter was younger, she was obsessed
with her own security blanket. Yeah. I mean, of course
you're gonna be stealing from life when you've got like
a daily deadline and and working at that sort of volume.
But I think the one character I always think about
is the little red haired girl who goes unnamed, And uh,
(09:35):
you know, that's the one that Charlie Brown always had
that huge crush on. She was apparently based on Schultz's
girlfriend in the late forties, this redhead named Donna May Johnson,
and after the war, the two of them worked together
at this correspondent school in Minneapolis, and after a few
years of dating, Shells finally worked at the Nerve to
propose to her, But then Donna May turned him down
and married a different guy a few months later, and
(09:56):
it was obviously this huge blow to his pride, but
in end, the ordeal actually inspired one of Schultz's most
famous characters, and supposedly he and Donna May remained friends
for years later. I mean, there are some definite shades
of Charlie Brown to that story, and you can see
that throughout his work. Yeah, definitely, And it makes sense
because both Charlie Brown and Snoopy they're often considered stand
(10:18):
ins for Schultz himself. In fact, Charles's son, Craig Schultz
once said about him, each of the characters represents a
piece of our dad. Charlie Brown was his real self
and Snoopy was what he wanted to be, which is
kind of funny to think about, but it makes sense
and it's both characters also had real world counterparts too.
Charlie Brown was actually the name of a friend that
(10:39):
Charles worked with prior to creating Peanuts, and Snoopy was
based on charles His own childhood dog, this English Pointer,
not a Beagle who was named Spike and whose name
would later be used for one of Snoopy's brothers. So
if Schultz had a dog named Spike, then where's the
name Snoopy come from? Well, apparently Charles had originally planned
to call his dog Sniffy, but then he found out
(11:02):
that another comic featured a dog with the same name,
so he had to change it to something else. But
luckily he had this backup. You know, when he was
a kid, his mother suggested if they ever got another dog,
they should name him Snoopy, and so that's where the
name came from. Anyway, back back to the real world
Snoopy for a second. It's pretty striking how devoted to
his dog. Charles was, just like Charlie Brown would later
(11:24):
be with Snoopy. So how how do you mean? Well,
the very first drawing that Charles ever published was of
his dog Spike. So Charles was just fifteen years old
at the time when he submitted this drawing and actually
a fact along with it to Ripley's Believe it or Not,
and it got published nationally. I mean, that's pretty cool.
But what was so unbolouivable about Spike that got him
(11:45):
published in Ripley's. Well, the drawings caption said that Spike
was quote a hunting dog that eats pins, tax and
razor blades, so he didn't exactly have Snoopy's refined palette.
But it does sound like Spike shared his taste for adventure.
That was this article and mental flaws about this that
was talking about. You know, the dog would make a
break for freedom anytime the door was open and only
(12:07):
come back because he loved going on car rides. So
whenever Spike got loose, Charles would run to his dad's
car and basically just honked the horn as a way
to lure the dog back. I mean, we we actually
had a dog like that growing up. She'd run off
for the only way to get her back was to
unwrap a slice of American exactly. That's what always works. Yeah,
I mean it's so weird that, like that plastic peel
(12:29):
sound like when it was coming off the craft slices,
that's what would make her race back to the house.
But you know, having a dog you keep losing sounds
very Charlie Brown to me as well. And and uh
speaking which, some of my favorite Peanuts facts are the
ones that overlap between Charlie Brown's childhood and Charles Schultz.
Is like, there's a surface level stuff, but both of
them had fathers who were barbers. But but then they're
(12:50):
also those like wonderfully tragic tidbits from Schultz's life that
feels so Charlie Brown, Like his dad used to give
him haircuts but when customers came in, he'd have to
hop out of the chair. So you just have to
grump around and wander about with half a haircut until
that finished it up. I which does sound so very
Charlie Brown. It's pretty great, yeah, I know. And there
was actually one time when Shultston line at a movie
(13:12):
theater because they were handing out candy bars to the
first kids to buy tickets that day, and of course
Schultz was the hundred first kid in line. You know.
When when he was in high school, Schultz's teacher convince
him to draw some comics for a senior year book.
And so Schultz, of course, being super timid and socially awkward,
he's a little nervous, but he desperately wants to be
(13:32):
a cartoonist, so he overcomes a shyness he submits artwork,
and then when the yearbook comes out, of course everyone
had forgotten to include his work, Like, not a single
one of his cartoons got used. That's a tough break,
but you know, it is interesting to see that that
not every aspect of Peanuts is drawn from Schultza's own experience.
You know, if you take the character Franklin, for instance,
(13:53):
he was introduced as the comic strips first black character.
And now this was in July of nineteen sixty eight,
and this was just a few months after the assassination
of M. L. K Jr. Yeah, it's amazing that that's
fifty years ago this year. And and uh and this
was based on a reader's suggestion, right, yeah, that's right.
The reader was a mother of three named Harriett Glickman,
(14:15):
and she wrote to Schultz just a few days after
the death of Martin Luther King. And now in that note,
the Glickman noted the power that mass media has to
shape what she called the unconscious attitudes of our kids.
So she has Schultz to add one or more black
characters to his trips. And this was so that children
could see that respect and friendship was possible between people
of all races. And Schultz was pretty moved by the idea,
(14:38):
but he didn't add the character immediately. He was actually
a little bit nervous that the move might seem to
be patronizing to black readers. But as Glickman continued to
correspond with him over the course of several months, you know,
he decided to change his mind on this and on
July one, he wrote to say that Glickman should watch
for the new character to appear by the end of
the month, which of course he did. And so does
(15:01):
show suffer any blowback from from this when when when
the strip comes out, Well, you know, you had some
black readers that did argue that Franklin was a bland
character and therefore somewhat patronizing, but in general readers appreciated
the added representation as well as you know how kind
and worry free Franklin was compared with other Peanuts kids.
(15:21):
But it still it was undoubtedly a tense time for
America for an artist to debut what was essentially the
first minority character in a mainstream comic strip. But other
than this brief exchange where Franklin mentions that his father
was a soldier in Vietnam, there's really nothing overtly political
about his inclusion. Like Charlie Brown loses his beach ball,
(15:41):
only to have it found and returned to him by
a boy named Franklin, and then the boys decided to
build a sandcastle together, which is of course very sweet. Yeah,
but they're definitely a bit of backlash from this. You
had several newspaper editors from southern states that wrote to
Schultz demanding that he stopped using the character, or at
the very least that he Alwaids showing Franklin in school
(16:02):
with the other white characters, which is just mind boggling
to think about. But his response was pretty straightforward. So
here's what he told an interviewer years later about the incident.
I never paid any attention to those things. And I
remember telling United Features President Larry Rutman at the time
about Franklin. He wanted me to change it, and we
talked about it for a long while on the phone,
(16:24):
and I finally sighed, and I said, well, Larry, let's
put it this way. Either you print it just the
way I draw it, or I quit. How's that? So
that's the way it ended. I mean, that is so awesome,
and it's nice to hear that, like, despite whatever reservations
he might have had at the beginning, she ultimately went
to bat for Franklin in this really big way. Yeah,
and you know, I know we wanted to talk about
(16:45):
an earlier occasion when Schultz butted heads with upper management,
and this time about what the strip should be called.
But before we get into that, let's take a quick break.
