November 27, 2019 • 38 mins
Every holiday season, Will and Mango rewatch The Peanuts classics. But how did Charles Schulz get his inspiration for the comic strip?
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
Guess what, Mango, what's that? Well, it is officially Charlie
Brown Season. I know, I am so excited. You know,
right between Thanksgiving Christmas is when my family buckles down
and we watch all those specials, and it is wild.
(00:26):
That's been over fifty years since some of the big
ones actually came out. But what is weirdest to me
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 two. Uh, and so we just hand out
headbands and did at a gym. I love this fact,
(00:46):
and the fact that probably more than half the kids
had no idea who Peppermint Patty was, at least going
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, uh,
I think Charlie Brown gives and Thanksgiving special and and
(01:09):
we've definitely watched It's a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and
Charlie 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
(01:32):
Charlie Brown. I do not think we watched that one.
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
(01:56):
Kiss Charlie Brown, which is another classic and also I
guess kind of weird. But we've got a lot of
catching up to do here, and with the holiday season
upon us, we thought now would be the perfect time
to look into the history of our favorite melancholy 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,
(02:18):
and how it was very nearly 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, podcast listeners, welcome the
(02:55):
part time genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm
joined by my good friend man guest Ticketer and on
the other side of the soundproof glass just shuffling a
stack of buttered toast, 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 would be this theatrical. But
(03:18):
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 he's wearing those slices
like he's a blackjack dealer or something. But I like
that he's getting the Thanksgiving Special a little love. I
feel like it's always the one that gets overshadowed by both,
like the Hallyween Special and the Christmas Special. But you know,
(03:40):
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 punkin pie,
roasted vegetable as even this giant cooked turkey, and they're
(04:03):
basically living it off while the kids were just eating
you know, snack food. I mean, it's kind of a
jerk move, but when you think about it, 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, they never strike you as just a little
bit weird that Woodstock would help Snoopy carve and eat
the turkey. I mean, Woodstock is a bird if you
(04:25):
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 aired as planned. But uh, you know what
(04:46):
was funny is that Mendelssohn did eventually get his way.
So all these years later, CBS asked Mendelsson to cut
three minutes from the specials so they could fit in,
you know, more commercials, and Mendelssohn sees the chance and
he removed that scene of Woodstock eating her geese that
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 on cut,
(05:07):
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, and
I don't remember it. Yeah, so it shows a boy
(05:29):
and a girl just sitting on the sidewalk and this boy,
Schemy 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, Cheremi adds, how I hate him, you know,
and that's the punch line. So yeah, there's there's definitely
(05:50):
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,
I guess 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
lot to go through today. But where do you think
(06:10):
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
still misname him as Shultz with the T. It's actually
(06:33):
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 date, 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 going to be aired in
the premier Wow. You know, I guess I've actually never
thought about this, and I'm sure that I'm guilty of
(06:55):
making the same mistake. But what kind of name is Schultz? Like?
Is it German? Yeah? That Carl Schultz immigrated from Germany
to Minnesota, which is where he met charless mom Dina,
and Charles was this only child. He was born in
ninety two. He grew up in St. Paul. But what's
interesting is that St. Paul is one of the few
places in the country that has both super hot summers
(07:15):
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 in St. Paul. I mean,
(07:36):
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,
(07:56):
there's a strip in nineteen fifty seven 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, and it'll be
(08:19):
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.
Lionus and Lucy van Pelt got their last name from
a man's Schultz served in the army with. Meanwhile, Lucy's
(08:40):
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 comnt in Hobbs strips,
and he thought of pe Nuts as the gold standard
of comic strips, and this is his take on Lucy quote.
(09:02):
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 tormentor 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.
