How did Charlie Brown win over America?

it's almost quaint. Ruby had a Peppermint Patty birthday party when she turned three because she assumed everyone was into Peppermint Patty too, uh, And so we just hand out headbands and did at the gym. I love this fact, and the fact that probably more than half the kids had no idea who Peppermint Patty was, at least going into the party. I'm sure Ruby told him all about her. But anyway, So, so, why are they so into the specials? You know, I have no idea of something just clicked

with them. But like Henry actually based his Thanksgiving speech a few years ago completely on the one that I think Charlie Brown gives and Thanksgiving special and and we've definitely watched It's a great pumpkin Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown Christmas a whole bunch of times. But you know, they're even into some of the oddball ones like Race for Your Life Charlie Brown, which is about the gang

going to camp. That's very good. I mean, you did hit on some of the big ones there, but I do think you forgot one of the most important of them all. Really. Oh yeah, of course, It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown. I do not think we watched that one. Is that a real thing? We're just making that up? Oh, it's absolutely a real thing. It was just one of the forty five Charlie Brown specials out there, forty five.

I had no idea that that many. Oh man, I'm surprised, Like you don't watch It's the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown every single east. I don't know how could be Easter without that special. And actually there's also It's Your First Kiss Charlie Brown, which is another classic and also I guess kind of weird. But we've got a lot of catching up to do here, and with the holiday season upon us, what we thought now would be the perfect time to look into the history of our favorite melon

colleague Grade schoolers. So we'll talk about the origin of the comics trip, including the real life inspiration behind some of the characters, the story of how the beloved Christmas Special came to be, and how it was very nearly 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 to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man gues Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass just shuffling a stack of buttered to It's kind of like it's a deck of cars. It's our friends and producer Tristan McNeil, and I do have to admit when Tristan said he wanted to recreate the famous meal from the Peanuts Thanksgiving Special, I really never dreamed it would be this theatrical. But it's really quite a show.

Don't you think you didn't think Tristan would be theatrical? I don't know, I don't know. It's just surprised me. Yeah. I mean, I have no idea how he's doing this. He's wearing those slices like he's a black jack dealer or something. But I like that he's giving the Thanksgiving Special a little love, and I feel like it's always the one that gets overshadowed by both, like the Hallyween

Special and the Christmas Special. But you know, we've had a saft spot for Charlie Brown Thanksgiving at my house, especially where um Snoopy puts together that last minute feast for Charlie Brown and he's got all that popcorn and pretzels.

But when the kids are gone, Snoopy and Woodstock are just back of their doghouse and they've got a lavish spread for themselves with like pumpkin pie, roast and vegetables, even this giant cooked turkey, and they're basically living it off while the kids are just eating you know, snack food.

I mean, it's kind of a jerk move, but when you think about that, it's it's that mix of whimsy and low key meanness that are sort of par for the course for peanuts that actually, for instance, did never strike you as just a little bit weird that Woodstock would help Snoopy carve and eat the turkey. I mean, Woodstock is a bird if you haven't noticed. You know what's funny about it is that I never actually gave it much thought. But it turns out you're not alone

in this. Lee Mendelssohn, who was the executive producer on the Peanuts specials, he actually objected to that scene because he was so weird it out by it, But because the idea had comes straight from Charles Schultz, the Peanuts creator, he was just overruled and the scene aireds planned. But uh, you know what was funny is that Mendelssohn did eventually

get his way. So all these years later, CBS asked Mendelssohn to cut three minutes from the special so they could fit in, you know, more commercials, and Mendelssohn sees the chance and he removed that scene of Woodstock eating turkey, so you can only see him eating pie instead. But then a few years later, the rights of the special move to ABC and the network decided to air it

on cut, meaning Woodstock is once again accountable. It feels a little bit odd to be kicking off our Peanuts show with a fact about bird cannibalism, but it also kind of feels appropriate, you know, given how dark Charlie Brown and his chums could often be. Actually, in fact, have you ever seen the very first Peanuts trip? I have, and I don't remember it. Yeah, So it shows a boy and a girl just sitting on the sidewalk and this boy, Scheremy is his name. He says, well, here