(17:09):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, and we're talking about
cartoonists Charles Schultz and his beloved Peanuts comic strips. So,
you know, to be clear, there was one thing that
she definitely did not love about his own strip, and
that was the title. So back in n when he
first pitched the strip to be carried by the United
Feature Syndicate, Schultz insisted the title should be Little Folks,
(17:31):
which maybe wasn't the most creative title, but it does seem,
i don't know, somewhat fitting if you think about how
so many of his characters they read like these little
kids with grown up type worries, and like they're plagued
by this level of anxiety and almost neurosis that's typically reserved,
you know, for adults. Yeah, but whether it's fitting or not,
the executives had this different problem with it. So there
(17:52):
was already a strip called Little Folks, except with the
word little all spelled out instead of little like it,
and then there was also a little abner the comic strip.
So they're worried that readers might confuse the titles, or
worse that the creators of the rival strips might sue
them for copyright infringement. So instead, the production manager at
the syndicate decided to call the strip Peanuts. And I
(18:15):
guess this was a reference to the Howdy Duty show
that was pretty popular at the time. When kids came
to tapings, they sat in the Peanut Gallery. So the
production manager thought, you know, like he'd rip off that
idea and just called the small Kids Peanuts. I do
like that their solution to not being sued was to
rip off a TV show instead, but either, I know,
I mean, the other theory is that they just thought
(18:36):
Little Folks was a weak title, but they didn't want
to upset Shultz. Um not that he wasn't upset anyway.
In the interview, he was still angry about the Peanuts title,
and he said, quote, it's totally ridiculous, has no meaning,
is simply confusing, and has no dignity. And I think
my humor has dignity, which is sad that you never
(18:57):
got to change the name. But you know, of course,
once this strip took off, he was kind of stuck
with the title. And uh, what's funny to me is
that schill Is actually avoided using the title himself, like
he claimed that whenever someone asked him what he did
for a living, you just tell them I draw that
comic strip with Snoopy in it, Charlie Brown and his Daughter. Well,
whatever you call it, there's no question that Schultz's comic
(19:19):
was a runaway hit once the strip gained a little
bit of steam. So it was published in just seven
US newspapers when it debuted back in October of nineteen.
Well by the end of its fifty year run and
two thousand, the comic was being translated in over twenty
different languages, published in seventy five different countries, and had
grown its global readership to his staggering three hundred and
(19:40):
fifty five million people. So in total, over fifteen thousand
daily strips and Sunday strips were produced, all written, inked,
and lettered by Charles Schultz himself. I mean, it was
this unprecedented run, and actually so unprecedented that the media
scholar Robert Thompson once called the fifty year story of
Charlie Brown and his Pals arguably the longest told story
(20:03):
by a single artist in human history. I mean, that's
really incredible to think about. So what do you think
made it click with people? For such a long time. Well,
I think a big part of it goes back to
something that we mentioned at the top of the show,
which is the way the strip really found this middle
ground in terms of tone. I mean, it was funny
and sometimes sweet, but there was always kind of this prickly,
(20:26):
world weary feeling underlying the humor there. And you know,
as it turns out, this was all by design. So
Schultz believed that happiness and humor didn't really mix, which
is of course why Charlie Brown never does get to
kick that football. And he know. Shultz also dealt with
bounts of depression in his own life, and one way
he found relief was by channeling his anxieties directly into
(20:49):
his art, which makes a lot of sense, And the
result is a strip with a somewhat despairing worldview and
and one where as Schultz once explained, here's what he
said about He said, all the loves are unrequited, all
the baseball games were lost, all the test scores or
d minuses, the great Pumpkin never comes, and the football
is always pulled away like when you described so hopefully
(21:11):
it really does. Yeah, it's funny that Sills like completely
stuck to that formula for the strip's entire run. Uh so,
I guess things did get a little cheerier in the
mid to late sixties once the TV special started like
and and uh, well, that merchandizing really kicked into high gear.
I've actually heard that most fans use the rise of
Snoopy and pop culture is kind of a turning point
(21:32):
in the strips run. And uh, you know, there's this
first decade or so where Snoopy is more or less
this normal dog in the strip. He he walks on
four legs, He he doesn't communicate through toop balloons, and
he doesn't even have a clear owner in the strips
like much less this tricked out doghouse. And weirdly, this
is also the period where the human characters were what
the creator of Little Abner called good, mean little bastards
(21:54):
eager to hurt one another. But as the sixties donned,
Shills began to capitalize in his creation with licensing deals
and product tie ins, which caused that public perception of
Peanuts to shift, and suddenly the characters were seen as
much sweeter and kinder than the strips had ever really been.
And while the newer strips never really lost their edge completely,
(22:14):
and Charlie Brown remained the world's you know, punching bag.
Snoopy did begin to take on more and more of
the limelight, and as this happened, the character became less
and less like a real dog. By the late sixties,
Snoopy was walking on two legs, He was composing love
letters with a typewriter in his doghouse. He was also
spending a lot less time around the human characters, and
(22:35):
instead he was either hanging out with his new animal
friends like Woodstock, or he was off by himself, sort
of waging these imaginary wars against the villainous Red Baron.
But you know, in other words, things took a much
zanier turn, and lots of Peanuts fans kind of think
of that as when the strip kind of jumped the shark.
I don't know. Some people must have liked these changes, though,
(22:55):
right because Snoopy never became a normal dog again, So
it feels like something must have been working. Yeah, I
mean so, some readers thought the new Snoopy was the
breath of fresh air, especially in contrast to how bleak
the kids could be sometimes, And and that really does
make sense when you think about how the other character
has never really react to Snoopy's changes. Um, you know,
he suddenly has this whole inner world that's generally much
(23:16):
more positive and upbeat than that of the kids, but
they still kind of just treating him like a regular dog.
Which is interesting because I wonder what such a sharp
turn and characterization says about what was going on, you know,
for Schultz at the time, like in his own life.
And you know, I got this new freewheeling Snoopy who
was supposedly the person or the character. I guess that
(23:36):
Schultz always wanted to be, you know, somebody who was
adventurous and care free instead of being bogged down by
doubt and worry all the time. And so, you know,
you think about this time in his life, and maybe
by the sixties and seventies, you know, all this fame
and fortune that Schultz finally made made him feel like
that kind of person. I guess if he was happier
(23:57):
in his personal life, it would make sense to he
might want to revel in that feeling and focus more
on Snoopy. Yeah. I think there's probably some truth to that,
but from many fans perspectives, the new Snoopy, and by extension,
the new Schultz were nothing to celebrate. They saw the slicker,
flashy air Snoopy as kind of like hard proof that Schultz,
who is now this millionaire cartoonist, had kind of lost
(24:19):
touch with those insecurities that had made Charlie Brown so
relatable in the first place. So The Atlantic actually did
an article on this, and they subbed up the feeling
this way quote. There was something fundamentally rotten about the
new Snoopy, whose charm was based on his total lack
of concern about what others thought of him. His confidence,
his breezy sense that the world may be falling apart,
(24:39):
but one can still dance on was worse than irritating.
It was morally bankrupt. Two legged Snoopy with his airs
and fantasies, peerless Snoopy, rich Snoopy, popular Snoopy, world famous Snoopy,
contented Snoopy that spoiled everything good Lord, I mean, like
so overthought on the one hand, but I mean, I
(25:00):
guess I get what they're saying, but it still feels
pretty harsh to pin all of that on Snoopy. And
when you think about the strips where Snoopy's imagining all
of these wild and kind of high flying adventures. They
usually end with a reality bursting his bubble in some way,
and like all of a sudden, Snoopy feels cold, so
we're back on top of his doghouse and sharing the
desert or wherever. But I don't know, things like that
(25:22):
always made me feel like Snoopy's flights of fancy were
there were really just another coping mechanism for how tough
life can be. Where that was like Linus's blanket or
Lucy's hot temper. But I don't know, that just seems
like such a harsh reaction, And you think about this.
