Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones -- the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
Charles Schulz in 1956. Photo: Library of Congress.
Good evening, Kibitzers! Astonishingly, today is the 49th anniversary of the first broadcast of the now-iconic Christmas TV special
A Charlie Brown Christmas. (Next year, when the number is a big round 50, is when it gets
really astonishing. How did I get so old??)
Join me below the orange Charlie Brown hair for some more things I found surprising about it.
Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip had become something of a cultural phenomenon by the mid-1960s. A documentary film producer named Lee Mendelson contacted Schulz and got him to cooperate in making a documentary about the strip, but the TV networks (remember, there were only three!) weren't interested.
In April 1965, Mendelson got a call from Coca-Cola's ad agency. He hoped they wanted the documentary, but instead, Coke wanted an animated Peanuts Christmas special. They needed the outline in less than a week, and they needed the completed show in six months. At the time, with animation hand-drawn, it was widely regarded as impossible to create such a thing from a standing start in six months, but Mendelson agreed anyway.
He signed up animator Bill Melendez, and they worked with Schulz on the story. Jazz artist Vince Guaraldi had already composed the peppy Linus and Lucy for the ill-fated documentary, so he was signed on to add further music to the score. They cast actual kids to voice the characters, and with the exception of Charlie Brown and Linus, not experienced actors. The youngest of them couldn't read yet, and had to be fed her lines one at a time. Melendez voiced Snoopy himself.
Then Schulz wrote the scene where Linus recites the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible, Luke 2:8-14. In the sixties, that was not something that happened in a mainstream network TV show, and Mendelson and Melendez were aghast, but Schulz felt strongly about it; his story was about a rebellion against the commercialization of Christmas, and in his view, that was the antidote. Schulz also insisted that the show not have a laugh track, another thing that was just not done.
The most entertaining part of this story is that, at the end, when this impossible task was finished and delivered ten days before the air date, they were all sure it would be a disaster. Mendelson and Melendez thought it was terrible. The network hated it and, had they not already advertised it all over the place, would never have shown it.
And then, the show won glowing reviews, an enormous following, and an Emmy. The network signed up for three more Peanuts specials. And, and this is the best, the show killed the aluminum Christmas tree industry.
Here: the folks involved tell it much better than I can. It's 16 minutes well spent.
The entire show isn't on YouTube, but here's the back 7 minutes (from the purchase of the little tree):
And here's the whole Vince Guaraldi soundtrack album. (40 minutes; see track list at the YouTube page.)
Are you, like me, sufficiently ancient to have seen the original airing of the show? Have you seen it later on? Do you like it? Or what?
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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