comes good old Charlie Brown. Good old Charlie Brown. Yes, sir, good old Charlie Brown. And then when Charlie Brown is out of sight, Cheremy adds, how I hate him, you know, and that's the punch line. So yeah, there's there's definitely some darkness to the world of Peanuts, no matter how

cute or simplistic the characters might look. But there's also incredible warmth and humor there as well, and it feels like it's that unique mix that really made Peanuts this enduring part of pop culture, not only in the US but all around the world. So we've definitely got a lot to go through today. But where do you think you want to start? Why don't we spend a few minutes on the man behind the Peanuts himself, Charles M. Schultz. So This name sounds familiar enough because we've all seen

his name a million times. It's signed at the bottom of each and every Peanuts strip, all seventeen thousand eight of them. But despite the constant exposure, lots of people still misname him as Schultz with the T. It's actually s C h U l z. And according to Medium, the misspelling is so common that's actually appeared wrong in more than thirty thousand articles to Day, as well as

the original opening to the Peanuts Christmas Special. I guess someone caught it at the very last minute, but there was an error that was gonna be aired in the premier You know, I guess I've actually never thought about this, and I'm sure that I'm guilty of making the same mistake. But what kind of name is Schultz? Like it is? Is it German? Yeah? His dad, Carl Schultz, immigrated from Germany to Minnesota, which is where he met charles mom Dina,

and Charles was this only child. He was born in too. He grew up in St. Paul. But what's interesting is that St. Paul is one of the few places in the country that has both super hot summers and freezing cold winters, and It's the same for the Peanuts Kids, right, Like, there's so many strips that are centered on these summer activities like playing baseball, flying kites, selling lemonade on hot days. But then you have a ton of strips where there's like a foot of snow on the ground and everyone's

playing ice hockey. So then it is Peanuts actually set in St. Paul. I mean, there's some debate about that. Some fans think the strip is set near Santa Rosa, California, which is where Schultz lived once the Peanuts became a hit. But you know, that doesn't make much sense when you look at all all the strips set in the winter. But what little evidence there is in the strips does kind of point to either St. Paul or Minneapolis as

their hometown. For instance, there's a strip in nine seven 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 would be pretty on theme for Schultz, because when you look at the comics, so many elements of the Peanuts strip turn out to be somewhat biographical. I mean, just listen to this breakdown. Shuremy was a childhood friend. Schroeder was a caddy at the golf course Schultz worked at as a teenager. Linus and Lucy van Pelt got their last name from a man's Schultz served in the

army with. Meanwhile, Lucy's character was inspired by Schultz's first wife and his mother. I guess there's a lot to unpack there, but that does seem to be the case. Actually, I was reading this tribute to Charles Schultz from Bill Waterson, who is my hero and uh who did the Colvinant Hobbs strips, and he thought of Peanuts as the gold standard of comic strips, and this is his take on

Lucy quote. I was struck less by the fact that Schultz drew on his troubled marriage for material than by the sympathy that he shows for his torment, and by his ability to poke fun at himself, which is actually pretty interesting, like, like, you know, Lucy is annoying and mean spirited, but you don't ever really hate her for it. Now, that's true. And you know he was looking for inspiration everywhere.

Even line is his famous blue blanket came straight from Schultz's life when his daughter was younger, she was obsessed with her own security blanket. Yeah. I mean, of course you're gonna be stealing from life when you've got like a daily deadline and and working at that sort of volume. But I think the one character I always think about is the little red haired girl who goes unnamed, And uh, you know, that's the one that Charlie Brown always had

that huge crush on. She was apparently based on Schultz's girlfriend in the late forties, this redhead named Donna May Johnson, and after the war, the two of them worked together at this correspondent school in Minneapolis, and after a few years of dating, Shells finally worked at the Nerve to propose to her, But then Donna May turned him down and married a different guy a few months later, and it was obviously this huge blow to his pride, but

in end, the ordeal actually inspired one of Schultz's most famous characters, and supposedly he and Donna May remained friends for years later. I mean, there are some definite shades of Charlie Brown to that story, and you can see that throughout his work. Yeah, definitely, And it makes sense because both Charlie Brown and Snoopy they're often considered stand ins for Schultz himself. In fact, Charles's son, Craig Schultz once said about him, each of the characters represents a