Snoopy would talk a good game, but at the end
of the day, he's just a pop So I don't know.
To me, there's something endearing about that. Yeah, I mean,
(25:46):
I agree with that, and I think Schultz would as well.
In was being interviewed on the Tonight Show just as
he was announcing his retirement, and he observed that quote.
Snoopy likes to think that he's this independent dog who
does all these things and leads his own life, but
he always makes sure that he never gets too far
from the suffer dish. All right, Well, now that we've
(26:07):
talked a little more about the unique tone and mood
of the Peanuts strips, what do you say we take
a look at how that translated into all those TV
specials and definitely, but first let's take a quick break, Okay, mangoes.
(26:34):
So we established earlier that you didn't exactly do your
homework by watching n is It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown.
So I guess we'll have to talk about that in
a later episode, maybe a dedicated episode just to that.
But it's actually not the only unusual title. I mean,
there's some other chestnuts in the mix, like Someday You'll
find her Charlie Brown, which sounds a little bleak, and
(26:56):
my personal favorite, why Charlie Brown? Why? Why? Indeed? That's
that's a crazy title. Well, I think because money Mango.
I mean, the first Peanuts special was such a giant
ratings hit for CBS that the network immediately commissioned four
more specials and obviously many more to follow that, which
(27:17):
is fair enough, but I think for everyone's sake, whould
probably just stick to a special that people have actually seen. So,
but why don't we talk a little bit about the
one that people will be watching for the million time
in the next few weeks, which is to Charlie Brown Christmas.
That makes sense. So what do you want to say
first about it? Well, how about the fact that nobody
involved in the special thought it was actually going to work.
(27:37):
And it's actually hard to imagine this now, but you know, um,
there were a lot of factors working against it while
it was in production, and a lot of those actually
stemmed from controversial choices that Schultz himself insisted on, like
what so for starters, Schultz insisted that the Peanuts kids
be voiced by real children, and this meant the crew
would be working with mostly non professionals, many of whom
(27:59):
were too young memorize their lines or even to read
in some cases, so most of the child actors had
to have their lines fed to them a few words
at a time. It was all done by that long
suffering director and the voice of Snoopy, Bill Melendez. I mean,
just hearing that it does make me realize that in
the specials the voices do sound a little choppy, like
(28:20):
the way kids talk isn't exactly seamless. Yeah, I mean,
there's not a lot of rhythm to the senses, and
if you listen close enough, you can actually hear the
scenes between the words, where like different parts of the
line were stitched together and post But these untrained actors
were just the first of many notes that ended up
jeopardizing the project, and these were all coming from Schultz.
So another shake up came when Schultz refused to let
(28:41):
the network use the laugh track to I guess kind
of cue the viewers on the jokes, which is so
strange because it is hard to imagine it now with
a laugh track. Yeah, but I guess laugh tracks were
common practice at the time, even in cartoons like uh
you know, the Flintstones obviously relied on rue and I
think the Jetsons to. But but when uh Lee Mendelssohn
(29:02):
mentioned the idea to Schultz, the artist simply got up
and left the room, And then a few minutes later
Schultz came back and carried on the conversation as if
nothing had happened, which does sound a little bit like
a George Costanza tactic. You know, it's pretty funny, Yeah, totally,
And I guess Mendelssohn read between the lines on that
and never brought up the laugh track again. Wow, what
(29:23):
about some of the heavier stuff in the special, like
the commercialization of Christmas? And that's see where Linus reads
from the Bible, like with Shultz behind those kinds of
decisions too. Yeah, definitely, it was really important to him
that the special explore what he called the true meaning
of Christmas, which is why Linus reads the story of
Jesus's birth straight from the Gospel of Luke. And this
(29:43):
was a super risky move at the time because, according
to The Atlantic, less than nine percent of Christmas episodes
and specials from the era contained any religious references of
any kind, much less direct quotes from scripture. So surprisingly,
CBS didn't object to this inclusion, and not that it.
Coca Cola, who was the special sponsor um the producer, though,
(30:03):
was super nervous, and he told shots that no animated
character had ever read from the Bible before, which was
all the more reason to Schultz, and he told Mendelssohn, well,
if we don't do it, who will. I mean, I
guess that's true, but that was still a pretty big
gamble at the time. I mean, CBS and Coke must
have really liked what they saw if they let the
reference pass without you know, much more scrutiny. Yeah, I
(30:25):
mean you think so. But this executive from Coke's ad
agency actually visited the crew halfway through production and he
said the special was shaping up to be a total disaster.
And and CBS thought the same thing when they screened
like this early cut of it just a few weeks
before the premiere. They said there was two little action
that the whole thing moved way too slowly, and not
to mention the low energy voice acting and the jazzy soundtrack,
(30:48):
which they just found grading for some reason. But Bill
Melendez later said that the network would have scrapped the
entire special except that they had made this commitment to
Coke and it was kind of too late to back out.
So the show went on as scheduled, and to everyone's shock,
viewers just tuned in and droves. Like I want to say, um,
half of all American households with the TV tuned in
(31:10):
to watch the special that night, which was apparently fifteen
million people at the time. And a few months later,
Charles Schultz and Lee Mendelssohn were on stage at the
Emmy's actually accepting the award for Outstanding children's program. It
was the surprise hit that no one had seen coming,
and that included Charles Schultz himself. He later told TV
Guide in the continued success of the special has surprised
(31:33):
me as much as anyone. A lot of the drawings
are terrible, and of course those terrible drawings are based
on his own designs. Yeah, I guess we shouldn't be
too surprised that Schultz would, you know, take this class
half empty approach when judging oone work. But uh, you know,
for all the fanciful touches in his stories, like kite
(31:54):
eating trees and Canaan fighter pilots, you know, Peanuts is
really a strip about simple truths. It's characters are vulnerable,
just like the creator and all of us, really and
and there's no grand finale or cathartic resolution to the stories,
and that's probably what makes the strips, you know, ring
so true to us. Yeah, you know, I've actually been
thinking a lot this week about a quote that Schultz
(32:16):
gave in an interview, and it was actually with Penthouse,
of all places, but he was talking about how much
of his own life is wrapped up in the strip
and what he hoped to accomplish with it, and and
here's what he had to say about it. Of course
I could grind out daily gags, but I'm not interested
in simply doing gags. I'm interested in doing a strip
that says something and make some comment on the important
(32:37):
things of life. And I really think that Mantra bleeds
through in every single one of his strips, and they
show us that life is made up of both small,
hard one triumphs and these bitterly felt disappointments, and not
always an equal measure either. But you know the important
thing is to pick yourself up and never stop trying.