(09:23):
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 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,
(09:44):
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 Mae Johnson,
and after the war, the two of them worked together
at this correspondent school in Minneapolis, and after a few
years of dating, Sills finally worked at the nerve of
to propose to her, but then Dona May turned him
down and married a different guy a few months later,
(10:05):
and it was obviously this huge blow to his Pride,
But in the 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
(10:26):
considered stand 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 said both characters also had real
world counterparts too. Charlie Brown was actually the name of
(10:47):
a friend that 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
(11:10):
he found out 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
(11:32):
Charlie Brown would later 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
(11:53):
about Spike that got him published in Ripley's. Well, the
drawings caption said that Spike was quote a hunting dog
that eats pin 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. There was this article
and mental Flaws about this that was talking about, you know,
the dog would make a break for freedom anytime the
(12:14):
door was open and only come back because he loved
going on car ride. 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,
(12:36):
like that plastic peel 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 of which, some of my favorite
Peanuts facts are the ones that overlap between Charlie Brown's
childhood and Charles Schultze's. Like there's a surface level stuff,
but both of them had fathers who were barbers. But
(12:58):
but then they're also those like wonderfully tragic tidbits from
Schultza'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 his dad that finished it up, which
does sound so very Charlie Brown. It's pretty great, yeah,
I know. And there was actually one time when Shultston
(13:20):
line at a movie 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. And when when he was in high school,
Schultz's teacher convince him to draw some comics for his
senior year book. And so Schultz, of course, being super
timid and socially awkward, he's a little nervous, but he
(13:40):
desperately wants to be 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. So, 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
(14:01):
character Franklin, for instance, 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
(14:23):
Harriett Glickman, 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 strips. And this was
so that children could see that respect and friendship was
possible between people of all races. And Schultz was pretty
(14:46):
moved by the idea, 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.
(15:09):
And so does show suffer any blowback from from this
when when when the stroke 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. But it still it was undoubtedly a
(15:32):
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, only to have it found and returned to
(15:52):
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 only 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 always
showing Franklin in school with the other white characters, which
(16:13):
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, and I finally sighed and
(16:34):
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, Schultz ultimately went to bat for Franklin
in this really big way. Yeah, And you know, I
know we wanted to talk about an earlier occasion when
(16:55):
Schultz butted heads with upper management, and this time about
what the strip should be. All But before we get
into that, let's take a quick break. You're listening to
(17:19):
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 when he first pitched the strip to
be carried by the United Feature Syndicate, Schultz insisted the
title should be Little Folks, which maybe wasn't the most
(17:42):
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 was already a strip
(18:02):
called Little Folks, except with the word little all spelled
out instead of little like, 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 guess this was a
(18:25):
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 riff 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 Little Folks was a weak title,
(18:47):
but they didn't want to upset shuts 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 you never got to change the name. But
(19:07):
you know, of course, once the strip took off, he
was kind of stuck with the title. And uh, what's
funny to me is that Schultz 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 was a runaway hit once
(19:29):
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 fifty. 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 a staggering three hundred and fifty five million people.
(19:52):
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 by a single artist
(20:14):
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
this trip 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, world weary feeling underlying
(20:37):
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 shouts. Also dealt with bounts of depression in his
own life, and one way he found relief was by
channeling his anxieties directly into his art, which makes a
(21:00):
lot of sense, And the result is a strip with
a somewhat despairing world view 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 are lost,
all the test scores are d minuses, the Great Pumpkin
never comes, and the football is always pulled away, like
when he described like that, hopefully it really does. Yeah,
(21:22):
it's funny that Shills like completely stuck to that formula
for the strip's entire run. So I guess things did
get a little cheerier in the mid to late sixties
once the TV specials started, like and and uh, all
that merchandizing really kicked into high gear. I've actually heard
that most fans used the rise of Snoopy and pop
culture is kind of a turning point in the strips run.
(21:42):
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 thought 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 or what the creator of
Little Abner called good, mean little bastards eager to hurt
(22:04):
one another. But as the sixties donned, Schultz began to
capitalize on his creation with licensing deals and product hie 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 and Charlie
(22:24):
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 instead he
(22:45):
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, right because
Snoopy never became a normal dog again, So it feels
(23:08):
like something must have been working. Yeah, I mean so,
some readers thought the new Snoopy was a 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 more positive
and upbeat than that of the kids, But they still
(23:29):
kind of just treat 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've got this new freewheeling Snoopy who
was supposedly the person or the character. I guess that
Schultz always wanted to be, you know, somebody who was
adventurous and care free instead of being bogged down by
(23:51):
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 his fame
and fortune that Schultz finally made made him feel like
that kind of person. I guess if he was happier
in his personal life, it would make sense that he
might want to revel in that feeling and focus more
on Snoopy. Yeah, I think there's probably some truth to that.
(24:14):
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
touch with those insecurities that it made Charlie Brown so
relatable in the first place. So The Atlantic actually did
an article on this, and they subbed up the feeling
(24:35):
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,
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,
(25:01):
contented Snoopy that spoiled everything good Lord, I mean, like
so overthought on the one hand, but I mean, I
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
(25:21):
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
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
(25:42):
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,
I agree with that, and I think Schultz would as well.