piece of our dad. Charlie Brown was his real self and Snoopy was what he wanted to be, which is kind of funny to think about, but it makes sense and it's both characters also had real world counterparts too. Charlie Brown was actually the name of a friend that Charles worked with prior to creating Peanuts, and Snoopy was based on charles His own childhood dog, this English Pointer, not a Beagle who was named Spike and whose name

would later be used for one of Snoopy's brothers. So if Schultz had a dog named Spike, then where's the name Snoopy come from? Well, apparently Charles had originally planned to call his dog Sniffy, but then he found out that another comic featured a dog with the same name, so he had to change it to something else. But luckily he had this backup. You know, when he was a kid, his mother suggested if they ever got another dog, they should name him Snoopy, and so that's where the

name came from. Anyway, back back to the real world Snoopy for a second. It's pretty striking how devoted to his dog. Charles was, just like Charlie Brown would later be with Snoopy. So how how do you mean? Well, the very first drawing that Charles ever published was of his dog Spike. So Charles was just fifteen years old at the time when he submitted this drawing and actually a fact along with it to Ripley's Believe it or Not, and it got published nationally. I mean, that's pretty cool.

But what was so unbolouivable about Spike that got him published in Ripley's. Well, the drawings caption said that Spike was quote a hunting dog that eats pins, tax and razor blades, so he didn't exactly have Snoopy's refined palette. But it does sound like Spike shared his taste for adventure. That was this article and mental flaws about this that was talking about. You know, the dog would make a break for freedom anytime the door was open and only

come back because he loved going on car rides. So whenever Spike got loose, Charles would run to his dad's car and basically just honked the horn as a way to lure the dog back. I mean, we we actually had a dog like that growing up. She'd run off for the only way to get her back was to

unwrap a slice of American exactly. That's what always works. Yeah, I mean it's so weird that, like that plastic peel sound like when it was coming off the craft slices, that's what would make her race back to the house. But you know, having a dog you keep losing sounds very Charlie Brown to me as well. And and uh speaking which, some of my favorite Peanuts facts are the ones that overlap between Charlie Brown's childhood and Charles Schultz. Is like, there's a surface level stuff, but both of

them had fathers who were barbers. But but then they're also those like wonderfully tragic tidbits from Schultz's life that feels so Charlie Brown, Like his dad used to give him haircuts but when customers came in, he'd have to hop out of the chair. So you just have to grump around and wander about with half a haircut until that finished it up. I which does sound so very

Charlie Brown. It's pretty great, yeah, I know. And there was actually one time when Shultston line at a movie theater because they were handing out candy bars to the first kids to buy tickets that day, and of course Schultz was the hundred first kid in line. You know. When when he was in high school, Schultz's teacher convince him to draw some comics for a senior year book.

And so Schultz, of course, being super timid and socially awkward, he's a little nervous, but he desperately wants to be a cartoonist, so he overcomes a shyness he submits artwork, and then when the yearbook comes out, of course everyone had forgotten to include his work, Like, not a single one of his cartoons got used. That's a tough break, but you know, it is interesting to see that that not every aspect of Peanuts is drawn from Schultza's own experience.

You know, if you take the character Franklin, for instance, he was introduced as the comic strips first black character. And now this was in July of nineteen sixty eight, and this was just a few months after the assassination of M. L. K Jr. Yeah, it's amazing that that's fifty years ago this year. And and uh and this was based on a reader's suggestion, right, yeah, that's right. The reader was a mother of three named Harriett Glickman, and she wrote to Schultz just a few days after

the death of Martin Luther King. And now in that note, the Glickman noted the power that mass media has to shape what she called the unconscious attitudes of our kids. So she has Schultz to add one or more black characters to his trips. And this was so that children could see that respect and friendship was possible between people of all races. And Schultz was pretty moved by the idea, but he didn't add the character immediately. He was actually a little bit nervous that the move might seem to

be patronizing to black readers. But as Glickman continued to correspond with him over the course of several months, you know, he decided to change his mind on this and on July one, he wrote to say that Glickman should watch for the new character to appear by the end of

the month, which of course he did. And so does show suffer any blowback from from this when when when the strip comes out, Well, you know, you had some black readers that did argue that Franklin was a bland character and therefore somewhat patronizing, but in general readers appreciated the added representation as well as you know how kind and worry free Franklin was compared with other Peanuts kids.