And you know Charles Schultz understood that, and I feel like,
(33:00):
thanks to his work, lots of other people, including us,
do too. Definitely. But you know, before we dive into
this delicious feast of buttered toast and jelly beans that
Tristan has prepared for us, but what do you say
we sneak in a quick fact off. I don't know
if I can hold off, but let's try. M So,
(33:24):
did you know that NASA gives out an award every
year called the Silver Snoopy. It's actually a silver pin,
and instead of going to astronauts, it actually is the
astronauts who give the awards to the staff and the
researchers that helped support them. So this program started in
the sixties, and you're probably wondering why Snoopy. Well, at
(33:44):
the time, NASA had just suffered the disaster with the
Apollo one mission and they were looking for something uplifting
that people could really get behind, and there was nothing
bigger than Snoopy at the time. So today the pins
go for about a thousand dollars on eBay and now
claims every pen goes to space and comes back before
it's handed out. Oh, I really like that. So you know,
(34:06):
when when Charles Schultz moved away from Minnesota as an adult,
he he never actually gave up his love of ice hockey,
So when one ice skating rink that was close to
his home in California closed in the sixties, he actually
had one built and according to mental Flass, he loved
the Swiss alpine themed arena so much that he ate
both breakfast and lunch there every day at its warm
(34:29):
puppy snack bar. And he also used to play pickup
games every week with his son's I Guess on Tuesday nights,
which is kind of fun. Well, apparently that Charlie Brown
Halloween Special had a huge impact on kids, and particularly
the scene where Charlie Brown opens his Halloween bag and
finds that he's just got a bunch of rocks instead
of candy. So kids thought this was so unfair that
(34:52):
for years they would try to share their treats with him,
and so they would send bags of candy to Charles
Schultz's office care of Charlie Brown. So here's the super
weird one about musician Vince Coralty, who did all that
jazzy music for the specials. Apparently, one night, while he
was composing music for the Halloween Special, he decided to
take a shower, but when he heard a noise outside,
(35:13):
he ran down to see what it was, and somehow
he locked himself out of his house in the process,
completely naked. I don't know why he didn't have a
towel with him, but the only way to get back
into his house was to climb and break into his
own house, and of course the neighbors called the cops
on him. So apparently, when the police came up to
this naked man breaking into his own house and asked
(35:35):
him to identify himself, he did keep his sense of
humor and he said, don't shoot, I'm the great pumpkin
of course. All right, well, here's a super quick fact
about the trouble with working with kid actors. So during
the taping of the Christmas Special, there was a child
actress who portrayed both Violet and Freedom, and she would
get so nervous before reading each time that after she
(35:58):
was done recording every all time, she would throw up. Now,
luckily she didn't have that big of a role kid actors. Yeah, well,
here's the one that's kind of heartwarming. Uh So, so
we all know that Lucy loves to pull that football
away from Charlie Brown just as he's about to kick it,
and often she says mean things right before or after,
like uh apparently she'll ask him don't you trust anyone anymore?
(36:21):
Or putting the football out, or she'll let him know
after she's pulled it away that don't you know a
woman's handshake isn't binding, which is a strange bit of
legally is there. But you know that there was one
moment where she let him kick the ball, and this
was in nineteen seventy As Slate reports, um there was
actually a sequence where Charlie Brown gets very ill and
(36:42):
when Lucy Here's that he's sick and might not come
back from the hospital, she says how much he means
to her and and then promises to let him kick
the football if he gets better. And then when he
does recover, she lives up to her promise and holds
that ball out for him, but of course he slips
and misses it. Anyway, Well, it is nice to know
that for once she gave him a chance and I
(37:03):
like that factor. So I think you get to take
home today's trophy. Thank you, Will, and thanks for all
of you out there for tuning into another part time Genius.
You know, I'm sure you have wonderful Snoopy and Charlie
Brown memories. So if you've got facts of stories, we
definitely want to hear them. Or if you've got topics
you want us to cover, we're actually looking for those two.
So it just emails as part Time Genius at how
stuff Works dot com or hit us up on the socials.
(37:26):
But from gave Tristan, Will and me thank you so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(37:46):
is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things
we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact
for user thing. Gabe blues Yer is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(38:07):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Did we did we forget Jason?
Jason who
I guess what, mango, what's that? Well, it is officially
Charlie Brown season. I know, I am so excited. You know,
right between Thanksgiving and Christmas is when my family buckles
down and we watch all those specials, and it is wild.
That's been over fifty years since some of the big
ones actually came out. But what is weirdest to me
(00:22):
is that my kids are so into Charlie Brown, like
it's almost quaint. Ruby had a Peppermint Patty birthday party
when she turned three because she assumed everyone was into
Peppermint Patty too, uh, And so we just hand out
headbands and did at the gym. I love this fact,
and the fact that probably more than half the kids
had no idea who Peppermint Patty was, at least going
(00:43):
into the party. I'm sure Ruby told him all about her.
But anyway, So, so, why are they so into the specials?
You know, I have no idea of something just clicked
with them. But like Henry actually based his Thanksgiving speech
a few years ago completely on the one that I
think Charlie Brown gives and Thanksgiving special and and we've
definitely watched It's a great pumpkin Charlie Brown and Charlie
(01:04):
Brown Christmas a whole bunch of times. But you know,
they're even into some of the oddball ones like Race
for Your Life Charlie Brown, which is about the gang
going to camp. That's very good. I mean, you did
hit on some of the big ones there, but I
do think you forgot one of the most important of
them all. Really. Oh yeah, of course, It's Arbor Day
Charlie Brown. I do not think we watched that one.
(01:28):
Is that a real thing? We're just making that up? Oh,
it's absolutely a real thing. It was just one of
the forty five Charlie Brown specials out there, forty five.
I had no idea that that many. Oh man, I'm surprised,
Like you don't watch It's the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown
every single east. I don't know how could be Easter
without that special. And actually there's also It's Your First
Kiss Charlie Brown, which is another classic and also I
(01:49):
guess kind of weird. But we've got a lot of
catching up to do here, and with the holiday season
upon us, what we thought now would be the perfect
time to look into the history of our favorite melon
colleague Grade schoolers. So we'll talk about the origin of
the comics trip, including the real life inspiration behind some
of the characters, the story of how the beloved Christmas
Special came to be, and how it was very nearly
(02:11):
canceled in production. Now, of course, we'll also talk a
little bit about the reason why creator Charles Schultz hated
the name Peanuts and why some fans can't stand Snoopy.
There's a lot to cover, so let's dive in. Hey there,
(02:45):
podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson,
and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man
gues Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof
glass just shuffling a stack of buttered to It's kind
of like it's a deck of cars. It's our friends
and producer Tristan McNeil, and I do have to admit
when Tristan said he wanted to recreate the famous meal
from the Peanuts Thanksgiving Special, I really never dreamed it
(03:07):
would be this theatrical. But it's really quite a show.
Don't you think you didn't think Tristan would be theatrical?
I don't know, I don't know. It's just surprised me. Yeah.
I mean, I have no idea how he's doing this.
He's wearing those slices like he's a black jack dealer
or something. But I like that he's giving the Thanksgiving
Special a little love, and I feel like it's always
the one that gets overshadowed by both, like the Hallyween
(03:29):
Special and the Christmas Special. But you know, we've had
a saft spot for Charlie Brown Thanksgiving at my house,
especially where um Snoopy puts together that last minute feast
for Charlie Brown and he's got all that popcorn and pretzels.
But when the kids are gone, Snoopy and Woodstock are
just back of their doghouse and they've got a lavish
spread for themselves with like pumpkin pie, roast and vegetables,
(03:51):
even this giant cooked turkey, and they're basically living it
off while the kids are just eating you know, snack food.