Was being interviewed on the Tonight Show just as he
was announcing his retirement, and he observed that quote, Snoopy
(26:05):
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 talked
a little more about the unique tone and mood of
the Peanut 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, Mango,
(26:43):
So we established earlier that you didn't exactly do your
homework by watching ninety six. 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
(27:05):
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
(27:26):
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 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.
(27:46):
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
(28:08):
were too young to 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.
(28:28):
Like 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 we're 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
(28:50):
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 too. But but when Lee Mendelssohn mentioned
(29:11):
the idea to Schultz, the the artist simply got up
and left the room, And then a few minutes later
Shultz 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
(29:32):
about some of the heavier stuff in the special, like
the commercialization of Christmas and that seeing 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 explorer 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
(29:52):
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 contain any religious references of
any kind, much less direct quotes from scripture. So surprisingly,
CBS didn't object to this inclusion, and neither did Coca Cola,
who was the special sponsor. Um The producer, though, was
(30:13):
super nervous, and he told shots that no anime 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
(30:34):
mean you'd 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,
(30:57):
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
(31:19):
to watch the specials that night, which was apparently fifteen
million people at the time. And a few months later,
Charles Schultz and Lee Medelssohn 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
(31:42):
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 work. But uh, you know,
for all the fanciful touches in his stories like kite
(32:03):
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
(32:25):
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
(32:46):
things of life. And I really think that Mantra bleeds
through in every single one of his strips, and they
show us that life has made up of both small,
hard won 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,
(33:09):
thanks to his work, lots of other people, including us,
due to 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. So. Did
(33:33):
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 the time,
(33:53):
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 NASA claims every
pen goes to space and comes back before it's handed out. Oh,
I really like that. So you know, when when Charles
(34:16):
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 puppy
(34:39):
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 the 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, this was so unfair that for
(35:01):
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 Guilty, 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,
(35:22):
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
(35:44):
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
(36:07):
was done recording, every single time, she would throw up. Now,
luckily she didn't have that big of a role kidd 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 friendly, she'll ask him don't you trust anyone
(36:30):
anymore for 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's 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
(36:51):
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
(37:13):
like that fact. 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.
(37:35):
But from gave Tristan Will and me, thank you so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(37:55):
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
producer thing. Gabe Louesier is our lead researcher, with support
from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Lucas Adams and Eves Jeff Cook gets the show to
(38:17):
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 you? Did you forget Jason? Jason who
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
Guess what, Mango, what's that? Well, it is officially Charlie
Brown Season. I know, I am so excited. You know,
right between Thanksgiving Christmas is when my family buckles down
and we watch all those specials, and it is wild.
(00:26):
That's been over fifty years since some of the big
ones actually came out. But what is weirdest to me
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 two. Uh, and so we just hand out
headbands and did at a gym. I love this fact,
(00:46):
and the fact that probably more than half the kids
had no idea who Peppermint Patty was, at least going
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, uh,
I think Charlie Brown gives and Thanksgiving special and and
(01:09):
we've definitely watched It's a Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and
Charlie 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
(01:32):
Charlie Brown. I do not think we watched that one.
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
(01:56):
Kiss Charlie Brown, which is another classic and also I
guess kind of weird. But we've got a lot of
catching up to do here, and with the holiday season
upon us, we thought now would be the perfect time
to look into the history of our favorite melancholy 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,
(02:18):
and how it was very nearly 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, podcast listeners, welcome the
(02:55):
part time genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm
joined by my good friend man guest Ticketer and on
the other side of the soundproof glass just shuffling a
stack of buttered toast, 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 would be this theatrical. But
(03:18):
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 he's wearing those slices
like he's a blackjack dealer or something. But I like
that he's getting the Thanksgiving Special a little love. I
feel like it's always the one that gets overshadowed by both,
like the Hallyween Special and the Christmas Special. But you know,
(03:40):
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 punkin pie,
roasted vegetable as even this giant cooked turkey, and they're
(04:03):
basically living it off while the kids were just eating
you know, snack food. I mean, it's kind of a
jerk move, but when you think about it, 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, they never strike you as just a little
bit weird that Woodstock would help Snoopy carve and eat
the turkey. I mean, Woodstock is a bird if you
(04:25):
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 aired as planned. But uh, you know what
(04:46):
was funny is that Mendelssohn did eventually get his way.