But it still it was undoubtedly a tense time for America for an artist to debut what was essentially the first minority character in a mainstream comic strip. But other than this brief exchange where Franklin mentions that his father was a soldier in Vietnam, there's really nothing overtly political about his inclusion. Like Charlie Brown loses his beach ball, only to have it found and returned to him by a boy named Franklin, and then the boys decided to

build a sandcastle together, which is of course very sweet. Yeah, but they're definitely a bit of backlash from this. You had several newspaper editors from southern states that wrote to Schultz demanding that he stopped using the character, or at the very least that he Alwaids showing Franklin in school with the other white characters, which is just mind boggling to think about. But his response was pretty straightforward. So here's what he told an interviewer years later about the incident.

I never paid any attention to those things. And I remember telling United Features President Larry Rutman at the time about Franklin. He wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed, and I said, well, Larry, let's put it this way. Either you print it just the way I draw it, or I quit. How's that? So

that's the way it ended. I mean, that is so awesome, and it's nice to hear that, like, despite whatever reservations he might have had at the beginning, she ultimately went to bat for Franklin in this really big way. Yeah, and you know, I know we wanted to talk about an earlier occasion when Schultz butted heads with upper management, and this time about what the strip should be called. But before we get into that, let's take a quick break.

You're listening to Part Time Genius, and we're talking about cartoonists Charles Schultz and his beloved Peanuts comic strips. So, you know, to be clear, there was one thing that she definitely did not love about his own strip, and

that was the title. So back in n when he first pitched the strip to be carried by the United Feature Syndicate, Schultz insisted the title should be Little Folks, which maybe wasn't the most creative title, but it does seem, i don't know, somewhat fitting if you think about how so many of his characters they read like these little kids with grown up type worries, and like they're plagued by this level of anxiety and almost neurosis that's typically reserved,

you know, for adults. Yeah, but whether it's fitting or not, the executives had this different problem with it. So there was already a strip called Little Folks, except with the word little all spelled out instead of little like it, and then there was also a little abner the comic strip. So they're worried that readers might confuse the titles, or worse that the creators of the rival strips might sue them for copyright infringement. So instead, the production manager at

the syndicate decided to call the strip Peanuts. And I guess this was a reference to the Howdy Duty show that was pretty popular at the time. When kids came to tapings, they sat in the Peanut Gallery. So the production manager thought, you know, like he'd rip off that

idea and just called the small Kids Peanuts. I do like that their solution to not being sued was to rip off a TV show instead, but either, I know, I mean, the other theory is that they just thought Little Folks was a weak title, but they didn't want to upset Shultz. Um not that he wasn't upset anyway. In the interview, he was still angry about the Peanuts title, and he said, quote, it's totally ridiculous, has no meaning,

is simply confusing, and has no dignity. And I think my humor has dignity, which is sad that you never got to change the name. But you know, of course, once this strip took off, he was kind of stuck with the title. And uh, what's funny to me is that schill Is actually avoided using the title himself, like he claimed that whenever someone asked him what he did for a living, you just tell them I draw that

comic strip with Snoopy in it, Charlie Brown and his Daughter. Well, whatever you call it, there's no question that Schultz's comic was a runaway hit once the strip gained a little bit of steam. So it was published in just seven US newspapers when it debuted back in October of nineteen.