I mean, it's kind of a jerk move, but when
you think about that, it's it's that mix of whimsy
and low key meanness that are sort of par for
the course for peanuts that actually, for instance, did never
strike you as just a little bit weird that Woodstock
would help Snoopy carve and eat the turkey. I mean,
(04:14):
Woodstock is a bird if you haven't noticed. You know
what's funny about it is that I never actually gave
it much thought. But it turns out you're not alone
in this. Lee Mendelssohn, who was the executive producer on
the Peanuts specials, he actually objected to that scene because
he was so weird it out by it, But because
the idea had comes straight from Charles Schultz, the Peanuts creator,
he was just overruled and the scene aireds planned. But uh,
(04:37):
you know what was funny is that Mendelssohn did eventually
get his way. So all these years later, CBS asked
Mendelssohn to cut three minutes from the special so they
could fit in, you know, more commercials, and Mendelssohn sees
the chance and he removed that scene of Woodstock eating turkey,
so you can only see him eating pie instead. But
then a few years later, the rights of the special
move to ABC and the network decided to air it
(04:57):
on cut, meaning Woodstock is once again accountable. It feels
a little bit odd to be kicking off our Peanuts
show with a fact about bird cannibalism, but it also
kind of feels appropriate, you know, given how dark Charlie
Brown and his chums could often be. Actually, in fact,
have you ever seen the very first Peanuts trip? I have,
(05:18):
and I don't remember it. Yeah, So it shows a
boy and a girl just sitting on the sidewalk and
this boy, Scheremy is his name. He says, well, here
comes good old Charlie Brown. Good old Charlie Brown. Yes, sir,
good old Charlie Brown. And then when Charlie Brown is
out of sight, Cheremy adds, how I hate him, you know,
(05:39):
and that's the punch line. So yeah, there's there's definitely
some darkness to the world of Peanuts, no matter how
cute or simplistic the characters might look. But there's also
incredible warmth and humor there as well, and it feels
like it's that unique mix that really made Peanuts this
enduring part of pop culture, not only in the US
but all around the world. So we've definitely got a
(05:59):
lot to go through today. But where do you think
you want to start? Why don't we spend a few
minutes on the man behind the Peanuts himself, Charles M. Schultz.
So This name sounds familiar enough because we've all seen
his name a million times. It's signed at the bottom
of each and every Peanuts strip, all seventeen thousand eight
of them. But despite the constant exposure, lots of people
(06:20):
still misname him as Schultz with the T. It's actually
s C h U l z. And according to Medium,
the misspelling is so common that's actually appeared wrong in
more than thirty thousand articles to Day, as well as
the original opening to the Peanuts Christmas Special. I guess
someone caught it at the very last minute, but there
was an error that was gonna be aired in the
(06:41):
premier You know, I guess I've actually never thought about this,
and I'm sure that I'm guilty of making the same mistake.
But what kind of name is Schultz? Like it is?
Is it German? Yeah? His dad, Carl Schultz, immigrated from
Germany to Minnesota, which is where he met charles mom Dina,
and Charles was this only child. He was born in too.
He grew up in St. Paul. But what's interesting is
(07:02):
that St. Paul is one of the few places in
the country that has both super hot summers and freezing
cold winters, and It's the same for the Peanuts Kids, right, Like,
there's so many strips that are centered on these summer
activities like playing baseball, flying kites, selling lemonade on hot days.
But then you have a ton of strips where there's
like a foot of snow on the ground and everyone's
playing ice hockey. So then it is Peanuts actually set
(07:25):
in St. Paul. I mean, there's some debate about that.
Some fans think the strip is set near Santa Rosa, California,
which is where Schultz lived once the Peanuts became a hit.
But you know, that doesn't make much sense when you
look at all all the strips set in the winter.
But what little evidence there is in the strips does
kind of point to either St. Paul or Minneapolis as
their hometown. For instance, there's a strip in nine seven
(07:49):
that implied that the character has lived in Hennepin County,
which is in Minnesota, and two years before that there
was one where Schroeder confesses he always thought his hero
Beethoven was a native in Minnesota, which you know is
presumably just like him. All right, Well, although that makes sense,
and you'd actually expect the cartoonists to set the strip
about childhood in their hometown. That wouldn't be that surprising,
(08:09):
and it would be pretty on theme for Schultz, because
when you look at the comics, so many elements of
the Peanuts strip turn out to be somewhat biographical. I mean,
just listen to this breakdown. Shuremy was a childhood friend.
Schroeder was a caddy at the golf course Schultz worked
at as a teenager. Linus and Lucy van Pelt got
their last name from a man's Schultz served in the
(08:30):
army with. Meanwhile, Lucy's character was inspired by Schultz's first
wife and his mother. I guess there's a lot to
unpack there, but that does seem to be the case. Actually,
I was reading this tribute to Charles Schultz from Bill Waterson,
who is my hero and uh who did the Colvinant
Hobbs strips, and he thought of Peanuts as the gold
standard of comic strips, and this is his take on
(08:52):
Lucy quote. I was struck less by the fact that
Schultz drew on his troubled marriage for material than by
the sympathy that he shows for his torment, and by
his ability to poke fun at himself, which is actually
pretty interesting, like, like, you know, Lucy is annoying and
mean spirited, but you don't ever really hate her for it. Now,
that's true. And you know he was looking for inspiration everywhere.
(09:14):
Even line is his famous blue blanket came straight from
Schultz's life when his daughter was younger, she was obsessed
with her own security blanket. Yeah. I mean, of course
you're gonna be stealing from life when you've got like
a daily deadline and and working at that sort of volume.
But I think the one character I always think about
is the little red haired girl who goes unnamed, And uh,
(09:35):
you know, that's the one that Charlie Brown always had
that huge crush on. She was apparently based on Schultz's
girlfriend in the late forties, this redhead named Donna May Johnson,
and after the war, the two of them worked together
at this correspondent school in Minneapolis, and after a few
years of dating, Shells finally worked at the Nerve to
propose to her, But then Donna May turned him down
and married a different guy a few months later, and
(09:56):
it was obviously this huge blow to his pride, but
in end, the ordeal actually inspired one of Schultz's most
famous characters, and supposedly he and Donna May remained friends
for years later. I mean, there are some definite shades
of Charlie Brown to that story, and you can see
that throughout his work. Yeah, definitely, And it makes sense
because both Charlie Brown and Snoopy they're often considered stand
(10:18):
ins for Schultz himself. In fact, Charles's son, Craig Schultz
once said about him, each of the characters represents a
piece of our dad. Charlie Brown was his real self
and Snoopy was what he wanted to be, which is
kind of funny to think about, but it makes sense
and it's both characters also had real world counterparts too.
Charlie Brown was actually the name of a friend that
(10:39):
Charles worked with prior to creating Peanuts, and Snoopy was
based on charles His own childhood dog, this English Pointer,
not a Beagle who was named Spike and whose name
would later be used for one of Snoopy's brothers. So
if Schultz had a dog named Spike, then where's the
name Snoopy come from? Well, apparently Charles had originally planned
to call his dog Sniffy, but then he found out
(11:02):
that another comic featured a dog with the same name,
so he had to change it to something else. But
luckily he had this backup. You know, when he was
a kid, his mother suggested if they ever got another dog,
they should name him Snoopy, and so that's where the
name came from. Anyway, back back to the real world
Snoopy for a second. It's pretty striking how devoted to
his dog. Charles was, just like Charlie Brown would later
(11:24):
be with Snoopy. So how how do you mean? Well,
the very first drawing that Charles ever published was of
his dog Spike. So Charles was just fifteen years old
at the time when he submitted this drawing and actually
a fact along with it to Ripley's Believe it or Not,
and it got published nationally. I mean, that's pretty cool.
But what was so unbolouivable about Spike that got him
(11:45):
published in Ripley's. Well, the drawings caption said that Spike
was quote a hunting dog that eats pins, tax and
razor blades, so he didn't exactly have Snoopy's refined palette.
But it does sound like Spike shared his taste for adventure.
That was this article and mental flaws about this that
was talking about. You know, the dog would make a
break for freedom anytime the door was open and only
(12:07):
come back because he loved going on car rides. So
whenever Spike got loose, Charles would run to his dad's
car and basically just honked the horn as a way
to lure the dog back. I mean, we we actually
had a dog like that growing up. She'd run off
for the only way to get her back was to
unwrap a slice of American exactly. That's what always works. Yeah,
I mean it's so weird that, like that plastic peel
(12:29):
sound like when it was coming off the craft slices,
that's what would make her race back to the house.
