Peanuts
Alternate meaning: See peanut
Peanuts book cover
Peanuts is the name of a syndicated comic strip written and drawn by American cartoonist Charles Schulz from October 2, 1950 to 2000.
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2 Television and films 3 Feature Films 4 Animated TV Specials 5 The This Is America, Charlie Brown Series (1988) 6 External Links 7 Books |
History
Peanuts had its origin in Li'l Folks, a weekly comic strip that appeared in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to 1950. When the strip was picked up by a syndicate, however, the "Li'l Folks" name had to be dropped to avoid confusion with two other comics of the time: Al Capp's Li'l Abner and a now-forgotten strip entitled "Little Folks." The syndicate settled on the name "Peanuts," a title Schulz himself was not particularly fond of.
The strip's early years bear little resemblance to the later incarnation most are familiar with. The art was cleaner and sleeker, with thicker lines and short, squat characters; for example, in these early strips, Charlie Brown's famous round head is closer to an American football. Several major characters (Lucy, Linus, and Schroeder) are pre-verbal infants who gradually aged as the strip went on, while Snoopy was a more or less typical dog rather than the anthropomorphized character he would later become. Finally, whereas the comic would eventually come to revolve primarily around Charlie Brown and Snoopy, the main protagonist in these early strips was a fairly bland and generic character named Shermy.
As the strip wore on, Shermy was relegated to increasingly rare supporting appearances, while Charlie Brown (who was, by Schulz's own admission, inspired by his own childhood self) became more and more prominent. Charlie Brown's main characteristic is his self-defeating stubbornness: he can never win a ballgame, but continues playing baseball. He can never fly a kite successfully, but continues trying to fly his kite. Charlie Brown's playmates in the early years included his beagle Snoopy, Lucy van Pelt and her little brother Linus, and piano-playing Schroeder.
The Peanuts characters generally do not age, except in the case of infant characters who catch up to the rest of the cast, then stop. Linus, for example, is born in the first couple of years of the strip's run. He ages from infancy to Charlie Brown's age over the course of the first fifteen years of the strip's run, during which we see him learn to walk and talk with the help of Lucy and Charlie Brown. Linus then stops aging, and becomes Charlie Brown's classmate in third grade and best friend.
In the 1960s, the strip shifts in two ways. For one, Snoopy becomes a more prominent character. Many of the strips revolve around Snoopy's active fantasy life, in which he might be a World War I fighter pilot or an ice hockey star, to the amusement and consternation of the children who wonder what he is doing.
Also, Schulz introduced greater diversity in his cast of characters by replacing some of the largely anonymous neighborhood children (Shermy, Violet) with a character named Patricia Reichardt — known universally as Peppermint Patty. Patty is an assertive, athletic, but rather obtuse girl who shakes up Charlie Brown's world by calling him "Chuck", flirting with him, and giving him compliments he's not so sure he deserves.
Peppermint Patty (not to be confused with an earlier character named Patty) also brought a new group of friends, including the strip's first black character, Franklin, and Peppermint Patty's bookish sidekick Marcie Johnson, who calls Patty "Sir" and Charlie Brown "Charles" (all other characters call him "Charlie Brown" at all times). Some have speculated that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are portrayals of lesbians, but this may well be idle fantasy especially considering the girls' mutual affection for Charlie Brown.
Other notable characters include Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally, who was fixated on Linus, and Woodstock the bird, who spoke entirely in apostrophes.
The newest character is Rerun van Pelt, the little brother of Linus and Lucy, who was introduced in the 1970s.
Peanuts is remarkable for its deft social commentary, especially compared with other strips appearing in the 1950s and early 1960s. Schulz did not explicitly address racial and gender equality issues so much as he assumed them to be self-evident in the first place. Peppermint Patty's athletic skill and self-confidence is simply taken for granted, for example. However, Schulz could throw some barbs when he chose.
One memorable sequence featured a little boy named "5", whose sisters were named "3" and "4", whose father had changed the family surname to their ZIP code number as a protest. Another sequence lampooned Little Leagues and "organized" play, when all the neighborhood kids join "snowman-building" leagues and criticize Charlie Brown when he insists on building his own snowmen without leagues or coaches.
The final original Peanuts comic strip was finished on January 3, 2000 and published in newspapers a day after Schulz died on February 12.
Aside from numerous books of or about the comic strips, the Peanuts characters have appeared in animated form on television many times. This started when the Ford Motor Company licensed the Peanuts characters in 1959 for black and white television advertisements for the Ford Falcon. This commercial was animated by Bill Melendez who worked at Playhouse Pictures, a cartoon studio that had Ford as a client. Schultz and Melendez became friends, and when then documentary producer Lee Mendelson decided to make a short film called A Boy Named Charlie Brown, he brought on Melendez to work on the animated sequences. Before this project was completed, the three of them produced their first television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, first broadcast in 1965 on CBS, which featured the music of Vince Guaraldi. The success of A Charlie Brown Christmas was the impetus for CBS to air a long-running, celebrated series of prime-time Peanuts TV specials over the years, including It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown, and many others. In total, more than thirty animated specials were produced.
During the early 1990s, Peanuts was adapted to a weekly Saturday morning animated series, entitled The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show. This series failed to gain the acclaim and the audiences of the prime-time specials, and it was cancelled after two seasons.
Schulz and team later collaborated on other television specials and full-length feature films, the first of which was A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1968). (Again, note the absence of the word "Peanuts" in the title.) Most of these made use of material from Schulz's strips, which were then adapted. The Peanuts characters even found their way to the theatre, appearing in the musicals You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown was originally an extremely successful off-Broadway musical that ran for four years (1967-1971) in New York City and on tour, with Gary Burghoff as the original Charlie Brown. An updated revival opened in New York City in 1999.
Peanuts strips have been reprinted in many books over the years. Some represented chronological collections of strips, while others were thematic collections, such as Snoopy's Tennis Book. Some single-story books were produced, such as Snoopy and the Red Baron. In addition, most of the Peanuts television animated specials were adapted into book form.
Charles Schulz always resisted publication of early Peanuts strips, as they did not reflect the characters as he eventually developed them. However, in 1997 he began talks with Fantagraphics Books to have all Peanuts strips published, including every strip from the early years. The first volume in the collection, The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, was published in April 2004. Peanuts is in a unique situation compared to other comics in that archive quality masters of most strips are still owned by the syndicate. The following books publish much of this previously unreproduced material.
Television and films
Feature Films
Animated TV Specials
The This Is America, Charlie Brown Series (1988)
External Links
Books