Well by the end of its fifty year run and two thousand, the comic was being translated in over twenty different languages, published in seventy five different countries, and had grown its global readership to his staggering three hundred and fifty five million people. So in total, over fifteen thousand daily strips and Sunday strips were produced, all written, inked,

and lettered by Charles Schultz himself. I mean, it was this unprecedented run, and actually so unprecedented that the media scholar Robert Thompson once called the fifty year story of Charlie Brown and his Pals arguably the longest told story by a single artist in human history. I mean, that's really incredible to think about. So what do you think

made it click with people? For such a long time. Well, I think a big part of it goes back to something that we mentioned at the top of the show, which is the way the strip really found this middle ground in terms of tone. I mean, it was funny and sometimes sweet, but there was always kind of this prickly, world weary feeling underlying the humor there. And you know,

as it turns out, this was all by design. So Schultz believed that happiness and humor didn't really mix, which is of course why Charlie Brown never does get to

kick that football. And he know. Shultz also dealt with bounts of depression in his own life, and one way he found relief was by channeling his anxieties directly into his art, which makes a lot of sense, And the result is a strip with a somewhat despairing worldview and and one where as Schultz once explained, here's what he said about He said, all the loves are unrequited, all the baseball games were lost, all the test scores or d minuses, the great Pumpkin never comes, and the football

is always pulled away like when you described so hopefully it really does. Yeah, it's funny that Sills like completely stuck to that formula for the strip's entire run. Uh so, I guess things did get a little cheerier in the mid to late sixties once the TV special started like and and uh, well, that merchandizing really kicked into high gear. I've actually heard that most fans use the rise of Snoopy and pop culture is kind of a turning point

in the strips run. And uh, you know, there's this first decade or so where Snoopy is more or less this normal dog in the strip. He he walks on four legs, He he doesn't communicate through toop balloons, and he doesn't even have a clear owner in the strips like much less this tricked out doghouse. And weirdly, this is also the period where the human characters were what the creator of Little Abner called good, mean little bastards

eager to hurt one another. But as the sixties donned, Shills began to capitalize in his creation with licensing deals and product tie ins, which caused that public perception of Peanuts to shift, and suddenly the characters were seen as much sweeter and kinder than the strips had ever really been. And while the newer strips never really lost their edge completely, and Charlie Brown remained the world's you know, punching bag.

Snoopy did begin to take on more and more of the limelight, and as this happened, the character became less and less like a real dog. By the late sixties, Snoopy was walking on two legs, He was composing love letters with a typewriter in his doghouse. He was also spending a lot less time around the human characters, and instead he was either hanging out with his new animal friends like Woodstock, or he was off by himself, sort of waging these imaginary wars against the villainous Red Baron.

But you know, in other words, things took a much zanier turn, and lots of Peanuts fans kind of think of that as when the strip kind of jumped the shark. I don't know. Some people must have liked these changes, though, right because Snoopy never became a normal dog again, So

it feels like something must have been working. Yeah, I mean so, some readers thought the new Snoopy was the breath of fresh air, especially in contrast to how bleak the kids could be sometimes, And and that really does make sense when you think about how the other character

has never really react to Snoopy's changes. Um, you know, he suddenly has this whole inner world that's generally much more positive and upbeat than that of the kids, but they still kind of just treating him like a regular dog. Which is interesting because I wonder what such a sharp turn and characterization says about what was going on, you know, for Schultz at the time, like in his own life. And you know, I got this new freewheeling Snoopy who

was supposedly the person or the character. I guess that Schultz always wanted to be, you know, somebody who was adventurous and care free instead of being bogged down by doubt and worry all the time. And so, you know, you think about this time in his life, and maybe by the sixties and seventies, you know, all this fame and fortune that Schultz finally made made him feel like

that kind of person. I guess if he was happier in his personal life, it would make sense to he might want to revel in that feeling and focus more on Snoopy. Yeah. I think there's probably some truth to that, but from many fans perspectives, the new Snoopy, and by extension,

the new Schultz were nothing to celebrate. They saw the slicker, flashy air Snoopy as kind of like hard proof that Schultz, who is now this millionaire cartoonist, had kind of lost touch with those insecurities that had made Charlie Brown so relatable in the first place. So The Atlantic actually did an article on this, and they subbed up the feeling this way quote. There was something fundamentally rotten about the new Snoopy, whose charm was based on his total lack

