A Charlie Brown Christmas was the Peanut gang’s first TV special ever made,
and before it aired in 1965
the Peanuts characters had mainly been featured as animated characters
in Ford TV commercials.
Since the Peanuts characters were still predominantly comic book characters,
it wasn’t on any of the creators’ minds to make a 20 minute animated cartoon TV special.
However, all of that changed when a Coca-Cola representative called executive producer
Lee Mendelson and asked if they had a Peanuts Christmas special in the works.
Well, they didn’t, but he said “yes” anyway, thinking that they’d have a few
weeks to come up with a story.
However, he was blind-sided when they asked to see a draft of the story in just five days.
“That beautiful sound of cold, hard cash.”
Charles Schulz, Lee Mendelson and the director Bill Melendez, all met up soon after the phone
call and created the story for the cartoon in just one afternoon.
The day after the deadline Coca-Cola called them back with surprising news that not only
did they like their story, but they also wanted it to be ready to air in just six months.
"Now look! If we're ever to get this play off the ground, we've got to have some cooperation."
This was the first time Charles Schulz’ team ever had to consider what a Peanuts cartoon
sounded like.
So for the soundtrack they decided to go with Jazz because they thought it had a sound that
could appeal to both kids and adults alike.
[upbeat Jazz piano music}
They hired Vince Guaraldi to write the music,
and after Vince spent some time working on some ideas,
he quickly called up Lee Mendelson to tell him he needed to hear something right away.
Mendelson asked if it could wait because he preferred to hear it in person,
but Guaraldi insisted on playing it over the phone
because he was afraid he’d forget if they waited any longer.
And the song Guaraldi played for him was the now-famous “Charlie Brown theme song”,
“Linus and Lucy”.
[high energy piano music]
Another famous piece of music that came from the cartoon is the song “Christmas Time is Here”.
[Slow jazz music playing, kids singing: "Christmas time is here!]
Originally it was going to be an instrumental piece, but Lee Mendelson thought they also
needed to have a song to go with the special.
He first searched for a lyricist to write the song, but he wasn’t able to find anyone
who could do it.
So he decided to sit down and try to write the lyrics himself, and he wrote all the words
to the song you hear in the cartoon in just 15 minutes.
There’s a missing scene when Charlie Brown gets flung into a tree where the movie title
appears, but we never what happens to Linus because in the original airing he crashed
into a Coca-Cola sign, which now has to be edited out since they’re no longer the sponsor
of the cartoon.
Back then it was a common practice to have adults provide the voices for cartoon characters,
but for A Charlie Brown Christmas the animators used kid actors instead because they were
adamant about the voices needing to match their characters’ ages.
Peter Robbins and Christopher Shea, who voiced Charlie Brown and Linus respectively, were
the only professional actors hired to do the voices.
The rest of the kids were voiced by non-professionals, some as young as 4 or 5 years old, so they
often had to be fed their lines one at a time to get a good recording.
"That's right! What about my part!?"
One of the unique challenges the animators faced while turning their comic strip characters
into animated, talking characters was what to about Snoopy’s voice.
In the meantime Bill Melendez filled in by doing all of Snoopy’s sounds as a placeholder
while they looked for someone else.
[Snoopy moaning]
However, as time went on everyone thought he did a pretty good job at it,
so they left his sounds in the movie instead.
[Sheep call]
Lucy: "How 'about a cow?"
[cow mooing sound]
When the networks saw the final cut of the special before putting it on the air,
they didn’t like it at all because it came across to them as an amateur production
due largely to the music and the kid actors.
[Laughter]
The networks were only going to put it on the air once to fulfill their contractual agreement,
and then never air it again.
However, they were surprised that it became a huge hit and was the second most-watched show of the week,
and soon after the networks ordered bookings to air the special for the
next 15 years.
"Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!!"
Not only that, but "A Charlie Brown Christmas" went on to win an Emmy, a Peabody award,
and has been running on TV every year at Christmas time since its first run in 1965.
"Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about!?!"
When the TV special first aired it stirred up some controversy over its inclusion of Bible verses.
"For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy!"
One of the reasons behind the criticism was that some people thought cartoons were an
inappropriate place for such sacred words to be used.
However, the animation team,
even Bill Melendez who said he didn’t know anything about the religious side of Christmas,
argued that they were needed
because they evoked the best qualities of Christmas’s religious experience,
which for Charlie Brown was the true meaning of Christmas.
Whether you have a religious background or not, let me know down in the comments what
the true meaning of Christmas is to you?
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