But you know, having a dog you keep losing sounds
very Charlie Brown to me as well. And and uh
speaking which, some of my favorite Peanuts facts are the
ones that overlap between Charlie Brown's childhood and Charles Schultz.
Is like, there's a surface level stuff, but both of
them had fathers who were barbers. But but then they're
(12:50):
also those like wonderfully tragic tidbits from Schultz's life that
feels so Charlie Brown, Like his dad used to give
him haircuts but when customers came in, he'd have to
hop out of the chair. So you just have to
grump around and wander about with half a haircut until
that finished it up. I which does sound so very
Charlie Brown. It's pretty great, yeah, I know. And there
was actually one time when Shultston line at a movie
(13:12):
theater because they were handing out candy bars to the
first kids to buy tickets that day, and of course
Schultz was the hundred first kid in line. You know.
When when he was in high school, Schultz's teacher convince
him to draw some comics for a senior year book.
And so Schultz, of course, being super timid and socially awkward,
he's a little nervous, but he desperately wants to be
(13:32):
a cartoonist, so he overcomes a shyness he submits artwork,
and then when the yearbook comes out, of course everyone
had forgotten to include his work, Like, not a single
one of his cartoons got used. That's a tough break,
but you know, it is interesting to see that that
not every aspect of Peanuts is drawn from Schultza's own experience.
You know, if you take the character Franklin, for instance,
(13:53):
he was introduced as the comic strips first black character.
And now this was in July of nineteen sixty eight,
and this was just a few months after the assassination
of M. L. K Jr. Yeah, it's amazing that that's
fifty years ago this year. And and uh and this
was based on a reader's suggestion, right, yeah, that's right.
The reader was a mother of three named Harriett Glickman,
(14:15):
and she wrote to Schultz just a few days after
the death of Martin Luther King. And now in that note,
the Glickman noted the power that mass media has to
shape what she called the unconscious attitudes of our kids.
So she has Schultz to add one or more black
characters to his trips. And this was so that children
could see that respect and friendship was possible between people
of all races. And Schultz was pretty moved by the idea,
(14:38):
but he didn't add the character immediately. He was actually
a little bit nervous that the move might seem to
be patronizing to black readers. But as Glickman continued to
correspond with him over the course of several months, you know,
he decided to change his mind on this and on
July one, he wrote to say that Glickman should watch
for the new character to appear by the end of
the month, which of course he did. And so does
(15:01):
show suffer any blowback from from this when when when
the strip comes out, Well, you know, you had some
black readers that did argue that Franklin was a bland
character and therefore somewhat patronizing, but in general readers appreciated
the added representation as well as you know how kind
and worry free Franklin was compared with other Peanuts kids.
(15:21):
But it still it was undoubtedly a tense time for
America for an artist to debut what was essentially the
first minority character in a mainstream comic strip. But other
than this brief exchange where Franklin mentions that his father
was a soldier in Vietnam, there's really nothing overtly political
about his inclusion. Like Charlie Brown loses his beach ball,
(15:41):
only to have it found and returned to him by
a boy named Franklin, and then the boys decided to
build a sandcastle together, which is of course very sweet. Yeah,
but they're definitely a bit of backlash from this. You
had several newspaper editors from southern states that wrote to
Schultz demanding that he stopped using the character, or at
the very least that he Alwaids showing Franklin in school
(16:02):
with the other white characters, which is just mind boggling
to think about. But his response was pretty straightforward. So
here's what he told an interviewer years later about the incident.
I never paid any attention to those things. And I
remember telling United Features President Larry Rutman at the time
about Franklin. He wanted me to change it, and we
talked about it for a long while on the phone,
(16:24):
and I finally sighed, and I said, well, Larry, let's
put it this way. Either you print it just the
way I draw it, or I quit. How's that? So
that's the way it ended. I mean, that is so awesome,
and it's nice to hear that, like, despite whatever reservations
he might have had at the beginning, she ultimately went
to bat for Franklin in this really big way. Yeah,
and you know, I know we wanted to talk about
(16:45):
an earlier occasion when Schultz butted heads with upper management,
and this time about what the strip should be called.
But before we get into that, let's take a quick break.
(17:09):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, and we're talking about
cartoonists Charles Schultz and his beloved Peanuts comic strips. So,
you know, to be clear, there was one thing that
she definitely did not love about his own strip, and
that was the title. So back in n when he
first pitched the strip to be carried by the United
Feature Syndicate, Schultz insisted the title should be Little Folks,
(17:31):
which maybe wasn't the most creative title, but it does seem,
i don't know, somewhat fitting if you think about how
so many of his characters they read like these little
kids with grown up type worries, and like they're plagued
by this level of anxiety and almost neurosis that's typically reserved,
you know, for adults. Yeah, but whether it's fitting or not,
the executives had this different problem with it. So there
(17:52):
was already a strip called Little Folks, except with the
word little all spelled out instead of little like it,
and then there was also a little abner the comic strip.
So they're worried that readers might confuse the titles, or
worse that the creators of the rival strips might sue
them for copyright infringement. So instead, the production manager at
the syndicate decided to call the strip Peanuts. And I
(18:15):
guess this was a reference to the Howdy Duty show
that was pretty popular at the time. When kids came
to tapings, they sat in the Peanut Gallery. So the
production manager thought, you know, like he'd rip off that
idea and just called the small Kids Peanuts. I do
like that their solution to not being sued was to
rip off a TV show instead, but either, I know,
I mean, the other theory is that they just thought
(18:36):
Little Folks was a weak title, but they didn't want
to upset Shultz. Um not that he wasn't upset anyway.
In the interview, he was still angry about the Peanuts title,
and he said, quote, it's totally ridiculous, has no meaning,
is simply confusing, and has no dignity. And I think
my humor has dignity, which is sad that you never
(18:57):
got to change the name. But you know, of course,
once this strip took off, he was kind of stuck
with the title. And uh, what's funny to me is
that schill Is actually avoided using the title himself, like
he claimed that whenever someone asked him what he did
for a living, you just tell them I draw that
comic strip with Snoopy in it, Charlie Brown and his Daughter. Well,
whatever you call it, there's no question that Schultz's comic
(19:19):
was a runaway hit once the strip gained a little
bit of steam. So it was published in just seven
US newspapers when it debuted back in October of nineteen.
Well by the end of its fifty year run and
two thousand, the comic was being translated in over twenty
different languages, published in seventy five different countries, and had
grown its global readership to his staggering three hundred and
(19:40):
fifty five million people. So in total, over fifteen thousand
daily strips and Sunday strips were produced, all written, inked,
and lettered by Charles Schultz himself. I mean, it was
this unprecedented run, and actually so unprecedented that the media
scholar Robert Thompson once called the fifty year story of
Charlie Brown and his Pals arguably the longest told story
(20:03):
by a single artist in human history. I mean, that's
really incredible to think about. So what do you think
made it click with people? For such a long time. Well,
I think a big part of it goes back to
something that we mentioned at the top of the show,
which is the way the strip really found this middle
ground in terms of tone. I mean, it was funny
and sometimes sweet, but there was always kind of this prickly,
(20:26):
world weary feeling underlying the humor there. And you know,
as it turns out, this was all by design. So
Schultz believed that happiness and humor didn't really mix, which
is of course why Charlie Brown never does get to
kick that football. And he know. Shultz also dealt with
bounts of depression in his own life, and one way
he found relief was by channeling his anxieties directly into
(20:49):
his art, which makes a lot of sense, And the
result is a strip with a somewhat despairing worldview and
and one where as Schultz once explained, here's what he
said about He said, all the loves are unrequited, all
the baseball games were lost, all the test scores or
d minuses, the great Pumpkin never comes, and the football
is always pulled away like when you described so hopefully
(21:11):
it really does. Yeah, it's funny that Sills like completely
stuck to that formula for the strip's entire run. Uh so,
I guess things did get a little cheerier in the
mid to late sixties once the TV special started like
and and uh, well, that merchandizing really kicked into high gear.