of concern about what others thought of him. His confidence, his breezy sense that the world may be falling apart, but one can still dance on was worse than irritating. It was morally bankrupt. Two legged Snoopy with his airs and fantasies, peerless Snoopy, rich Snoopy, popular Snoopy, world famous Snoopy, contented Snoopy that spoiled everything good Lord, I mean, like so overthought on the one hand, but I mean, I guess I get what they're saying, but it still feels

pretty harsh to pin all of that on Snoopy. And when you think about the strips where Snoopy's imagining all of these wild and kind of high flying adventures. They usually end with a reality bursting his bubble in some way, and like all of a sudden, Snoopy feels cold, so we're back on top of his doghouse and sharing the desert or wherever. But I don't know, things like that always made me feel like Snoopy's flights of fancy were there were really just another coping mechanism for how tough

life can be. Where that was like Linus's blanket or Lucy's hot temper. But I don't know, that just seems like such a harsh reaction, And you think about this. Snoopy would talk a good game, but at the end of the day, he's just a pop So I don't know. To me, there's something endearing about that. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that, and I think Schultz would as well. In was being interviewed on the Tonight Show just as he was announcing his retirement, and he observed that quote.

Snoopy likes to think that he's this independent dog who does all these things and leads his own life, but he always makes sure that he never gets too far from the suffer dish. All right, Well, now that we've talked a little more about the unique tone and mood of the Peanuts strips, what do you say we take a look at how that translated into all those TV specials and definitely, but first let's take a quick break, Okay, mangoes.

So we established earlier that you didn't exactly do your homework by watching n is It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown. So I guess we'll have to talk about that in a later episode, maybe a dedicated episode just to that. But it's actually not the only unusual title. I mean, there's some other chestnuts in the mix, like Someday You'll find her Charlie Brown, which sounds a little bleak, and 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 is fair enough, but I think for everyone's sake, whould

probably just stick to a special that people have actually seen. So, but why don't we talk a little bit about the one that people will be watching for the million time in the next few weeks, which is to Charlie Brown Christmas. That makes sense. So what do you want to say first about it? Well, how about the fact that nobody involved in the special thought it was actually going to work.

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 were too young memorize their lines or even to read

in some cases, so most of the child actors had to have their lines fed to them a few words at a time. It was all done by that long suffering director and the voice of Snoopy, Bill Melendez. I mean, just hearing that it does make me realize that in the specials the voices do sound a little choppy, like

the way kids talk isn't exactly seamless. Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of rhythm to the senses, and if you listen close enough, you can actually hear the scenes between the words, where like different parts of the line were stitched together and post But these untrained actors were just the first of many notes that ended up jeopardizing the project, and these were all coming from Schultz.

So another shake up came when Schultz refused to let the network use the laugh track to I guess kind of cue the viewers on the jokes, which is so strange because it is hard to imagine it now with a laugh track. Yeah, but I guess laugh tracks were common practice at the time, even in cartoons like uh you know, the Flintstones obviously relied on rue and I

think the Jetsons to. But but when uh Lee Mendelssohn mentioned the idea to Schultz, the artist simply got up and left the room, And then a few minutes later Schultz came back and carried on the conversation as if nothing had happened, which does sound a little bit like a George Costanza tactic. You know, it's pretty funny, Yeah, totally, And I guess Mendelssohn read between the lines on that

and never brought up the laugh track again. Wow, what about some of the heavier stuff in the special, like the commercialization of Christmas? And that's see where Linus reads from the Bible, like with Shultz behind those kinds of decisions too. Yeah, definitely, it was really important to him that the special explore what he called the true meaning of Christmas, which is why Linus reads the story of

Jesus's birth straight from the Gospel of Luke. And this was a super risky move at the time because, according to The Atlantic, less than nine percent of Christmas episodes and specials from the era contained any religious references of any kind, much less direct quotes from scripture. So surprisingly, CBS didn't object to this inclusion, and not that it.