So all these years later, CBS asked Mendelsson to cut
three minutes from the specials so they could fit in,
you know, more commercials, and Mendelssohn sees the chance and
he removed that scene of Woodstock eating her geese that
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 on cut,
(05:07):
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, and
I don't remember it. Yeah, so it shows a boy
(05:29):
and a girl just sitting on the sidewalk and this boy,
Schemy 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, Cheremi adds, how I hate him, you know,
and that's the punch line. So yeah, there's there's definitely
(05:50):
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,
I guess 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
lot to go through today. But where do you think
(06:10):
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
still misname him as Shultz with the T. It's actually
(06:33):
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 date, 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 going to be aired in
the premier Wow. You know, I guess I've actually never
thought about this, and I'm sure that I'm guilty of
(06:55):
making the same mistake. But what kind of name is Schultz? Like?
Is it German? Yeah? That Carl Schultz immigrated from Germany
to Minnesota, which is where he met charless mom Dina,
and Charles was this only child. He was born in
ninety two. He grew up in St. Paul. But what's
interesting is that St. Paul is one of the few
places in the country that has both super hot summers
(07:15):
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 in St. Paul. I mean,
(07:36):
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,
(07:56):
there's a strip in nineteen fifty seven 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, and it'll be
(08:19):
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.
Lionus and Lucy van Pelt got their last name from
a man's Schultz served in the army with. Meanwhile, Lucy's
(08:40):
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 comnt in Hobbs strips,
and he thought of pe Nuts as the gold standard
of comic strips, and this is his take on Lucy quote.
(09:02):
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 tormentor 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.
(09:23):
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 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,
(09:44):
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 Mae Johnson,
and after the war, the two of them worked together
at this correspondent school in Minneapolis, and after a few
years of dating, Sills finally worked at the nerve of
to propose to her, but then Dona May turned him
down and married a different guy a few months later,
(10:05):
and it was obviously this huge blow to his Pride,
But in the 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
(10:26):
considered stand 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 said both characters also had real
world counterparts too. Charlie Brown was actually the name of
(10:47):
a friend that 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
(11:10):
he found out 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
(11:32):
Charlie Brown would later 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
(11:53):
about Spike that got him published in Ripley's. Well, the
drawings caption said that Spike was quote a hunting dog
that eats pin 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. There was this article
and mental Flaws about this that was talking about, you know,
the dog would make a break for freedom anytime the
(12:14):
door was open and only come back because he loved
going on car ride. 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,
(12:36):
like that plastic peel 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 of which, some of my favorite
Peanuts facts are the ones that overlap between Charlie Brown's
childhood and Charles Schultze's. Like there's a surface level stuff,
but both of them had fathers who were barbers. But
(12:58):
but then they're also those like wonderfully tragic tidbits from
Schultza'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 his dad that finished it up, which
does sound so very Charlie Brown. It's pretty great, yeah,
I know. And there was actually one time when Shultston
(13:20):
line at a movie 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. And when when he was in high school,
Schultz's teacher convince him to draw some comics for his
senior year book. And so Schultz, of course, being super
timid and socially awkward, he's a little nervous, but he
(13:40):
desperately wants to be 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. So, 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
(14:01):
character Franklin, for instance, 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
(14:23):
Harriett Glickman, 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 strips. And this was
so that children could see that respect and friendship was
possible between people of all races. And Schultz was pretty
(14:46):
moved by the idea, 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.
(15:09):
And so does show suffer any blowback from from this
when when when the stroke 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. But it still it was undoubtedly a
(15:32):
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, only to have it found and returned to
(15:52):
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 only 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 always
showing Franklin in school with the other white characters, which
(16:13):
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, and I finally sighed and
(16:34):
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, Schultz ultimately went to bat for Franklin
in this really big way. Yeah, And you know, I
know we wanted to talk about an earlier occasion when
(16:55):
Schultz butted heads with upper management, and this time about
what the strip should be. All But before we get
into that, let's take a quick break. You're listening to
(17:19):
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 when he first pitched the strip to
be carried by the United Feature Syndicate, Schultz insisted the
title should be Little Folks, which maybe wasn't the most
(17:42):
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 was already a strip
(18:02):
called Little Folks, except with the word little all spelled
out instead of little like, 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 guess this was a
(18:25):
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 riff 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 Little Folks was a weak title,
(18:47):
but they didn't want to upset shuts 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 you never got to change the name. But
(19:07):
you know, of course, once the strip took off, he
was kind of stuck with the title. And uh, what's
funny to me is that Schultz 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 was a runaway hit once
(19:29):
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 fifty. 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 a staggering three hundred and fifty five million people.