I've actually heard that most fans use the rise of
Snoopy and pop culture is kind of a turning point
(21:32):
in the strips run. And uh, you know, there's this
first decade or so where Snoopy is more or less
this normal dog in the strip. He he walks on
four legs, He he doesn't communicate through toop balloons, and
he doesn't even have a clear owner in the strips
like much less this tricked out doghouse. And weirdly, this
is also the period where the human characters were what
the creator of Little Abner called good, mean little bastards
(21:54):
eager to hurt one another. But as the sixties donned,
Shills began to capitalize in his creation with licensing deals
and product tie ins, which caused that public perception of
Peanuts to shift, and suddenly the characters were seen as
much sweeter and kinder than the strips had ever really been.
And while the newer strips never really lost their edge completely,
(22:14):
and Charlie Brown remained the world's you know, punching bag.
Snoopy did begin to take on more and more of
the limelight, and as this happened, the character became less
and less like a real dog. By the late sixties,
Snoopy was walking on two legs, He was composing love
letters with a typewriter in his doghouse. He was also
spending a lot less time around the human characters, and
(22:35):
instead he was either hanging out with his new animal
friends like Woodstock, or he was off by himself, sort
of waging these imaginary wars against the villainous Red Baron.
But you know, in other words, things took a much
zanier turn, and lots of Peanuts fans kind of think
of that as when the strip kind of jumped the shark.
I don't know. Some people must have liked these changes, though,
(22:55):
right because Snoopy never became a normal dog again, So
it feels like something must have been working. Yeah, I
mean so, some readers thought the new Snoopy was the
breath of fresh air, especially in contrast to how bleak
the kids could be sometimes, And and that really does
make sense when you think about how the other character
has never really react to Snoopy's changes. Um, you know,
he suddenly has this whole inner world that's generally much
(23:16):
more positive and upbeat than that of the kids, but
they still kind of just treating him like a regular dog.
Which is interesting because I wonder what such a sharp
turn and characterization says about what was going on, you know,
for Schultz at the time, like in his own life.
And you know, I got this new freewheeling Snoopy who
was supposedly the person or the character. I guess that
(23:36):
Schultz always wanted to be, you know, somebody who was
adventurous and care free instead of being bogged down by
doubt and worry all the time. And so, you know,
you think about this time in his life, and maybe
by the sixties and seventies, you know, all this fame
and fortune that Schultz finally made made him feel like
that kind of person. I guess if he was happier
(23:57):
in his personal life, it would make sense to he
might want to revel in that feeling and focus more
on Snoopy. Yeah. I think there's probably some truth to that,
but from many fans perspectives, the new Snoopy, and by extension,
the new Schultz were nothing to celebrate. They saw the slicker,
flashy air Snoopy as kind of like hard proof that Schultz,
who is now this millionaire cartoonist, had kind of lost
(24:19):
touch with those insecurities that had made Charlie Brown so
relatable in the first place. So The Atlantic actually did
an article on this, and they subbed up the feeling
this way quote. There was something fundamentally rotten about the
new Snoopy, whose charm was based on his total lack
of concern about what others thought of him. His confidence,
his breezy sense that the world may be falling apart,
(24:39):
but one can still dance on was worse than irritating.
It was morally bankrupt. Two legged Snoopy with his airs
and fantasies, peerless Snoopy, rich Snoopy, popular Snoopy, world famous Snoopy,
contented Snoopy that spoiled everything good Lord, I mean, like
so overthought on the one hand, but I mean, I
(25:00):
guess I get what they're saying, but it still feels
pretty harsh to pin all of that on Snoopy. And
when you think about the strips where Snoopy's imagining all
of these wild and kind of high flying adventures. They
usually end with a reality bursting his bubble in some way,
and like all of a sudden, Snoopy feels cold, so
we're back on top of his doghouse and sharing the
desert or wherever. But I don't know, things like that
(25:22):
always made me feel like Snoopy's flights of fancy were
there were really just another coping mechanism for how tough
life can be. Where that was like Linus's blanket or
Lucy's hot temper. But I don't know, that just seems
like such a harsh reaction, And you think about this.
Snoopy would talk a good game, but at the end
of the day, he's just a pop So I don't know.
To me, there's something endearing about that. Yeah, I mean,
(25:46):
I agree with that, and I think Schultz would as well.
In was being interviewed on the Tonight Show just as
he was announcing his retirement, and he observed that quote.
Snoopy likes to think that he's this independent dog who
does all these things and leads his own life, but
he always makes sure that he never gets too far
from the suffer dish. All right, Well, now that we've
(26:07):
talked a little more about the unique tone and mood
of the Peanuts strips, what do you say we take
a look at how that translated into all those TV
specials and definitely, but first let's take a quick break, Okay, mangoes.
(26:34):
So we established earlier that you didn't exactly do your
homework by watching n is It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown.
So I guess we'll have to talk about that in
a later episode, maybe a dedicated episode just to that.
But it's actually not the only unusual title. I mean,
there's some other chestnuts in the mix, like Someday You'll
find her Charlie Brown, which sounds a little bleak, and
(26:56):
my personal favorite, why Charlie Brown? Why? Why? Indeed? That's
that's a crazy title. Well, I think because money Mango.
I mean, the first Peanuts special was such a giant
ratings hit for CBS that the network immediately commissioned four
more specials and obviously many more to follow that, which
(27:17):
is fair enough, but I think for everyone's sake, whould
probably just stick to a special that people have actually seen. So,
but why don't we talk a little bit about the
one that people will be watching for the million time
in the next few weeks, which is to Charlie Brown Christmas.
That makes sense. So what do you want to say
first about it? Well, how about the fact that nobody
involved in the special thought it was actually going to work.
(27:37):
And it's actually hard to imagine this now, but you know, um,
there were a lot of factors working against it while
it was in production, and a lot of those actually
stemmed from controversial choices that Schultz himself insisted on, like
what so for starters, Schultz insisted that the Peanuts kids
be voiced by real children, and this meant the crew
would be working with mostly non professionals, many of whom
(27:59):
were too young memorize their lines or even to read
in some cases, so most of the child actors had
to have their lines fed to them a few words
at a time. It was all done by that long
suffering director and the voice of Snoopy, Bill Melendez. I mean,
just hearing that it does make me realize that in
the specials the voices do sound a little choppy, like
(28:20):
the way kids talk isn't exactly seamless. Yeah, I mean,
there's not a lot of rhythm to the senses, and
if you listen close enough, you can actually hear the
scenes between the words, where like different parts of the
line were stitched together and post But these untrained actors
were just the first of many notes that ended up
jeopardizing the project, and these were all coming from Schultz.