Coca Cola, who was the special sponsor um the producer, though, was super nervous, and he told shots that no animated character had ever read from the Bible before, which was all the more reason to Schultz, and he told Mendelssohn, well, if we don't do it, who will. I mean, I guess that's true, but that was still a pretty big gamble at the time. I mean, CBS and Coke must have really liked what they saw if they let the reference pass without you know, much more scrutiny. Yeah, I

mean you think so. But this executive from Coke's ad agency actually visited the crew halfway through production and he said the special was shaping up to be a total disaster. And and CBS thought the same thing when they screened like this early cut of it just a few weeks before the premiere. They said there was two little action that the whole thing moved way too slowly, and not to mention the low energy voice acting and the jazzy soundtrack,

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 to watch the special that night, which was apparently fifteen

million people at the time. And a few months later, Charles Schultz and Lee Mendelssohn were on stage at the Emmy's actually accepting the award for Outstanding children's program. It was the surprise hit that no one had seen coming, and that included Charles Schultz himself. He later told TV Guide in the continued success of the special has surprised me as much as anyone. A lot of the drawings are terrible, and of course those terrible drawings are based

on his own designs. Yeah, I guess we shouldn't be too surprised that Schultz would, you know, take this class half empty approach when judging oone work. But uh, you know, for all the fanciful touches in his stories, like kite 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 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 things of life. And I really think that Mantra bleeds through in every single one of his strips, and they show us that life is made up of both small, hard one triumphs and these bitterly felt disappointments, and not always an equal measure either. But you know the important thing is to pick yourself up and never stop trying.

And you know Charles Schultz understood that, and I feel like, thanks to his work, lots of other people, including us, do too. Definitely. But you know, before we dive into this delicious feast of buttered toast and jelly beans that Tristan has prepared for us, but what do you say we sneak in a quick fact off. I don't know if I can hold off, but let's try. M So, did you know that NASA gives out an award every

year called the Silver Snoopy. It's actually a silver pin, and instead of going to astronauts, it actually is the astronauts who give the awards to the staff and the researchers that helped support them. So this program started in the sixties, and you're probably wondering why Snoopy. Well, at the time, NASA had just suffered the disaster with the Apollo one mission and they were looking for something uplifting that people could really get behind, and there was nothing

bigger than Snoopy at the time. So today the pins go for about a thousand dollars on eBay and now claims every pen goes to space and comes back before

it's handed out. Oh, I really like that. So you know, when when Charles Schultz moved away from Minnesota as an adult, he he never actually gave up his love of ice hockey, So when one ice skating rink that was close to his home in California closed in the sixties, he actually had one built and according to mental Flass, he loved the Swiss alpine themed arena so much that he ate both breakfast and lunch there every day at its warm

puppy snack bar. And he also used to play pickup games every week with his son's I Guess on Tuesday nights, which is kind of fun. Well, apparently that Charlie Brown Halloween Special had a huge impact on kids, and particularly the scene where Charlie Brown opens his Halloween bag and finds that he's just got a bunch of rocks instead of candy. So kids thought this was so unfair that for years they would try to share their treats with him, and so they would send bags of candy to Charles

Schultz's office care of Charlie Brown. So here's the super weird one about musician Vince Coralty, who did all that jazzy music for the specials. Apparently, one night, while he was composing music for the Halloween Special, he decided to take a shower, but when he heard a noise outside, 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 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 was done recording every all time, she would throw up. Now, luckily she didn't have that big of a role kid actors. Yeah, well,

here's the one that's kind of heartwarming. Uh So, so we all know that Lucy loves to pull that football away from Charlie Brown just as he's about to kick it, and often she says mean things right before or after, like uh apparently she'll ask him don't you trust anyone anymore? Or putting the football out, or she'll let him know after she's pulled it away that don't you know a woman's handshake isn't binding, which is a strange bit of

legally is there. But you know that there was one moment where she let him kick the ball, and this was in nineteen seventy As Slate reports, um there was actually a sequence where Charlie Brown gets very ill and 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 like that factor. So I think you get to take home today's trophy. Thank you, Will, and thanks for all of you out there for tuning into another part time Genius. You know, I'm sure you have wonderful Snoopy and Charlie

Brown memories. So if you've got facts of stories, we definitely want to hear them. Or if you've got topics you want us to cover, we're actually looking for those two. So it just emails as part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or hit us up on the socials. But from gave Tristan, Will and me thank you so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things

we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact for user thing. Gabe blues Yer is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the

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