(19:52):
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 by a single artist
(20:14):
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
this trip 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, world weary feeling underlying
(20:37):
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 shouts. Also dealt with bounts of depression in his
own life, and one way he found relief was by
channeling his anxieties directly into his art, which makes a
(21:00):
lot of sense, And the result is a strip with
a somewhat despairing world view 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 are lost,
all the test scores are d minuses, the Great Pumpkin
never comes, and the football is always pulled away, like
when he described like that, hopefully it really does. Yeah,
(21:22):
it's funny that Shills like completely stuck to that formula
for the strip's entire run. So I guess things did
get a little cheerier in the mid to late sixties
once the TV specials started, like and and uh, all
that merchandizing really kicked into high gear. I've actually heard
that most fans used the rise of Snoopy and pop
culture is kind of a turning point in the strips run.
(21:42):
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 thought 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 or what the creator of
Little Abner called good, mean little bastards eager to hurt
(22:04):
one another. But as the sixties donned, Schultz began to
capitalize on his creation with licensing deals and product hie 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 and Charlie
(22:24):
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 instead he
(22:45):
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, right because
Snoopy never became a normal dog again, So it feels
(23:08):
like something must have been working. Yeah, I mean so,
some readers thought the new Snoopy was a 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 more positive
and upbeat than that of the kids, But they still
(23:29):
kind of just treat 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've got this new freewheeling Snoopy who
was supposedly the person or the character. I guess that
Schultz always wanted to be, you know, somebody who was
adventurous and care free instead of being bogged down by
(23:51):
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 his fame
and fortune that Schultz finally made made him feel like
that kind of person. I guess if he was happier
in his personal life, it would make sense that he
might want to revel in that feeling and focus more
on Snoopy. Yeah, I think there's probably some truth to that.
(24:14):
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
touch with those insecurities that it made Charlie Brown so
relatable in the first place. So The Atlantic actually did
an article on this, and they subbed up the feeling
(24:35):
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,
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,
(25:01):
contented Snoopy that spoiled everything good Lord, I mean, like
so overthought on the one hand, but I mean, I
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
(25:21):
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
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
(25:42):
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,
I agree with that, and I think Schultz would as well.
Was being interviewed on the Tonight Show just as he
was announcing his retirement, and he observed that quote, Snoopy
(26:05):
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 talked
a little more about the unique tone and mood of
the Peanut 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, Mango,
(26:43):
So we established earlier that you didn't exactly do your
homework by watching ninety six. 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
(27:05):
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
(27:26):
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 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.
(27:46):
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
(28:08):
were too young to 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.
(28:28):
Like 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 we're 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
(28:50):
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 too. But but when Lee Mendelssohn mentioned
(29:11):
the idea to Schultz, the the artist simply got up
and left the room, And then a few minutes later
Shultz 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
(29:32):
about some of the heavier stuff in the special, like
the commercialization of Christmas and that seeing 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 explorer 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
(29:52):
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 contain any religious references of
any kind, much less direct quotes from scripture. So surprisingly,
CBS didn't object to this inclusion, and neither did Coca Cola,
who was the special sponsor. Um The producer, though, was
(30:13):
super nervous, and he told shots that no anime 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
(30:34):
mean you'd 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,
(30:57):
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
(31:19):
to watch the specials that night, which was apparently fifteen
million people at the time. And a few months later,
Charles Schultz and Lee Medelssohn 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
(31:42):
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 work. But uh, you know,
for all the fanciful touches in his stories like kite
(32:03):
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
(32:25):
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
(32:46):
things of life. And I really think that Mantra bleeds
through in every single one of his strips, and they
show us that life has made up of both small,
hard won 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,
(33:09):
thanks to his work, lots of other people, including us,
due to 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. So. Did
(33:33):
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 the time,
(33:53):
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 NASA claims every
pen goes to space and comes back before it's handed out. Oh,
I really like that. So you know, when when Charles
(34:16):
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 puppy
(34:39):
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 the 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, this was so unfair that for
(35:01):
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 Guilty, 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,
(35:22):
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
(35:44):
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
(36:07):
was done recording, every single time, she would throw up. Now,
luckily she didn't have that big of a role kidd 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 friendly, she'll ask him don't you trust anyone
(36:30):
anymore for 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's 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
(36:51):
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
(37:13):
like that fact. 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.
(37:35):
But from gave Tristan Will and me, thank you so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(37:55):
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
producer thing. Gabe Louesier is our lead researcher, with support
from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Lucas Adams and Eves Jeff Cook gets the show to
(38:17):
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 you? Did you forget Jason? Jason who
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