So another shake up came when Schultz refused to let
(28:41):
the network use the laugh track to I guess kind
of cue the viewers on the jokes, which is so
strange because it is hard to imagine it now with
a laugh track. Yeah, but I guess laugh tracks were
common practice at the time, even in cartoons like uh
you know, the Flintstones obviously relied on rue and I
think the Jetsons to. But but when uh Lee Mendelssohn
(29:02):
mentioned the idea to Schultz, the artist simply got up
and left the room, And then a few minutes later
Schultz came back and carried on the conversation as if
nothing had happened, which does sound a little bit like
a George Costanza tactic. You know, it's pretty funny, Yeah, totally,
And I guess Mendelssohn read between the lines on that
and never brought up the laugh track again. Wow, what
(29:23):
about some of the heavier stuff in the special, like
the commercialization of Christmas? And that's see where Linus reads
from the Bible, like with Shultz behind those kinds of
decisions too. Yeah, definitely, it was really important to him
that the special explore what he called the true meaning
of Christmas, which is why Linus reads the story of
Jesus's birth straight from the Gospel of Luke. And this
(29:43):
was a super risky move at the time because, according
to The Atlantic, less than nine percent of Christmas episodes
and specials from the era contained any religious references of
any kind, much less direct quotes from scripture. So surprisingly,
CBS didn't object to this inclusion, and not that it.
Coca Cola, who was the special sponsor um the producer, though,
(30:03):
was super nervous, and he told shots that no animated
character had ever read from the Bible before, which was
all the more reason to Schultz, and he told Mendelssohn, well,
if we don't do it, who will. I mean, I
guess that's true, but that was still a pretty big
gamble at the time. I mean, CBS and Coke must
have really liked what they saw if they let the
reference pass without you know, much more scrutiny. Yeah, I
(30:25):
mean you think so. But this executive from Coke's ad
agency actually visited the crew halfway through production and he
said the special was shaping up to be a total disaster.
And and CBS thought the same thing when they screened
like this early cut of it just a few weeks
before the premiere. They said there was two little action
that the whole thing moved way too slowly, and not
to mention the low energy voice acting and the jazzy soundtrack,
(30:48):
which they just found grading for some reason. But Bill
Melendez later said that the network would have scrapped the
entire special except that they had made this commitment to
Coke and it was kind of too late to back out.
So the show went on as scheduled, and to everyone's shock,
viewers just tuned in and droves. Like I want to say, um,
half of all American households with the TV tuned in
(31:10):
to watch the special that night, which was apparently fifteen
million people at the time. And a few months later,
Charles Schultz and Lee Mendelssohn were on stage at the
Emmy's actually accepting the award for Outstanding children's program. It
was the surprise hit that no one had seen coming,
and that included Charles Schultz himself. He later told TV
Guide in the continued success of the special has surprised
(31:33):
me as much as anyone. A lot of the drawings
are terrible, and of course those terrible drawings are based
on his own designs. Yeah, I guess we shouldn't be
too surprised that Schultz would, you know, take this class
half empty approach when judging oone work. But uh, you know,
for all the fanciful touches in his stories, like kite
(31:54):
eating trees and Canaan fighter pilots, you know, Peanuts is
really a strip about simple truths. It's characters are vulnerable,
just like the creator and all of us, really and
and there's no grand finale or cathartic resolution to the stories,
and that's probably what makes the strips, you know, ring
so true to us. Yeah, you know, I've actually been
thinking a lot this week about a quote that Schultz
(32:16):
gave in an interview, and it was actually with Penthouse,
of all places, but he was talking about how much
of his own life is wrapped up in the strip
and what he hoped to accomplish with it, and and
here's what he had to say about it. Of course
I could grind out daily gags, but I'm not interested
in simply doing gags. I'm interested in doing a strip
that says something and make some comment on the important
(32:37):
things of life. And I really think that Mantra bleeds
through in every single one of his strips, and they
show us that life is made up of both small,
hard one triumphs and these bitterly felt disappointments, and not
always an equal measure either. But you know the important
thing is to pick yourself up and never stop trying.
And you know Charles Schultz understood that, and I feel like,
(33:00):
thanks to his work, lots of other people, including us,
do too. Definitely. But you know, before we dive into
this delicious feast of buttered toast and jelly beans that
Tristan has prepared for us, but what do you say
we sneak in a quick fact off. I don't know
if I can hold off, but let's try. M So,
(33:24):
did you know that NASA gives out an award every
year called the Silver Snoopy. It's actually a silver pin,
and instead of going to astronauts, it actually is the
astronauts who give the awards to the staff and the
researchers that helped support them. So this program started in
the sixties, and you're probably wondering why Snoopy. Well, at
(33:44):
the time, NASA had just suffered the disaster with the
Apollo one mission and they were looking for something uplifting
that people could really get behind, and there was nothing
bigger than Snoopy at the time. So today the pins
go for about a thousand dollars on eBay and now
claims every pen goes to space and comes back before
it's handed out. Oh, I really like that. So you know,
(34:06):
when when Charles Schultz moved away from Minnesota as an adult,
he he never actually gave up his love of ice hockey,
So when one ice skating rink that was close to
his home in California closed in the sixties, he actually
had one built and according to mental Flass, he loved
the Swiss alpine themed arena so much that he ate
both breakfast and lunch there every day at its warm
(34:29):
puppy snack bar. And he also used to play pickup
games every week with his son's I Guess on Tuesday nights,
which is kind of fun. Well, apparently that Charlie Brown
Halloween Special had a huge impact on kids, and particularly
the scene where Charlie Brown opens his Halloween bag and
finds that he's just got a bunch of rocks instead
of candy. So kids thought this was so unfair that
(34:52):
for years they would try to share their treats with him,
and so they would send bags of candy to Charles
Schultz's office care of Charlie Brown. So here's the super
weird one about musician Vince Coralty, who did all that
jazzy music for the specials. Apparently, one night, while he
was composing music for the Halloween Special, he decided to
take a shower, but when he heard a noise outside,
(35:13):
he ran down to see what it was, and somehow
he locked himself out of his house in the process,
completely naked. I don't know why he didn't have a
towel with him, but the only way to get back
into his house was to climb and break into his
own house, and of course the neighbors called the cops
on him. So apparently, when the police came up to
this naked man breaking into his own house and asked
(35:35):
him to identify himself, he did keep his sense of
humor and he said, don't shoot, I'm the great pumpkin
of course. All right, well, here's a super quick fact
about the trouble with working with kid actors. So during
the taping of the Christmas Special, there was a child
actress who portrayed both Violet and Freedom, and she would
get so nervous before reading each time that after she
(35:58):
was done recording every all time, she would throw up. Now,
luckily she didn't have that big of a role kid actors. Yeah, well,
here's the one that's kind of heartwarming. Uh So, so
we all know that Lucy loves to pull that football
away from Charlie Brown just as he's about to kick it,
and often she says mean things right before or after,
like uh apparently she'll ask him don't you trust anyone anymore?
(36:21):
Or putting the football out, or she'll let him know
after she's pulled it away that don't you know a
woman's handshake isn't binding, which is a strange bit of
legally is there. But you know that there was one
moment where she let him kick the ball, and this
was in nineteen seventy As Slate reports, um there was
actually a sequence where Charlie Brown gets very ill and
(36:42):
when Lucy Here's that he's sick and might not come
back from the hospital, she says how much he means
to her and and then promises to let him kick
the football if he gets better. And then when he
does recover, she lives up to her promise and holds
that ball out for him, but of course he slips
and misses it. Anyway, Well, it is nice to know
that for once she gave him a chance and I
(37:03):
like that factor. So I think you get to take
home today's trophy. Thank you, Will, and thanks for all
of you out there for tuning into another part time Genius.
You know, I'm sure you have wonderful Snoopy and Charlie
Brown memories. So if you've got facts of stories, we
definitely want to hear them. Or if you've got topics
you want us to cover, we're actually looking for those two.
So it just emails as part Time Genius at how
stuff Works dot com or hit us up on the socials.
(37:26):
But from gave Tristan, Will and me thank you so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(37:46):
is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things
we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact
for user thing. Gabe blues Yer is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(38:07):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Did we did we forget Jason?
Jason who
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